MOTUnation.com

As we know, Apple's Mainstage is a whole lotta instruments and effects at a bargain price. But I have always heard that it only works directly with Apple DAWs (Logic, GarageBand). To use it with DP, you need to route it through a workaround app like Soundflower.

However, I just read on another forum that apparently Alchemy (which is an awesome sample-manipulation tool that Apple bought up from Camel Audio and made part of Mainstage and Logic) ... I heard that Alchemy works as a standard third party AU in DP and Ableton Live, without the need for the Soundflower workaround.

Can anyone confirm this?

Here is the exact quote: "I just downloaded the Alchemy suite in MainStage; then to my surprise, Alchemy showed up as plugin in Live and DP."

Sorry, but I don't trust it until it is confirmed by the Motunation!

Babz

On my setup the old Camel Audio Alchemy shows up as an AU plug, but not the Apple version. This must be the source of the confusion. If I'm wrong then I certainly would like to know the trick.

it doesn't work as a plugin in other hosts. Its built into Mainstage. You have to use soundflower or JackOSX

Person on other forum claims it does work. Says he did not have Alchemy on his Mac before he downloaded Mainstage. Says he's using it in DP 9 and is even using MIDI Lean with it and controlling it with his Korg Taktile 49, including the X/Y pad. Hmmmm...

Give us a link and we'll check it out! (We won't tell anyone about "other" forums.)

I have mainstage and no alchemy in the AU list in DP.

DP8, current MS3.

Babz wrote:Person on other forum claims it does work. Says he did not have Alchemy on his Mac before he downloaded Mainstage. Says he's using it in DP 9 and is even using MIDI Lean with it and controlling it with his Korg Taktile 49, including the X/Y pad. Hmmmm...

The new Alchemy is not a "true" AU (or VST) instrument in that it is embedded in Logic and does not reside in the Component or VST folders. It's highly unlikely this individual is accurate. The pre-Apple version loads fine in DP, so that is really the only feasible way that it could show up in a DP instrument insert.

Could he *possibly* be referring to the Alchemy iOS version?
http://musicappblog.com/alchemy-update-3/

So, why not use Soundflower?

I've made a test with Alchemy in Logic, linked to DP thru Soundflower.
Yes, it did work.
But, IMHO, latency and CPU load were not prime-time ready.

Didn't tried with Mainstage. Maybe I should.

There is no latency with jackosx

Didn't tried with Mainstage. Maybe I should.

On the rare occasions I fire it up, that's what I do.

dewdman42 wrote:There is no latency with jackosx

Didn't you tell us in another thread how? I couldn't find it in a search.

This becomes one of those issues where the key is to solve the problem (make Alchemy work with DP) rather than to try and make it work the way one would like (have it show up as a VI or plug in DP).

I don't remember what I may have said but I have been using jackosx occasionally for a long time and I can tell you, no noticeable latency.

The reason I started using it is because it works with wine and so it's possible to host Windows plugins on a Mac under wine and route the audio through jackosx without any added latency. I used to use that for jamstix and opx-pro but both have been ported to Mac by now and so I haven't needed to but I have the process down. I even have provided on github a build of the wineasio driver needed for that, but i digress.

I've tested between mainstage and dp using jackosx and it also works great. I just have so many other plugins that I haven't felt compelled to do that very often but admittedly alchemy is a cool synth I have been ignoring. I also bought harmor a while back which does a lot of similar stuff as alchemy but as of now it's only Windows version and they have an alpha version for Mac, but anyway I could use the above wine setup to use that too.