Mainstage, Ultralite and Augustus Loop

["Sjaak" <tcplugin@scarlet.be>]

I’ve made the decision to move to a laptop setup, mainly to get rid of the 
huge and heavy synthesizers, 19” racks and make it “transportable” in 
stead of “moveable” if you know what I mean. With this email I want to 
share my experience with you.

=> Btw: Per and others, thanks for all your emails regarding this topic; 
they have been very valuable so far. Thanks :)

To give you a little background information, I have been using Cubase for 
a long time, mainly as a sequencer application in a classic studio 
environment. I’ve not used software to process audio in real-time, so 
that’s totally new for me. I’m currently testing with a Macbook 2.4/4 Gb, 
Motu Ultralite mk3 and Logic Mainstage plus some hard and software loopers.

The Ultralite is a half-size 19” Firewire 400 interface, bus powered, many 
inputs (mic, line, spdif) and outputs, on-board reverb, EQ, compression 
and midi. All settings are adjustable using the front panel backlit LCD or 
through the Cue Mix software. You can use it as a standalone mixer and it 
has balanced outputs. To summarize: this little box replaces my mixer, 
compressor, EQ, DI/splitter and midi interface. Excellent value for the 
money, highly recommended.

Once you understand the basics of concerts, patches and channel strips, 
Mainstage is an easy application to work with and a real bargain if you 
consider how many high quality soft synths and FX plugins you get. Setting 
up midi controllers is also easy with the learn function, AU plugin 
settings are all saved within the patch.

I think Per already reported this in the past but the only real problem I 
have run into so far is that Mainstage becomes instable when you insert an 
external AU plugin on a bus.  What I want is setting up a global FX or 
looper on the concert level, some reverb and route normal channels through 
it using the FX send/return. You can of course use Augustus as an insert 
FX in a channel itself but that only works if you have a single layer 
patch.

Also, I have read the Augustus manual and it says you can run multiple 
instances of it, synced or unsynced. I’m not sure what the best way is to 
control these individual instances from a single midi foot controller and 
avoid the situation where multiple instances react at the same time. So 
something like the track concept where you use the previous and next track 
commands within a single looper. A maximum of 3 instances is about the 
maximum number of tracks I use live.

I could probably do this using Bidule but I believe I can’t use the Logic 
AU plugins outside of Mainstage or Logic itself. Hmmmm....

Btw: I really like the feature set and sound of Augustus 2.0, good stuff :)
---
Sjaak
http://www.livelooping.be/
http://www.overgaauw.be/
http://www.myspace.com/sjaakovergaauw


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