MainStage App Reviews

As a keyboardist and performer, Mainstage has been a valuable performance solution. For me it is an excellent way to bring my studio to the stage. Thank you Apple!

Yes, you need fast Mac, yes you need enough RAM and SSD, and yes you need right choice of audio interface and its driver, but once you setup your gear in good shape, MainStage is very solid. I’ve been programming and using MainStage for various musicals and theatrical shows on Broadway, the US national tours, the international tours, recordings and sound design sessions and it never let me down. I have 100% confident, and never felt scared to use MainStage in professional, critical condition and I’m recommending it to every single show I’ve been involved with. For instance, I designed keyboard system for Cinderella the US national tour and I use a server Mac mini (quad core i7) with two 512Gb SSDs, 16Gb RAM, RME UCX, NI komplete9 bundle, Omnisphere, and MainStage can handle about 300 patch changes with nearly 1000 plugin instances without a hiccup. I’ve never got a emergency call from players on the tour. I can’t not go back to “hardware” keyboard realm anymore. Enjoy!!

I just noticed when routing audio to output channel 1-2, channel 4 starts getting the same signal routed to 1-2. Any help on how to resolve this issue would be appreciated.

It is my error, but I “assumed” I would be able to use Apple vst instruments within other DAW’s. Rather than having to slave my mac to another master DAW. Cool program but the functionality is limited to using it truly as a stand alone. The same instruments require more CPU resources than using them within Garage Band or Logic X, which makes no sense at all.

Mainstage is incredible! My guitarist has used this application for years. Now I’ve taken the plunge too…

Certain aspects of the application don’t work, and vendor support is non-existent. Good luck.

Nice stage controller, hard to beat for the great price. The stock sounds are a good basic starting point for sounds. Pianos, Strings, Pads, Orchestra, Brass a bit on the weak side. Also, would be great if they had some built in templates for controllers. Looking forward to adding on.

This app is wonderful and I would highly recommend it to anyone. But the pedal has been sticking lately and is really hurting my performance. Both practicing and in performances somthing is not reading correctly and the pedal is just on all the time. I really hope there can be an update to this issue soon.

The concept is great and when it works, it works well, but I get graphic artifacts all over my iMac screen so badly I need to reboot. This doesn’t happen with Logic or any other program. Also occasionally crashes, usually never at a good time. Little support and few answers from the Apple forums. I’m starting to look at alternatives, though nothing will beat Mainstage’s price.

I have updated to the new 3.2 MainStage app and found that it will not load. I get an error message that it cannot load with ANY third party plugins installed. It doesn’t matter what 3rd party plugin I use, MainStage crashes and refuses to open. I completely removed all of my 3rd party plugins from my Mac and MainStage will open just fine without them. I hope they fix this bug soon. I even removed MainStage 3.2 and re-installed. But no joy. Wiil not load with any 3rd party plugins no matter which ones you have.

The addition of Alchemy has created a whole new world of possibilities for synth geeks and the like. Tons of new patches and sounds added with this single plugin alone. I’m still getting comfortable with Mainstage in general, but this one little add-on for no additional cost is mind-blowing! This definitely takes care of me debating wether or not I will be purchasing Spectrasonics Omnisphere, the industry standard synth plugin. Everything you need is right here, people!

I use the text option to save chords, since I have a hard time remembering them. However, after this most recent update, Mainstage is not saving the chords at the set level. Once I close out the concert, AFTER SAVING, it dissapears. Please fix this. This is really annoying. Thanks.

After Mainstage’s most recent update, the program is glitching like crazy. None of the input settings will save. This is supposed to be a professional program. Get it fixed yesterday.

After updating to this version, MainStage now no longer saves external instrument inputs. You can assign an external instrument to an input channel, save the concert, quit MainStage, and when you reload the concert all of your inputs are defaulted to no input. Also have problems now with CPU overload messages, even on concerts that do not have any plug-ins on them. Just plain audio routing. Avoid this build if you are a working musician.

Since updating to 3.2 on El Capitan, I’ve lost the status wheel, all Kontakt plugin support, and the visual layout disappears and the patches are named incorrectly more than half of the time. To say this program is “buggy" is a huge understatement. That’s like saying the entire known universe is “big.” DO NOT UPDATE until the next update, or you’ll be sorry. This update has taken a 5-star program and made it almost unusable.

Foolishly updated after 3.2 was out for about a month. I figured if there were any major issues with the new version, that they probably would have got them ironed out by now. Big mistake. 3.2 has more bugs than a dumpster and it’s convinced me that I need to ditch Mainstage in favor of a real music progam.

Do no update! If you already have and Mainstage will not open for you, you can hold down option and click the mainstage icon (keep holding option). It should open the main window for you instead of the last concert. At that point, it won’t open any concert for me (including the default ones). Your results may vary but I hope this helps you.

Had MainStage 3 working perfectly then updated to El Capitan and NOTHING will open. Saying the files aren’t in the correct format????

I love mainstage and it is fantastic. Still having issues with 3rd party plug ins (kontact) breaking up when my meters are below 50%. If you guys could fix that then my 5 star rating will be soon to follow! Thanks for all of the work you guys have put into this program!

Hey the thing is that as a new user of Mainstage and Mac I feel like I was misled when I purchased both the mac and the software. There are so many usb audio devices that are not yet compatible with OS X 10.11 that it makes it unusable on stage at this time. How long are we supposed to wait for a fix from various hardware audio devices? It’s been months now and they are just now reporting some of the problems that occur, meaning even if some hardware devices dont show incompatibility issues, they could find some in the future. My Sternberg UR22 Audio interface seems to work fine for an average time of about 15 to 25 minutes and then the audio just disappears. You might say that’s not the fault of mainstage but since it is an apple software and there are soooooo many interfaces that are not compatible then please warn us, or better yet, update a list of devices that do work with it. Moving on to other issues I have with the software. The learning curve of this software and all its terms. Its great that we have a fully customizable program and can do a lot of cool things with mainstage but wow its a little overwhelming to get started. I have purchased many software programs and learned their nuances and ways of operation from video editing and other recording programs but there are a number of things that could be done to make the whole thing take less TIME. I am a father and husband and the time I spend in the mornings before work should be enough to set up and learn how to operate this program. Sure I am figuring it out but I had to watch a youtube video just to get the basics. The truth is I may end up loving the software but until more interfaces are compatible with OS 10.11 it’s not so great especially since I just bought mine less than a year ago and it worked fine with Windows 7.