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I am currently testing out an all iPad rig with tracks using AUM mixer and several high quality iOS apps. I have three gigs lined up shortly that I am using it. The rig is 100% iOS. So far it is sounding good.

 

 

Would you share a breakdown of what youre using with us?

 

Pianos are Ravenscroft and Korg Module ivory

EPS are Korg module scarbee

For tracks I use launchpad and bloc waves

Everything mixed and loaded in AUM mixer. I have midi faders and buttons assigned so its all one touch.

 

For the sounds of my tracks (bass, horns, drums guitars etc) I use BeatHawk 3 IAP sounds. Man are they sweet sounding patches.

 

Im finding without a proper file system on iOS it takes a bit longer to put things together than on MacBook. Heres to hoping we get full file systems with iOS13.

Nektar LX61+, iPad 9.7 Inch, Mainstage, Korg Kronos 2
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I'm pretty happy with my iPad sounds:

Ravenscroft, Neo Soul Keys, Syntronik, Poison, Moog stuff, Synth One, Sound Fonts on bs-16, Noise, Patterning, Groovebox, All the Luis Martinez drum machines.

 

I think for my laptop my new setup will be Arturia V Collection 6, plus the full library for Mainstage. I have a few other plugs ins that I've picked up for free - OBxd, Baervaag, all of the free Spitfire LABS stuff, Tyrell N6, TAL Noisemaker and Addictive Keys.

 

If I had unlimited budget, I'd add NI Ultimate, Omisphere and Keyscape and whatever else I could, but I don't.

 

There are some nice deals out there for Black Friday so be on the lookout.

Yamaha U1 Upright, Roland Fantom 8, Nord Stage 4 HA73, Nord Wave 2, Korg Nautilus 73, Viscount Legend Live, Lots of Mainstage/VST Libraries

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Roland Guy & Jeff - thanks for the information. Ive yet to get into it that far (I retired my 2010 MBP and upgraded my studio iMac last year, so have been using bare minimum apps on my phone). I havent seen a need for an iPad, but its become clear to me that its the logical future for live gigs.

____________________________________
Rod

Here for the gear.

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So completed a live gig with an all iPad rig last night. This is what I noticed:

 

1 - everything is much more stable with higher buffer. I have non pro iPad, 2018 regular iPad. I eventually had to settle at 512 buffer - but rock solid.

 

2 - sound check on a sunny day and iPad are the worst enemies. Keep your iPad shaded. That thing heats up like dynamite.

 

3 - BeatHawk IAP sounds live are amazing - probably the best sounding IMHO. Shout to sample tank bass guitars as well. Did left hand keys and that bass punches nicely.

 

4 - battery is more than enough to last 3 full sets. But arrive at the gig with 100%.

 

overall I would probly recommend an iPad Pro so that buffers can be lower. Next gig I will run live tracks, play sounds and run loops all with iPad and Aum mixer live.

 

bL9eNA

 

Nektar LX61+, iPad 9.7 Inch, Mainstage, Korg Kronos 2
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  • 1 month later...

I've always been a PC guy, but now considering buying a used MacBook Pro to try Mainstage on band rehearsals. The plan is to use a MacBook Pro for VI Labs Ravenscroft 275, Scarbee Mark I, Synthronics, AcousicSamples B5, HALion 6, etc.

 

I've found some used MacBook Pro 13" from 2015 to about $ 800 - 1000. Most are i5 with 8GB of RAM and 128GB of SSD. I expect 8GB of RAM will be at the bottom end and that I should look for a machine with 16GB of RAM. I also expect a 128GB SSD disk to become too small, and that I should get a machine whit a 256GB SSD disk.

 

How important is the processor in that context? Should I try to buy a machine with a i7 processor - that it's hard to find on the used market - or will an i5-processor do as long as I find one with 16GB of RAM?

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Mid 2012 I believe is when they went to the "unibody" design with the "retina" screen. They can be opened with some effort but be aware the SSDs are a proprietary blade design (NVMe), so to upgrade you will spend more money than with a PC. AFAIK only OWC sells drives for these. You can also look for used OEM drives on Ebay. If you're very adventurous, google "Sintech adapter"; you may be able to use a more standard NVMe drive in your MacBook with one. Every few months I look into this approach and wind up more confused as to what will or won't work in my laptop. I have a late-2013 15" MBP with a 256GB drive. Right now, to go to 480GB would be $219 at OWC, which is better than it was in the past. But 500GB NVMe M.2 drives are typically $80 - $120 where I am.

 

I do OK with 8GB of ram. More is better but I run a pretty decent-sized live rig with no issues. You might know that RAM is soldered in Apple laptops now whatever it comes with is what you'll be stuck with for the life of the computer.

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Mid 2012 I believe is when they went to the "unibody" design with the "retina" screen. They can be opened with some effort but be aware the SSDs are a proprietary blade design (NVMe), so to upgrade you will spend more money than with a PC. AFAIK only OWC sells drives for these. You can also look for used OEM drives on Ebay. If you're very adventurous, google "Sintech adapter"; you may be able to use a more standard NVMe drive in your MacBook with one. Every few months I look into this approach and wind up more confused as to what will or won't work in my laptop. I have a late-2013 15" MBP with a 256GB drive. Right now, to go to 480GB would be $219 at OWC, which is better than it was in the past. But 500GB NVMe M.2 drives are typically $80 - $120 where I am.

