By Apple
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 4300 instrument and effect Patches • More than 1800 meticulously sampled instruments • 10000 Apple Loops in a wide range genres Storage Requirements • 6GB available disk space for minimum install / 72GB hard disk for full Sound Library installation
I've used MainStage since August. Most of the time it works well; however, I've had a few times where I have a layered patch using piano, pads, and maybe a rhodes and during the song, inexplicably, the piano sounds drop out and stop working. CPU and Memory all show minimal usage but I lost my piano sounds and have to wait until the end of the song, shut down MainStage and restart it. I've gone through every tech help available and it's still happening. So frustrating. Worth the $30 but you should have a secondary keyboard that isn't connected to MainStage in case it fails.
Since a recent update the recordings are no longer stereo (missing left channel), and are mono longer effectively making the feature useless.
She works again!! Thank you Apple for fixing the bugs in this update!! Performance Mode works again like it's supposed to. Mainstage is a killer app...especially at this price point. You won't be dissapointed.
I love MainStage, but don't upgrade to 3.5 yet. 3.5 is very slow loading patches that use ESX files. It is so slow, it makes the patch useless
Once it gets through the 20 minute load time of a simple concert it performs fine. This is now a wideley reported issue. Get on the stick Apple!
CPU performance is way better than last update, but pedalboard and amp sim tones and GUI is old and is in serious need of an update. Performance view has a bug where buttons don't work with mouse or trackpad, please fix.
i downloaded the latest update and non of my patches were able to launch in mainstage 3. Then it stoped opening, now it cant open. please fix this
I'm going with 2 stars because the latest updates to Logic Pro instruments are NOT here! PLEASE!!!!! Update so they match! The instruments in Logic are SO much better now! PLEASE!!!!
Somehow Mainstage is wreaking havoc on my entire system's performance after it runs. Quitting doesn't help. Resources do not appear to be consumed. Seeing that the last update was 7 months ago is not encouraging.
People ask me what I'm running all the time because the tonewheel organ sound is so good. I just want the ability to run two different keyboards easily, so I can do a Rhodes Hammond setup and switch one out at a time (e.g. if I want to use a grand piano, or do both manuals of an organ)