Mainstage 2 Problem with Zebra

[grantoz]

Hi Urs,

It was perhaps foolishly, and with my fingers firmly crossed, and saying a little prayer that I upgraded to Snow Leopard and Logic 9 / Mainstage 2, and played my first gig with the new setup a couple of nights ago.

I play 2 keyboards - EMU Xboard 61 (via USB) and StudioLogic SL990XP (via MIDI into a EMU 0404 USB) into a Macbook Pro 2.4Ghz dual and the 0404 for sound output.

I use only Zebra and Logic native instruments and effects, with one Space Designer and one stereo delay on aux buses for effects.

It's a great rig, it sounds great, I love using it, and I love that I can set up new patches and program new sounds on the train to work. (and I can't wait for Quad core Nehalem Mobile for some extra grunt)

The gig went pretty well - but in some songs where I have 2 or 3 zebras active over two keyboards, I would occasionally get a "semi-lock-up" - incoming MIDI would start to be processed slowly, if you clicked the mouse on the Mainstage Window I'd see the Spinning Beach Ball Of Doom.

Mercifully if I stopped playing notes for a few seconds it all came good and I was able to keep playing without having to quit Mainstage and restart or anything like that.

I've done some further testing at home, and I can replicate it - basically it happens when you're playing a lot of notes on Zebra and the CPU meter is at above %100 over two cores. This is less than I could do under Mainstage 1, where I could go right to the CPU red line and then I'd just get nasty audio breakup, but never the problem with delayed MIDI.

I can't replicate this problem when playing with just the Logic native instruments (I use mostly EXS24, EVP88, ES2)

Of course this could be a problem with Mainstage 2 or indeed Snow Leopard or the EMU0404 driver (although the EMU seems to work well in most other respects), but I hope this is still useful info. Perhaps there is some minor compatibility issue that could be addressed, I don't know.

And if you could do a bit of testing in Mainstage for the upcoming Zebra 2.5 release I'd be very grateful!

Cheers
Grant

Oh yeah and PS... OpenCL Zebra?? (just dreaming

[Urs]

Yo,

My Snow Leopard box sits right next to the Logic Studio upgrade... I have to yet install these. I'll soon do so and give it a spin.

Cheers,

Urs

[grantoz]

Cool, thanks a lot Urs.

Actually last night I was playing a gig and I encountered the problem - fortunately it only manifested as slowed-down MIDI for about 5 seconds as I was taking it pretty easy on the patch that causes the most problems with 3 zebras over two keyboards - and I had a thought:

Maybe it's the CPU scheduler algorithm in 10.6 - I know this has changed, it's now the much-vaunted "Grand Central Dispatch" which I'm sure is pretty awesome really, but as the semi-lockup condition seems to happen when you get Zebra over 100% CPU (and thus by definition running over two or more cores, two in my case on a MBP), perhaps it's how the scheduler and Zebra interact.

I try not to have too many thoughts like this while I'm playing live though, it's not exactly rock and roll

I haven't had a chance yet, but I need to try getting Zebra up to high CPU usage in Logic now to see if something similar happens there - this would suggest that it is the OS / Zebra combination rather than Mainstage specifically.

I'll try to do some more testing tonight and let you know how things go...

Cheers & thanks a lot,
Grant

[kujotek]

I went from Tiger to Snow Leopard just to run Logic Studio 9. SINGLE NOTES are pegging the CPU on Mainstage 2 with Omnisphere. Sitting idle, the CPU is about 1/4 to 1/3 used. I never came close to that problem with Tiger/Mainstage 1/Omnisphere. I'm really frustrated right now. I'm running a MB Pro 2.33 4GB.

[Urs]

I have installed Snow Leopard, but havn't gotten around installing L9 yet...

[grantoz]

Just a quick update - Zebra 2.3 is working great on Snow Leopard and Mainstage 2 since the Logic 9 / Mainstage 2.01 update. I've played a few gigs with this setup and it's all working well.

Cheers,
Grant