I’m planning on going PC when my 2015 macbook does, but can’t help you with the apollo! I use motu, max and reaper

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i looked around on their site for 20 minutes…totally missed that install old versions doc! luckily it seems like my comp is doing good on 10.15 after the install process from that macadmin-scripts tool

great insight for maintaining old upgradable macs. Due to privacy concerns I would not upgrade to Catalina but the described hardware upgrades are well worth the investment.

if anyone has any tips on how to use PureData on a 16" 2019 MBP without the fans blasting and my battery dying after 60 minutes i’m all ears.

i’m used to ableton causing my computer to turn into an oven - but pure data ?!? :sob:

I always had PCs until I got married, and my wife has since had a succession of mac laptops that I use or take over completely. the first is a 2.2 i7 MBP that will only do 10.7.5 but runs Reaper totally capably. I only recently started using VSTs and plugins and finally bought my first plugin, which does not run on 10.7.5. so I reached for candidate two, a four-ish year old Macbook Air, which will run the plugin and Reaper, but doesn’t have full featured sound.

so what next? my impulse is to get a pimped out G5 tower since I do not need a laptop and the tower is like half the price. I will never gig outside of streaming, it seems like kind of a steal at the prices I’m seeing. my brother in law says Mac Mini, I’m not opposed, but it seems like you can get the same era G5 tower for maybe a couple hundred more.

love to hear some thoughts, but I will read back through this thread cause there is a lot of info in here.

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Does anyone know what the most recent macOS that is stable and not likely to wreck general functionality is?

I’m still on Mojave and my iPhone can’t connect to my 2015 MacBook Pro which evidently needs to be updated.

I’m hoping to avoid Big Sur for now.

Thanks!

Unfortunately, there are too many variables. My feeling at the impression is that Big Sur 11.1 is no worse than Crapalina ever was. But the fact is that it all depends on what you run and what you try to attach. :tired_face:

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Understood. In that case, was Mojave known for being particularly stable? It’s been pretty solid for me … I recall hearing all manner of scary reasons not to upgrade to Big Sur, but maybe it’s actually ok?

I’m primarily running Ableton with a LOT of plugins, some pretty obscure…

Opinions about the various MacOS releases seem to vary for the same aforementioned variables. I recall Mojave got off to a rocky start, but five point releases followed. Some folks are not having a good time on Big Sur. I didn’t upgrade any systems until the first point release came out, and it actually solved a couple minor irritations I was having with Crapalina.

I would stick with Mojave until you cannot any more, then jump straight to Big Sur. But YMMV. Indeed, it probably will. :tired_face:

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Really, the only systematic approach is to make a list of every device, plugin and application you use, then check the compatibility of each. And you can still be disappointed.

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The developer of one of the software I use professionally told me to upgrade to Catalina and ditch Mojave. It appears that the implementation of the dark mode in Mojave was a bit messy and got ironed out in Catalina and then Big Sur.

His software was having issue with the graphic server from Mojave.

It’s also really easy to create a new volume on a disk using APFS and do a clean install of any macOS to test it.

just got a new Imac pro and apparently Supercollider is not supported yet :frowning:

Has anyone had trouble recently sending loopback audio from YouTube or other program info Ableton with a UAD Apollo? I have no issues routing my system audio to a virtual channel in the Console software, but Ableton won’t recognize the input. This has always worked for me, so I think something might have changed with Big Sur or Ableton. I tried sampling Spotify into Luna and it worked fine, which is what makes me suspect it might be an Ableton issue. I’ve tried Live 10 & the 11 beta. I might test sampling into Renoise or Audacity this evening to confirm it’s an issue with Live.

This is the main thing stopping me from updating my OS at this point … although in the SC github issues it looks like people have had success by building from source and a few workarounds.

For me, the 3.11.2-rc1 binary works on Big Sur, even though the release version of 3.11.2 doesn’t (hangs on launch, same as older versions). I have a MacBook, not an iMac, but that version might be worth a try if you haven’t already.

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If your plugins/apps are 32 bit they will no longer work again past Mojave. Also are they locking out older software from newer phones and iPads? I don’t have the newest but maybe 2 years old and no problems connecting via wifi

If you have an extra drive laying around you could clone the drive and instal the update on that to test it. Much much easier then risking back.

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Here;s an Update
I spent an hour with SuperCollider 3.11.2 which is the bleeding edge and it works on big sur and i also was successful with installing and running tidalcycles
it was not that hard and it will be any day now that support for Big Sur is working in stable Sc3

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Sampling some audio via the UAD virtual channels into Reason seems to have somehow miraculously cleared up whatever issue I was having with Ableton. Very strange…

Has anyone successfully used a MOTU Firewire interface with an M1 mac? Thinking of upgrading my studio computer to whatever the next version of the M1 mac mini is, but my main studio interface is an OG MOTU Traveller (mk1), which I presently use via firewire. I know you can do that silly chain of dongles thing to get to thunderbolt, but I have no clue what that means in terms of “drivers”.

I’d be curious as well. I have a pair of ultralite’s that I use for sound installations as well as in the studio. I run the dongle chain and they work fine but I’m thinking I need to look for a better long term solution for both computer and interface