 

I do OK with 8GB of ram. More is better but I run a pretty decent-sized live rig with no issues. You might know that RAM is soldered in Apple laptops now whatever it comes with is what you'll be stuck with for the life of the computer.

 

Will a i7 with 8GB RAM be better than a i5 with 16 GB RAM for Mainstage and VST´s?

 

 

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I don't know how much RAM Mainstage needs, or uses, for a typical setup with a few VSTs but I suspect that the i7 & 8GB setup will be better. When I'm on a gig I always restart my laptop and run from a separate "music" partition with an OSX system not loaded up with addons. Just the stock system with the necessary midi & audio drivers. I've been doing fine with 8GB of ram. Depending on the gig I'll run maybe 7 - 10 VSTs (some sample-based, some synth, some efx) in total. Again, I have a 2015 MacBook Pro, with a 2.0Ghz quad-core i7. I was running at a 128 buffer but have been living dangerously with a setting of 64 recently. I use the headphone out, no external audio interface.
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Just recently completed a 3 month international contract with a band. Where I ran everything 100% mainstage. It was my first ever full mainstage live performance. Not one glitch or problem throughout three months performances.

 

However before the first gigs started I ran it through many tests, played through the sets regularly to sort of bed the laptop in.

 

Things I noticed during the 3 months:

 

As mainstage displays the setlist quite nicely on a retina screen, I often had band members look on my screen to get a glance of the upcoming songs.

 

It was very convenient to drag and drop songs into different orders each night.

 

Running tracks, loops, several layers, splits was all so easy. Everything was assigned to midi keyboard. My kybrd has next and previous buttons so just hitting those moved me to the next song or set easily.

 

Don't run mainstage on battery. Just don't. Had my power supply in at all times. During testing I found the battery mode to just cause mainstage to be unstable. Not sure why.

 

But yeah the ease of use, customization, on the fly set and song changes made it so easy.

 

Do you use an external sound card, or go with the internal audio? I've been having problems with an external sound card re latency (I'm trying to use a couple of Arturia V collection synths.)

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The internal sound card on MacBook Pros can get down pretty low. Are you on Mac or PC? On the PC you need to do some tweaking in Windows, lots of articles on this.

 

Not just with internal soundcards, but also with external sound interfaces..

 

Everything needed for low latency music is build directly in the kernel of macosx.. no to much with windows, where you try and layer the required tools on top of the windows api..

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If you don't require more than two channels of audio ouput from a Mac, IMO the headphone output is the way to go. Sounds fine and latency is low. An external interface usually brings 3rd-party driver software into the picture meaning you might have to deal with compatibility issues.

 

I was using a MOTU Microbook IIc and it disconnected from the laptop in the middle of a show. When that happens it means restarting my host software not cool. Unfortunately for me I was taking advantage of the multiple output busses of this interface, along with OSC control of its mixer, to give me control of my in-ears mix from my midi controller. Can't do that now.

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If you don't require more than two channels of audio ouput from a Mac, IMO the headphone output is the way to go. Sounds fine and latency is low. An external interface usually brings 3rd-party driver software into the picture meaning you might have to deal with compatibility issues.

 

I was using a MOTU Microbook IIc and it disconnected from the laptop in the middle of a show. When that happens it means restarting my host software not cool. Unfortunately for me I was taking advantage of the multiple output busses of this interface, along with OSC control of its mixer, to give me control of my in-ears mix from my midi controller. Can't do that now.

 

Im using internal audio right now on MBPro. 3.5mm to RCA on a Radial direct box. Thru TS to my monitor XLR to FOH. I run mono so I have that reduce to mono setup in software as a plugin on the MainStage main outs. For solo gigs I go stereo out to Spacestation v3.

Yamaha CP88, Casio PX-560

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What ever happened to the all in one software solution?

A high end controller with dedicated controll surface and build in pc hardware?

 

Interesting idea. I just wish they would put the capability in Windows 10 to put it in "Appliance Mode" to stop all unnecessary background activities.

 

Trying to optimize Windows for audio is like playing whack-a-mole. It takes a lot of work to get it stable, but you can eventually get it there. Are Macs better in this regard?

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For splits, layers you are better of using Keystage or Camelot pro. I have recently switched to this apps and its the best options for traditional keyboard style splits.

 

Keystage with AUM it's a killer combination, it allows you do all sorts of setups with ios apps and external devices.

 

Keystage has the option to create very powerful midi/routing/modifier patches that you can store to reuse in different songs, more powerful than Camelot Pro.

 

Camelot pro has some built in external presets for yamaha keyboards and some others, for me, that's the only small advantage over Keystage.

