Written by Apple
Whatʹs Great
1. 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.
Latest Version: 3.6.2
Licence: $29.99
Download for MacOS - server 1 --> $29.99Pros |
Cons |
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- Love this app and have used it for years. - It has allowed me to bring my live-keys playing to the next level. - Once you figure out to use it as it is designed, using aliases a d busses to economize CPU load, the program is solid. - I use it every week for live performance outside with a MacBook Pro 2012. - It does not run lights but since when should musicians do a pro lighting job. - There are many updates and it seems Apple is trying to keep it working and tweaked. - People reporting bugs are not using it correctly or have too many patches open at once. - It is not buggy and the latency is low. - I have a MacbookPro mid 2012 with mainstage that runs amazing. |
- Please consider adding MIDI Bussing within mainstage. - 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 app is absolute garbage. - It says on the help bar in the top left corner that the 'Drum Machine Designer' is an instrument with grids and cells for individual drum pieces that exists in MainStage (Like in Logic Pro). - However, whenever I try to make the channel strip instrument ‘DMD', it automatically makes the instrument ‘Ultrabeat’ which is the alternate instrument that is way more confusing and complex to use and I’m pretty sure you can’t even load your own drums into it. - And once that happens, DMD is NOWHERE to be found. - What kind of an app has a performance issued third party app that doesn’t let you program your own drums like the original Logic app. - Complete waste of time and money… DO NOT RECOMMEND GETTING THIS. - Apple has chosen to stay in the “Toy” world and sell a cheap app with limited use. - This is a great program but lacks pro features that other software has. |
What does MainStage do? MainStage lets you take your Windows 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 PC 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 Windows 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 PC 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 Microsoft Loops in a wide range of genres Storage Requirements • 6GB available disk space for minimum install / 72GB hard disk for full Sound Library installation
Download and Install MainStage
Download for PC - server 1 -->Intel, 64-bit processor, OS X 10.7 or later.
Compactible OS list:Yes. The app is 100 percent (100%) safe to download and Install. Our download links are from safe sources and are frequently virus scanned to protect you
Not sure what happened..
I have a MacbookPro mid 2012 with mainstage that runs amazing. Now I have a 2020 PC 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 PC 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 PC has a built in compressor impossible to toggle off. Can anyone help?
Midi and video playback
I have used Mainstage onstage in 6 different cover bands for my entire keyboard rig and for playing backing tracks with click to drummer. 100’s of gigs and not one single crash. Simple setup of 2 live USB keyboards and anywhere from 2-8 wav file backing tracks playing. I now want to add sequenced lighting and video screen playback in sync with backing tracks and any simple plug in similar to the audio playback would suffice but nothing. Microsoft has chosen to stay in the “Toy” world and sell a cheap app with limited use. This is a great program but lacks pro features that other software has. It has it’s uses but I will be finding something else as the recent update just ignores user requests just so they can port over already developed items from Logic Pro into Mainstage and call it an update. If you want a Toy to play with get MainStage, if you want a pro level piece of software to run your live show look elsewhere.
BUGS, Bugs, bugs.
I like this this program and how you can use it for performances but OMG it is buggy! I have to keeping reverting back to saved so that the sound from the app can replace the distorted sound from using too long. So I can’t see anyone actually using this on stage because of all the bugs. I would hope that who ever are the programmers can try to work all of this out, it is a great program that I can use for around 20 minutes and then……distortion of sound, even high resonace apperaring ovet time. I would never use this on the Main stage, I couldn’t rely on it. This is an Microsoft application, you would think it would be more reliable and able to function over time with the app being open for awhile? I really don’t know who the developers are? is it Microsoft ? or a 3rd party working for Microsoft? But guys, you need to do some work to fix this in the future.
Update 3.4.1
I LOVED this program before this update. It's VERY buggy, and its hard for me to play my patches for live perfomance now. I hope the developers can fix this soon. However, Mainstage is A GREAT tool for playing all of your created sounds/stems available for the stage. I find it really impressive for the limitless possibilities of how u can set up your virtural rig. This goes for even guitar players, if you're into that sort of thing. I reccomend it for those of you looking to really start somewhere with your ability to perfom sets efficiently, and go through all of your patches, preset with ease.
Fails at the worst times
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.