MainStage
By Apple
Description
MainStage lets you take your Mac to the stage with a full-screen interface optimized for live performance, flexible hardware control, and a massive collection of plug-ins and sounds that are fully compatible with Logic Pro. The Ultimate Live Rig • Perform live with 100 instrument, effect, and MIDI plug-ins or work with Audio Units plug-ins • Add your sounds from Logic Pro and GarageBand to bring your studio sound to the stage • Support for the Touch Bar on MacBook Pro provides convenient controls for layout, editing, and performance • Combine instruments and live audio, such as keyboards and vocals, in a single Patch • Switch between Patches without stopping sound output or cutting off held notes • Design rich keyboard Patches using splits and layers, the Arpeggiator, and other MIDI plug-ins • Perform with stereo or multitrack backing tracks using Playback • 64-bit architecture uses all the RAM in your system for larger sampled instruments Hardware Control • Connect your favorite hardware and use it to play and control your plug-ins • Use USB and MIDI-equipped controllers like keyboards, foot pedals, and drum pads • Instantly set up a large variety of hardware using automatic device recognition • Quickly assign hardware knobs, buttons, and faders to onscreen controls • Manage sophisticated rigs using the Assignments & Mapping overview Designed for the Stage • See only what you need during your performance using a customizable, full-screen live interface • Screen controls adapt for each Patch using Smart Controls • Smart Controls offer dynamic performance controls that change with each Patch • Easily view your Mac screen from a distance using a high-contrast, full-screen performance view Instrument Plug-ins • Play or create a wide variety of rich sampled instruments with Sampler and Quick Sampler • Turn your favorite hardware synthesizers into sampled instruments using the Auto Sampler plug-in • Quickly find sounds or create unique new ones with Alchemy, the ultimate sample manipulation synthesizer • Play classic ’70s- and ’80s-style synthesizer sounds using Retro Synth • Play faithful models of vintage keyboards with Vintage B3, Vintage Electric Piano, and Vintage Clav • Perform inspired sounds using a collection of synths that provide analog, wavetable, FM, additive, granular, spectral, and modeling synthesis • Play deeply sampled, professionally mixed, and fully customizable drum kits provided by Drum Kit Designer • Perform electronic beats with the Ultrabeat drum machine MIDI Plug-ins • Transform simple ideas into elaborate performances using nine MIDI plug-ins • Instantly turn a simple chord into a rich performance with the Arpeggiator • Play a single note to trigger predefined chords with Chord Trigger • Perform a part and conform notes to a specific scale using Transposer Creative and Production Effects • Play your sounds through a variety of realistic acoustic spaces or creative synthesized reverbs • Use a range of multi-tap, vintage tape, and stereo delays • Add movement to your tracks with a variety of modulation effects • Get the perfect mix with a collection of vintage and modern EQs, dynamics, and other mixing tools Guitar and Bass Gear • Build your own guitar or bass rig with Amp Designer using vintage and modern amps, cabinets, and mics • Design a custom Pedalboard from a collection of delay, distortion, and modulation stompboxes • Access a full-screen Tuner to quickly get in tune Sound Library • Over 5,900 instrument and effect patches • 1,200 meticulously sampled instruments • 14,750 Apple Loops in a wide range of genres Storage Requirements • 6GB available disk space for minimum install / 72GB hard disk for full Sound Library installation
Screenshots
Reviews
integrating samples
why cant all the samples just be saved into the file like logic does. doesnt make sense that you have to go into each audio sample and save it a certain way in order to be consolidated into one file
Moving on to Ableton
Tired of the constant slowness, freeze-ups during live performances, crashes, bugs, and infrequent software updates to fix issues. Mainstage is great when it's working properly, but 3.6 is the worst release I've seen. Switching to Ableton.
Previous version of Mainstage worked great.
Previous version worked great-- new version is super slow and unresponsive. It makes me wonder if Apple is trying to coerce me to buy a new machine, for no other reason than they want more money. I wish I hadn't updated.
Was Great now it won't open.
After the new update Mainstage crashes and won't open; running a Mid 2014 Macbook Pro. Never had any problems before. Highly disappointed.
Ugghhh...Just Broken
This has been a critical piece of software for me for years -- - I knew I should have read the most recent reviews before downloading. This newest update, V3.6, is unusable/buggy/broken.... No other way to put it....and I'm running on the new silicon. Please fix this!
This version 3.6 is buggy !
I have a 2021 Macbook Pro M1 Max and when using Mainstage 3.6 the patches don't pull up the stock sounds in Concert/Performance mode. For some reason they are missing and when I pull up the plugin I have to manually reset it. That just doesn't work when I'm performing live. Gonna go back to version 3.5.3 and wait until they fix these issues. Mainstage is a great program just not at the moment for me unfortunantly. I hope they address this soon! We want to PLAY with no problems!
White background/White text
This app is just broken. After the update both the patch panel and the studio controls panel have a white background with white text making them unusable. Only solution is to permanatly turn on dark mode. How do you release garbage like this?
HOW DOES APPLE RELEASE THIS UPDATE??>??????????
3.6 is a FULL FAILURE!!!! 5 different MACs from 2013 to an M1. AND NOW NONE OF THEM DO ANYTHING excpet hang on startup... one has been thre for 36 minutes no change... ABSOLUTE JOKE THIS WAS RELASED AND THE TEAM MANAGERE WHO APPROVED IT MUST BE FIRED !!!! HUNDREDS OF MUSICIANS WILL LOSE WORK OVER THIS GARBAGE UPDATE
Newest update, March 2022
The new update is AUTROCIOUS! Completey has unassigned mappings, INCLUDING the sustain pedal module. UNABLE to assign...it swtiches to Volume 7 EVERY TIME. Needs to be fixed IMMEDIATELY.
Not sure what happened..
I have a MacbookPro mid 2012 with mainstage that runs amazing. Now I have a 2020 Macbook Air M1, so now when I open Mainstage it lags for about 3 min before there is no lag. The worse part for me is when I play the trombone from Kontakt and some othe sounds the whole volume compresses to where the sound loses so much body I cant even use the Macbook Air live anymore. This issue has been driving me crazy! I do not have any compressor set anywhere for this to happen. Its almost as if this Macbook Air has a built in compressor impossible to toggle off. Can anyone help?
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