 

And yes, imidipatchbay seems easier at first glance, but, less flexible, besides they want to charge you $$ for all extra options that the others apps already include (eg charts,etc)

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Its tricky marketing, selling and making money on an instrument made up of all off the shelf parts like the Open Labs models. Its also very narrow in use - really marketed for music production. And those guys dont need it all to be self contained to begin with. Ive not seen an attempt at this focused on live play - with choice of actions, lots of midi controllers and inputs for pedals, Cantabile or MainStage host instead of DAW. It might be time to revisit this built around a Mac Mini or Intel NUC or something like that - SSDs have gotten cheap, touch screens common, etc.

Yamaha CP88, Casio PX-560

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Been doing this 8 years and will never go back. Though I now have a hardware synth (Mojo) to use as a backup if god-forbid anything goes wrong.

 

My biggest recommendation is DON'T USE AN INTERFACE. Use the headphone out. MainStage reboots the audio system completely if the current interface is unavailable, and then reboots again if you plug it back in. I did only a few rehearsals with a firewire interface, and it was so scary, I'll never do it again. Macs have incredibly good audio interfaces built in, compared to Dells & other non-Macs. So while I totally understand PC user's need to use an interface, there is absolutely no need with Macs.

 

I also don't hide my laptop. I flaunt it. It sits there on top of my Keylab tray. I have everything arranged by song. My band doesn't use setlists, we just read the crowd, so I have to be ready to pull up any song at a moments notice. I can't just use a "next patch" button (though I have one for other bands, and do have some "mini sets" that my main band does).

 

Early 2011 MacPro 13". Still going incredibly strong. This little bugger is still a beast! I'll probably upgrade this year, but it's awesome.

Puck Funk! :)

 

Equipment: Laptop running lots of nerdy software, some keyboards, noise makersâ¦yada yada yadaâ¦maybe a cat?

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Im using a Macbook Air mid-2015, 2.4 GHz i7, 8 GB RAM, 512 GB SSD. It should be enough for anything but XL samples, but two synth layers with Arturia V (synclavier and dx7) killed the cpu. It may be the Focusrie 2i2 Scarlett USB, but I gave up at that point. I might use the small Roland jdxi for some synth sounds (it sounds good enough for small venue gigs), but I have to get the laptop solution worked out, especially for out-of-town gigs that I have to travel by air.
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Will a i7 with 8GB RAM be better than a i5 with 16 GB RAM for Mainstage and VST´s?

 

To answer one question. Surprisingly, MainStage hits the GPU pretty hard with its 3D rendered widgets. I'm not even sure they have to be on screen, but tests have shown that MainStage is unusually greedy in the graphics department. Some feel it is unusable without a standalone GPU. I haven't found that to be the case, but I would definitely recommend buying a MacBook with a graphics card though. As for RAM, I used to think RAM was everything, and it was with a 7200RPM drive, but when I switched to SSD, a lot more got shuttled to VMem, and all my RAM problems went away. My next machine will still have 32GB instead of my current 16GB.

 

Partly, it all depends upon what kind of bands you're playing in. If originals, you can get by with less, but for cover bands (200 songs+) you're going to want all the beef you can get in terms of RAM, you're going to be building up a HUGE library of patches over time.

 

I've I were starting over from scratch, I would consider trying SWAM's new "Camelot" which looks to be a fantastic competitor to MainStage, but considering I've sunk hundreds of hours into my current MainStage projects, it would be foolish for me to switch.

Puck Funk! :)

 

Equipment: Laptop running lots of nerdy software, some keyboards, noise makersâ¦yada yada yadaâ¦maybe a cat?

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Macs have incredibly good audio interfaces built in, compared to Dells & other non-Macs. So while I totally understand PC user's need to use an interface, there is absolutely no need with Macs.

 

Gaming PCs generally have very good audio outs. I'm currently using an Acer Predator for DJ work, and it's audio outs are every bit as good as the outs on my NI S5 controller, and better than my older S4. Plus it's built like a tank - definitely a plus in my line of work.

 

That's all I've got, other than I'm reading what you guys have to say with extreme interest.

 

 

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I dunno, I haven't tried it, but MS is a hog, as much as I love it. And Apple's known for being really poor in their software efficiency (possibly to sell more powerful computers).

 

I saw some features in Camelot that make me swoon though. You can have multiple Scenes inside of one Song, which no other host that I know of has that architecture. I have that rigged up in MS using an external midi router, and then I set MS channel strips to different channels to achieve different Scenes internal to a song, it works but it's a hack. But to have that self-contained in the program would be HEAVEN. Not worth 100 hours recreating my MS project, but heaven never-the-less.

 

I don't use ANY Apple VIs, having Komplete and a huge number of other 3rd party VIs, but some may see the lack of a built-in library as a negative. I'll have to download it and give it a shot. One thing I'm curious about is how customizable the interface is. MainStage's "Layout" interface, while kind of a pain to initially setup, is positively FANTASTIC, and one of the huge draws for me. Being able to physically map all my controllers on screen is huge. Audio Modeling hasn't posted a huge number of their feature lists on their site, so I just don't know yet. I do know that you can show sheet music PDFs and images, which you can't do in MainStage, that would be awesome. But I know next to nothing about the interface.

Puck Funk! :)

 

Equipment: Laptop running lots of nerdy software, some keyboards, noise makersâ¦yada yada yadaâ¦maybe a cat?

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