Logic Studio apps Is this Mainstage rig worth trying for solo gigs?

[weshunter]

I have a white 13in macbook 2.16 intel core duo w/4gb ram and an apogee duet. i currently have logic studio 8 but am about to get 9 and the new mainstage that comes with it.

i play solo acoustic gtr/vox gigs. i think the possibility of recording background tracks in advance to add texture to the solo stuff is appealing. i wouldn't do anything like prerecord drum loops or try to make it sound like a full band, just maybe some bass, pads, bg vox, etc to add some texture.

to do this, though, i would need to do a separate mix with a click track for my monitor. i think i could accomplish this by creating a bus track with the built in headphone output and use the duet's for the mains.

so, i'm not talking about having a lot of tracks or plugins running at the same time, but i don't know if my white macbook can handle all that.

what do you guys think? is it even worth trying or would i be better off to just stick with the regular PA setup and maybe work in a loop station for the bg stuff?

 

[Doug Zangar]

You should have enough horsepower for what you want as it sounds like you'd primarily use audio tracks. The CPU will take a beating if you run too many greedy effects (Space Designer, etc.).

Your separation of the click from the rest of the mix may be a problem. Sounds like you're looking to create an aggregate device with the system audio and the Duet. This may not work, although it may be OK for play back of audio rather than recording. Alternately, you could mix to mono - background tracks to left out (and on to mains) and click to right out for headphones.

I'd experiment with an aggregate device and see how that goes. You can do that with your current set up.

 

[Peter Ostry]

The CPU will take a beating if you run too many greedy effects (Space Designer, etc.).

And especially third party effects.

 

[weshunter]

yeah, i probably wouldn't even try to use space designer - maybe plat. verb, though.

i hadn't heard of that 'aggregate device' thing, but i just googled it and it looks simple enough. i'll definitely give it a shot. thanks!

 

[Doug Zangar]

Post back results of your work if you have the time, thanks.

 

[weshunter]

Well, the good news is that the aggregate device seems to work great. The bad news is that, for some reason, I can't get any of my aux sends to work. For instance, I have a reverb aux track on bus 1, delay on 2, and i want to put my click on 3. I have all the send pre fader, I have the input on the aux tracks set to their respective busses, but I'm getting no signal on any of the aux tracks. switching my audio device back to just the duet doesn't help either. i've never had this problem in logic as i use bus-sends and aux tracks all the time. any ideas?

 

[Peter Ostry]

Maybe you just are not working according to the Mainstage hierarchy:
Concert -> Set -> Patch.

If the aux that processes a sent signal is on concert level, you hear it always. If the aux is on set level, you hear it in all patches belonging to this set. If you have it in a patch, you will hear the sound only in this particular patch. This is why Mainstage puts the auxes to concert level by default. You can of course cut/paste them to a set or patch, what you probably do. Then you have to put it where you need it.

 

[weshunter]

i don't think that's it. I had it on the concert level, but I will mess with that some and make sure. I just tried it with the preset templates and it works fine there. So there must be something I'm doing.