MainStage App Reviews

Great user interface, great concept, great value (with all the synths and effects). However, I do own a hexacore 2013 Mac Pro with 64GB RAM. Even with such a fast workstation, I was often missing a beat (quite literally) with MainStage due to unexplained CPU spikes: CPU use would stay around 25% and then suddenly (even when I was not playing anything at all) would peak around 200% the next moment causing very annoying drop outs and delays. This makes the application completely useless for professional use (and even for hobbyist use). Judging by what I read on the internet, I am not alone with this problem.

I have used MainStage On Mountain Lion,Mavericks,Yosemite and now El Capitan. Mountain Lion and 3.0 (?) was the best in terms of “it just works”. Now I hear pops and clicks when sounds decay and Kontakt 5 is completely unusable, even with turning off multi core support,etc. Apple has always had bugs with MS3 and at each “update” never solves the most common. It has so much going for it and is great if you stick with only the included plug ins.

..I don’t know where to start. I’m a keyboard player and I’ve been using MS for two years professionally and since updating, much functionality has gone out the window. Frequent glitching and crashing when using Rewire and slave DAWs like Reason. I have now gone back to Ableton Live and my work has suffered greatly. Apple promises certain things in the updates are fixed but some are complete lies. Apple, you are arrogant liars! Shame on you. Don’t get me wrong, there is a lot that is good about MS, especially the concept, which is why I’ve persisted to give it every chance. But I can’t work with the miriad of problems. I have written about these in the Apple community, of which Apple never responds to. 0 stars, if I could.

MainStage is my guitar workhorse. I use it every day, and have done so since version 1 appeared. There’s no equivalent product from anyone else. MainStage has all the power of the best DAWs (no surprise — it’s a Logic spinoff), but optimized for live performance. The ability to design custom setups to suit your instrument, gear, style, and musical needs is unprecedented and unique. Many of the complaints here seem to be standard Apple beefs. (“My fly-by-night interface manufacturer is slow to respond to Mac upgrades,” or “It won’t run with my 1987 Mac Plus.”) Assuming you have a Mac from the last four years or so and have upgraded your OS in the last year or two, there should be no unsurmountable problems. There is literally no competition for this brillaint and open-ended musical tool. Plus you get access to almost all the great plug-ins from Logic at an almost comically low price. (And contrary to what another review states, my MS sets are packed with NI Kontakt instances, and I’ve never encountered issues. Some people may need to read up on optimizing setting in MS and Kontakt, though.) Don’t believe the haters — MainStage is IT for customizable OS X performance software.

I try to load a preset and I get this warning “No document could be created. The file isn’t in the correct format”. So I can’t use the program without figuring out how to work around the problem. Apple got the money and I am stuck with half a program.

This update is awesome. Fixed the main bug that I was experiencing (way too much CPU taken up for feedback detection that could not be turned off in 3.2.2). Makes a few UI changes that are key (Mixer can take up more screen space) and has updated plugins! Quicker audio interface switching is also very nice. So far, very impressed. Mainstage is great. Yes, it has limitations and some things that I still sctrach my head over as to why (like only 16-bit stereo audio recording), but its a fantastic, cheap way to get a bunch of awesome synths and effects going live, which is really useful in combination with a more flexible but less friendly program like Max/MSP.

I have several concerts that have large amounts of routing aux busses. ALL of the Aux busses were renamed and the audio did NOT pass through them like it did using version 3.2.2. In addition, even though I have unchecked ‘save EXS samples’ in the save options, it still re- saves them (3.2.2 did NOT do this unless they were checked)…. This saving procsess happens EVERY TIME and takes FOREVER and basically hoses my machine EVERY time I hit ‘save’. So until they fix those two things, I’m sticking with 3.2.2.

Before this update I was able to sustain all of my instument’s sound coming from my pluging (ex. Kotankt) as long as they were in the same patch, but now I can only sustain the instrument sound that goes to channel midi 1. All of the other midi channels (2-16) within that plugin wont recieve sustain information. This bug renders mainstage 3.2.3 useless for me. I had to go back to the 3.2.2 version to be able to play my gig. Please Fix soon!!

I’ve been using Mainstage as my live keyboard rig for worship music for the last 2 years and it’s been remarkably solid. Instead of building out full-fledged “Concerts” I have settled with one Mainstage Concert that I use regardless of what I’m playing. I typically use the same collection of pianos, EPs, organs, pads, bells to get me through 95% of my performances. I’ve also recently added on Native Instruments Komplete which has really expanded the sound capabilities, but Mainstage is quite capable with what you get for free.

Apple clearly monitors the feedback and listens to the customers. Thank you for that! MainStage has been my tool of choice for my setups for many years.

MainStage might not be perfect, but this “little” app is seriously underpriced at $30. Just the software instruments and effects alone costs hundreds of dollars a few years ago. The trick with this app is to take the time to get out what you need. While on the surface it looks like a nice little app like GarageBand, it seems to be designed for pros and as such takes time to learn certain things.