MainStage's 'Channel EQ' is a solid low-latency EQ plugin.

Next time you’re designing patches in MainStage, be sure to check out the built-in sounds before reaching out for Kontakt, Omnisphere, and other relatively heavier virtual instruments. For example, instead of reaching for a Rhodes sound from Keyscape, you can pull up MainStage’s “Vintage Electric Piano” plugin with a few additional effects plugins instead. MainStage ships with a huge library of sounds, and many of the included virtual instruments sound really good – especially in a live environment where it’s difficult to hear details. Here are a few examples of how you can accomplish this. Practically speaking, the best way to do more with less is to use efficient and lightweight plugins instead of immediately jumping to heavier plugins. When it comes to performing live with MainStage, “doing more with less” is the name of the game. If you want to learn more about the best audio interfaces for performing live with MainStage, check out this post. Luckily, low-latency audio interfaces for MainStage aren’t too expensive. For example, a buffer size of 128 samples with a bad interface can have higher latency than a high quality interface with a buffer size of 512 samples. Lastly, keep in mind that the quality of your audio interface has a huge impact on latency. The Zoom UAC-2 is an affordable low-latency audio interface for MainStage. On the electric piano’s channel strip, there is a send routing audio to the Aux 1 channel strip with the reverb plugin. The input of the auxiliary channel strip is set to “Aux 1”. In the screenshot below, you can see an auxiliary channel strip with the AU Matrix Reverb plugin. Next, create a send to the same bus on any channel strip you want to send to the effect. To set up an auxiliary bus, create an auxiliary channel strip, add an effects plugin, and set the channel strip input to an unused bus. It’s better to use a single reverb instance for your entire concert rather than a unique instance for each instrument or channel strip. Reverbs and delays are two examples of global effects. A global effect is a catch-all term for any effect that you consistently use across your concert, and isn’t tailored towards a single sound. Use Auxiliary Buses for Global EffectsĬonfiguring auxiliary buses for global effects can reduce your MainStage concert’s CPU usage dramatically. In this post, you’ll learn about six ways to reduce your CPU usage in MainStage, so you can spend more time performing and less time worrying. With so many features and tools at your disposal, it’s easy to go overboard with resource usage in MainStage. It allows you to turn ideas into sounds, which you can then organize into patches and sets. MainStage is one of the most powerful applications available for live musicians.

Mainstage 3 requirements