New iMac or Wait?? Apple vs. Intel [Solved]

[Machinesworking]

I need Live (and maybe Cubase) to work on day one. I’m really hoping AAS String Studio works too. Nothing else matters right now, since my current projects for the EP (possibly album) we’re working on don’t use anything else. Since it looks like it will be a minute… I’ll have to roll with Rosetta or stay on my old hardware.

Cubase 12 is M1 native and obviously so is Live 11. I run the VEP plug in and Amplitube 5 in Rosetta 2 with no issues. RX9 is so far the only native iZotope product that's native. They have a list of projects dates, and sadly previously they showed what is not making it to Apple Silicon, they went all KGB on us about that and it's gone.
https://support.izotope.com/hc/en-us/ar ... le-silicon
So for me that's a lot of gear, Iris 2, Breaktweaker, Trash 2, Nimbus, and R4. iZotope are going the way of NI, great products, mediocre at best support. Then there's Arturia, U-He, Soundtoys, Waves and AAS all native 100% already. PSP are plugging away at it, plug in by plug in.


BTW there's a guy whose doing a great OCD job of tracking Apple Silicon native plug ins and hosts, here:
https://asaudio.tech

[Pitch Black]

I found Izotope support to be responsive when I emailed them to ask if Stutter Edit 1 would get an ARM update. It won’t, but they offered me a 50% discount coupon for Stutter Edit 2.

[H20nly]

All my iZotope plugins are the latest versions. The big ones, for me, all seem like it’s coming soon. They run on my old system even though they’re not officially supported. I’m a recent convert and I am loving their stuff more than anything I’ve used in the past… except for Delay. They don’t have a <insert confusing name here> Delay. At least not that I can find in the tree after install. Neoverb kinda takes things to a whole new level though… so, except in certain scenarios, when I want a full on no-doubt-about-it he’s using Delay effect, it’s mostly a non issue. I’ll use Live’s ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I’m thinking, at this point, Waves can kiss my ass. Native support or no native support… that BS where the latest version (12) wouldn’t run because of graphics was the proverbial final straw for me. How you gonna make a UI that looks like 20th century trash (sometimes with 2000’s gloss) and then use that as the reason to stop support on older systems without an integrated graphics upgrade back at the point of sale??

Arturia and AAS I do care about. Glad they’ll be ready on day one.

I wouldn’t mind having FL Studio working, just in case, since I’ve been pulling old bones out the catacombs lately. I have a few old tracks where I exported drums as ogg vorbis and then treated the rendered audio in Cubase with inserts that I don’t have anymore or were in SX3 but not in Cubase 7.5 or 11. It would be nice to open the source projects… but I’m not even sure I have the sound libraries anymore so it could be an exercise in futility anyway.

How does migrating away from Rosetta work?? Do you just install the latest and greatest and move on? Is there some kind of Rosetta application on the Mac or is all handled by the OS (mostly) transparently?

[Pitch Black]

When you first go to use an Intel-only app or plugin, Monterey asks if you want to download Rosetta. Say yes, and it takes about 10sec to download and then it’s invisible from there on, you don’t have to do anything.

I don’t know why they don’t include Rosetta in the OS proper, it’s such a small thing…

Updating to an ARM native version, just install the latest version, and that’s it.

Re: old archives, is just keeping your 2011 iMac a possibility? Congrats! You now have a media-consumption machine (and 2nd monitor with target monitor mode? Not sure about that last one)

[H20nly]

That sounds simple enough… certainly no worse than the 32 to 64 JBridge bit migration quasi grift of the late aughts.

