RANT - Developer: "You can still run [Insert DAW Name] in Rosetta mode"...

[James Steele]

Okay... just a fun rant. But I can't tell you how sick I am of getting responses from developers, or seeing their disclaimers in their support FAQs that say:

• "You can still run [Insert DAW Name] in Rosetta mode."

or...

• "[Insert Plugin Name] works fine using Rosetta 2..."

It's getting to the point where, what, 2 years later (?) that's really not the point anymore. I shouldn't have to hobble my DAW on Apple Silicon to run your plug-in now that we are halfway into April 2023. I can see it might take time to catch up on AAX given that Pro Tools was late to the "native party," but you still don't have an AU???

Okay... rant over!

[stubbsonic]

Run rant received, enjoyed, and whole-heartedly agreed with.

[Phil O]

+1

[EMRR]

Yup

[BobK]

+1

[EMRR]

Yup

I’m finding for instance, the Rode Soundfield plug isn’t yet updated, and you gotta have it to use the ambisonic mic they sell. ?!?! Appears a similar fate for several other mic pattern decoder plugs.

[stubbsonic]

I think being a software developer must be super-challenging. OS's were changing super rapidly. (Has that slowed down of late?) And I have no idea what fresh hell it might be to update to a completely different hardware platform.

Some of us who rely on a particular piece of software MIGHT not mind paying to update to an AS version-- but folks who bought relatively recently should be grandfathered in.

Will there be another big hardware transformation push soon that will force yet another compatibility hurdle? Or will Apple park in this M1/M2/AS spot for a time? If another one is on the horizon, I could understand developers thinking they'll let Rosetta2 handle this "phase".

[bayswater]

I think being a software developer must be super-challenging. OS's were changing super rapidly. (Has that slowed down of late?) And I have no idea what fresh hell it might be to update to a completely different hardware platform.

Some of us who rely on a particular piece of software MIGHT not mind paying to update to an AS version-- but folks who bought relatively recently should be grandfathered in.

Will there be another big hardware transformation push soon that will force yet another compatibility hurdle? Or will Apple park in this M1/M2/AS spot for a time? If another one is on the horizon, I could understand developers thinking they'll let Rosetta2 handle this "phase".

Well put. It’s nice for Apple that they’ve broken the dependency on Intel, but not so nice for developers who have to balance developing new and better products with keeping their old stuff working on the constantly changing target that is the Apple platform. I wonder if this is going on in the world of Windows.

[Michael Canavan]

I think being a software developer must be super-challenging. OS's were changing super rapidly. (Has that slowed down of late?) And I have no idea what fresh hell it might be to update to a completely different hardware platform.

Some of us who rely on a particular piece of software MIGHT not mind paying to update to an AS version-- but folks who bought relatively recently should be grandfathered in.

Will there be another big hardware transformation push soon that will force yet another compatibility hurdle? Or will Apple park in this M1/M2/AS spot for a time? If another one is on the horizon, I could understand developers thinking they'll let Rosetta2 handle this "phase".

Well put. It’s nice for Apple that they’ve broken the dependency on Intel, but not so nice for developers who have to balance developing new and better products with keeping their old stuff working on the constantly changing target that is the Apple platform. I wonder if this is going on in the world of Windows.

Recently Windows 11 did break things apparently.

To not be so nice about it, if a developer didn't do the upgrade to VST3, or fixed any issues with GUI size on modern screens, you could be certain it would be a while for Apple Silicon. Apple will probably slow down a bit as far as requirements for OS compatibility, I would guess most of the suffering from Catalina on was little tweaks to make Rosetta and Apple Silicon an easy transition, every company that was 100% up to date transitioned quickly, the others not so much. I think it's safe to say Apple will have at times updates to the OS that break things, but using their own chips is IMO the end game, there's never going to be a rational reason not to use them considering the performance and thermal advantages they have now.

At this point personally all that really left are Audio Ease, some PSP, VSL VEP, and deprecated probably products like Air and Nomad Factory. Audio Ease I'm betting will be a paid upgrade Altiverb 7 and Speakerphone 2 are something like 12 years old. Air is rebranding and dumbing down their line up for the MPC hardware which runs on an underpowered Arm chip. PSP are taking their sweat time now, I've been waiting for a usability upgrade to N2O for a decade almost now, the GUI has been a tiny mess on 1080p for about that long.

[BobK]

Thought this was interesting:

Through a web search, I found an article that said Intel plugins force DAWs to open in Rosetta mode.

But then I noticed that Altiverb 7 was working fine in DP 11, though DP was in Apple silicon native mode.

Why?

Poking around in Activity Monitor, I saw a process called AUHostingCompatibilityService.

Audio Ease confirmed that this is a part of macOS that lets Apple silicon DAWs run Audio Unit plugins in Rosetta. Cool.

While I mainly work in DP, my most important project these days is in Pro Tools, and that's a drag. Avid was very slow to release an Apple silicon native version. For the full version of Kontakt 6, NI released Apple silicon versions of AU and VST formats, but for AAX, you have to pay for an update to Kontakt 7 (though they don't say this directly on their web site).

I tried running PT in Rosetta on my MacStudio, and it crashed a bunch.

[James Steele]

Poking around in Activity Monitor, I saw a process called AUHostingCompatibilityService.

Audio Ease confirmed that this is a part of macOS that lets Apple silicon DAWs run Audio Unit plugins in Rosetta. Cool.

Yep, this is one of the cool things about using Audio Units. Only that format can do this trick where just the plug-in runs in Rosetta while the host DAW runs natively.

It’s good to check for this process in Activity Monitor to verify a plug is or isn’t running natively. There have been some cases, especially with some NI plugs like Battery 4, where the installer for the new native version, didn’t completely overwrite the Intel version, and it wasn’t actually running natively The way to tell this was to have a fresh project with no plug-ins in it, then instantiate the suspected plug-in, and then watch for that process to start up in activity monitor. This was how one user found that you had to completely delete certain Native Instruments plug-ins before installing the Apple Silicon version.

[James Steele]

…there's never going to be a rational reason not to use them considering the performance and thermal advantages they have now.

This is an excellent point. There’s no foreseeable scenario in which Apple outsources microprocessor production ever again. I think this definitely should mean no more massive transitions like Power PC to Intel and Intel to Apple Silicon. It should be welcome to developers.

With some stability for years to come, maybe we could see some incentive to revive some software that would take longer to recoup development costs as maintenance expenses might be less.

[monkey man]

All this, and yet IIRC when AS first appeared we were told by some devs that conversion was a breeze and "easier than expected".

[oldecuriosity]

Adding to this with my own rant - an M1 version of BFD3 was FINALLY released in the last day or so. While I know a lot of people moved to Superior Drummer and others, for me it was my last plug-in that I was waiting to updated. I'm sure there's much more to it than I'm aware, but still I can't believe that any product that is still actively being sold and marketed took this long to release a viable working version. Now, if they can only fix their license manager . . . .

[James Steele]

Adding to this with my own rant - an M1 version of BFD3 was FINALLY released in the last day or so. While I know a lot of people moved to Superior Drummer and others, for me it was my last plug-in that I was waiting to updated. I'm sure there's much more to it than I'm aware, but still I can't believe that any product that is still actively being sold and marketed took this long to release a viable working version. Now, if they can only fix their license manager . . . .

That’s interesting. I already had Superior Drummer, but I bought BFD3 on one of those ridiculous sales for something like $49? I figured it was worth it if they finally got their act together. I have been using a beta in which the VST3 version works in DP, but the AU was no good. I’ll have to try this new one.