Audio settings in MainStage

These settings let you set the audio output and input drivers, set the size of the I/O buffer, set the audio sample rate, and choose which note is displayed as middle C.

Audio

Audio Output pop-up menu: Choose the device you want to use to hear the audio output from MainStage.
Audio Input pop-up menu: Choose the device you want to use as the source for audio input. Choose Automatic to use the system setting for audio input (except when the only available input device is the built-in microphone, in which case no input device is selected).
Setup buttons: Click one of the Setup buttons to open the Audio/MIDI Setup window and configure audio output or input.
Sample Rate pop-up menu: Choose the sample rate for audio input. If you are using an audio interface or other audio device with MainStage, the Sample Rate value should be set to the sample rate of your audio device.
Advanced Settings button: Open the Advanced Settings window so you can set the I/O buffer size and driver latency, and view an estimate of the resulting latency.
Hot-Plug Behavior pop-up menu: Choose what action MainStage takes when you hot-plug an audio device while MainStage is open. The choices are:
- Alert me: Displays an alert when a device is hot-plugged. The alert includes buttons that let you use or ignore the device.
- Automatically Use Device: Switches the audio drivers to allow immediate use of the hot-plugged device for audio input and output.
- Do Nothing: Does not switch the audio drivers.

Recording

Output pop-up menu: Choose the audio output to record.
Recordings Folder field: Click the field, then browse to choose the location where recordings are saved. The file path of the chosen location appears in the field.
File Format pop-up menu: Choose the file format for audio recordings. The choices are:
- AIFF
- CAF
- WAVE
24-Bit Recording checkbox: When selected (default), MainStage can record 24-bit files. Otherwise, audio recordings use a resolution of 16-bit.

Channel Strips

Silence Previous Patch pop-up menu: Choose the amount of time sustaining notes and effects tails continue to sound before falling silent when you select a new patch.
The Silence Previous Patch preference applies only to audio and external instrument channel strips, not software instrument channel strips.
Globally Disable Feedback Protection checkbox: When selected, feedback protection is disabled for all audio and external instrument channel strips in all concerts. The Feedback Protection checkbox is also removed from the Attributes tab in the Channel Strip Inspector.
Voice Limiter Active checkbox: When selected, the voice limiter is enabled. The voice limiter avoids audio dropouts at high CPU loads by stopping voices from MainStage software instruments based on the order in which those voices were played. When the CPU load increases to the point that audio dropouts may occur, the voice limiter activates and stops a few of the oldest voices still sounding; if that doesn’t lower the CPU load enough to avoid dropouts, the voice limiter stops all older voices still sounding. In general, the voice limiter should remain enabled.

Advanced Settings

Clicking the Advanced Settings button in the Audio settings pane opens a new window with the following additional settings:

I/O Buffer Size pop-up menu: Choose the size of the buffer for audio input and output in samples. Smaller buffer sizes reduce the amount of latency, but also require more work from the CPU and may result in playback artifacts. You may want to try different settings to find the lowest setting that does not produce any artifacts.
I/O Safety Buffer checkbox: If selected, MainStage uses an additional buffer to process audio output streams, providing a safeguard against crackling noises that may occur when using very low I/O Buffer Size settings. If turning on this preference does not improve things on your system, disable the checkbox and select a larger I/O buffer size setting.
Note: Use of the I/O Safety Buffer preference increases the output latency and therefore the round trip (input plus output) latency.
Driver Latency slider: Drag the slider to set the amount of latency. Drag left to decrease the amount of latency, or drag right to increase the amount of safety (may increase latency).
The latency for the current buffer size is displayed below the Driver Latency slider.
CPU Usage slider: Drag the slider to set the amount of processor power devoted to audio processing. For multi-core processors, this controls the number of cores devoted to audio processing.
Draw pop-up menu: The MainStage interface is drawn using either the open source OpenGL standard, or the Apple-developed Metal standard. Metal can offer performance benefits for the latest generation of Macs, but can cause performance issues with older or less powerful computers. However, Metal also allows offloading drawing to discreet (external) GPUs. Therefore, you can choose whether the interface is drawn using OpenGL, using Metal on discreet GPUs, or Metal (on the built-in GPU), based on your specific equipment.

Download the guides:

MainStage User Guide: Apple Books | PDF

MainStage Instruments: Apple Books | PDF

MainStage Effects: Apple Books | PDF

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