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Table Of Contents
309MainStage Instruments
Playback
MainStage Playback plug-in overview
The Playback plug-in is an audio file player that you can use to play backing tracks, song
stems, and other audio files. The Playback plug-in supports uncompressed mono or stereo
audio files in the AIFF, WAV, and CAF formats with a bit depth of 16 or 24bits. You can
bounce a single stem from a Logic Pro project or a set of stems from individual tracks.
You can use Playback to jump to song sections and repeat them. If you assign multiple
instances to groups, each song section can include multiple stems, which expands the
possibilities for live remixing of your material. These and other features make the Playback
plug-in a flexible, powerful, creative tool, both in the studio and in live performance.
Add a MainStage Playback plug-in
The Playback plug-in is an Instrument plug-in and is available only for software instrument
channel strips. To use the Playback plug-in, you add it to a software instrument channel
strip, then select an audio file to play. You can add a Playback plug-in to a channel strip in
a patch or at the set or concert level.
Where you add an instance of the Playback plug-in depends on how you want to use it.
If you want to play back an audio file while you play a single patch, you can add it to the
patch. If you add a Playback plug-in at the set level, you can select different patches in
the set and have the audio file continue playing. This can be useful, for example, if the set
includes all the patches you use in a song, and the Playback plug-in plays an audio file with
a backing track for the song. If you add a Playback plug-in at the concert level, you can
select different patches in the concert and have the audio file continue playing. Being able
to use the plug-in at any level gives you a great deal of creative freedom in how you use it.
Each instance of the plug-in can play one audio file. You can use audio files in a variety
of file formats, including AIFF, WAVE, and CAF. You can play audio files containing marker
information, including files exported (bounced) from Logic Pro and AppleLoops, and shift
playback to markers located at different time positions in the audio file.
There are two ways to add a Playback plug-in:by dragging an audio file to the Channel
Strips area or from the Instrument slot on a channel strip. When you add multiple Playback
plug-ins by dragging audio files to the Channel Strips area, the newly added plug-ins are
all assigned to the same group.