RE: thinking about moving from rack to laptop...advice please!

[Jeff Larson <jeff.larson@sailpoint.com>]

[andy]
> This looks like a backward step compared to simply routing midi into a
> plugin.

I haven't had a chance to study this in detail but it appears that
Mainstage requires that anything the plugin wants to have controlled by 
the
user has to be exposed as an AU parameter (or whatever the equivalent of a
VST parameter is in AU, I forget).  Beyond parameters there are apparently
"actions" as well; one-shot commands that don't have a range of
values.

It's more like VST parameter automation in a DAW, the plugin never
gets MIDI directly.  This is kind of annoying for complex plugins 
(like say multi-track loopers) because you have to expose a bajillion
AU parameters and actions to make the most of Mainstage.  This is all
redundant if the plugin also needs to respond to MIDI for the
"primitive" hosts like Bidule.

Jeff