Major Mainstage midi note buffering issue

I'm running Mainstage 3.3.2 with a variety of 3rd party software plugins. When playing a piano patch in Kontakt (for example) often Mainstage will stop playing these notes and spit them all out at the same time a few seconds later. This does not register on the CPU load history window.

This started happening during a concert series, and I tried everything possible to fix it. All the sounds are on external SSDs. I replaced the SSD enclosures with brand new USB3 enclosures plugged directly into the iMac.

I also replaced the audio interface mid-run.

How can I fix this? As it is, it's unusable for me, but I really want to be able to use Mainstage for these live concerts.

iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, 2017), macOS Sierra (10.12.6)

Posted on Jul 2, 2018 9:12 AM

Top-ranking reply

DaCaptain

Level 4

1,048 points

Posted on Jul 4, 2018 2:42 AM

Please check, if your master keyboard spits out MIDI info, that's not required, like Aftertouch, etc. If so, switch it off in the keyboard itself to lower the amount of data processed by the MIDI engine in MainStage.

Then, you might check the number of threads Kontakt is using. This can be set in the preferences in Kontakt. Lowering them makes Kontakt a more friendly citizen.

If that doesn't help, use AutoSampler to sample the Kontakt patch into an EXS, which is pretty lightweight.

Another unusual thing might be the USB wiring / power supply. I had issues with my audio interface if using the 3-prong plug with the power supply. This seems to lead to a USB ground loop, which causes pretty unpredictable things, like MIDI devices coming and going, audio interface ceasing their services, etc. Once back to the 2 prong plug, all went well again.

Best,

DaCaptain

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Major Mainstage midi note buffering issue

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