I’ll definitely keep the old iMac around - plugged in and at arms length for some time. I don’t plan to use TimeMachine for the transition. I’m going to come anew. I’m hoping to savor installing only what I need/want with confidence… at rip shit speeds

The monitor thing is classic Apple… where you had to have selected the correct upgrade path with only a pure unit born under the right star… with the correct lineage… all depending heavily on whether house Ports! or house FuckYourPorts! was the ruling party in the land of Jobs during that era.
I doubt my iMac can act as a Display; at least not on paper. I’ll have to try it out once the beast arrives. I won’t be betting the farm

[Machinesworking]

How does migrating away from Rosetta work?? Do you just install the latest and greatest and move on? Is there some kind of Rosetta application on the Mac or is all handled by the OS (mostly) transparently?

Just in case you didn't know Rosetta works only with AU and I can't tell you yet what happens when that AU version goes native, but Amplitube and VEP are going to eventually be native so I'll find out if it's a smooth transition. IMO taking the time to save all your patches as presets in your AU is a good idea. PSP seem to be doing once a month native transitions so I guess I can test this out as they come.

[H20nly]

Only AU… That’s good to know. I’ll be sure and untick the box during installation for VST3.

I might as well start moving my parameters from VST to AU versions on my current sets. Not looking forward to that…

[Pitch Black]

I might as well start moving my parameters from VST to AU versions on my current sets. Not looking forward to that…

…annnnd that’s why we keep the old one!

[Mark Williams]

When I bought my M1, I came from PC using VST3's and had the foresight to change all my stuff over to AU soon as heard about the native/rosetta thing, so glad I did

[H20nly]

@Mark Williams - how long did it take??

I might as well start moving my parameters from VST to AU versions on my current sets. Not looking forward to that…

…annnnd that’s why we keep the old one!

It currently takes 5-10 minutes to launch Live, get a set loaded, and put away the beach ball so I can get to work on the 2011 iMac. lately that’s a good 45 minutes a week of launching; and I don’t mean clips
Not sure how long it will take to recoup the time on the Mac Studio… but I feel there may be a reckoning soon.

Maybe it’s the intended outcome, but after I go through the trouble to convert it all to AU, I’m not imagining myself going back to VST3

[Pitch Black]

The spectre of all this kind of faffing about was one of the reasons I decided to go with a Migration Assistant transition. Plugin manufacturers store their presets and libraries all over the place, theres little uniformity in where they choose. I didn’t feel comfortable “burning down the factory” just to start again from scratch. In another world it would be called Business Continuity, I guess.

I’ve Migration Assistant’ed through at least half a dozen Macs in the last 20-odd years, and I can’t say I’ve ever noticed any apparent issues going this way. The things that are outdated simply no longer work (expected) but their replacements or updates never seemed to give me any gyp.

On this recent move to Apple silicon I originally thought I’d start with completely fresh installs, but did a MA first to have a look-see (intending to go back to a clean install if things were too terrible) but I ended up staying with the MA - no problems except for one outdated font in one third party plugin, that the devs (Surreal Machines) sorted with an update.

Just a thought, YMMV and all that…

[H20nly]

The iMac was my first Mac… So there was a learning curve. I was coming from a Windows XP DAW. I had used G5 Macs in the lab in college with Illustrator, Photoshop, Dreamweaver, etc… but never with audio. Point being is that I made some messes in the file structure that could have been more refined. I’d rather take lessons learned and set up everything as tidy and structured as possible. I’m hoping to get another decade run in, if I can

Otherwise, fuck yeah I’d totally risk it
Then I could +1 your posts when you tell people it works fine

[drksmrks]

it’s $1600 a doesn’t even give hand jobs

There females on here so no so appropriate.

[H20nly]

it’s $1600 a doesn’t even give hand jobs

There females on here so no so appropriate.

How do you know I’m not female?

Fixed: it’s $1600 and doesn’t even flick a bean or give hand jobs

[drksmrks]

it’s $1600 a doesn’t even give hand jobs

There females on here so no so appropriate.

How do you know I’m not female?

Fixed: it’s $1600 and doesn’t even flick a bean or give hand jobs

It is rude to people. your choice words are not funny. Show women respect.