Is it OK to upgrade to Big Sur?

[mikehalloran]

I called Apple. They informed me that the new iMac would have Big Sur installed. Which is fine for the 3D side of things.

Mine came with Catalina. But nice to know there is no firmware block to installing 10.15.

[Paratripl]

Just need to confirm something.

The M1 Macs and the Big Sur warning about compatibility is that related to DP but the audio interfaces will work fine as long as you use another DAW?

Just figured I better ask because I realized that a lot of you guys are using DP.

In case audio interfaces do not work on Big Sur and not on M1 Macs is there anyone having got some speculation on how long it will take until MOTU updates their drivers? Maybe some similar transition a long while ago.

I’ve recently looked at MOTU as a more price worthy and sometimes better sounding version of RME, that had some slight bad reputation in the past but that has now been on the right track for over a decade.
Actually why I decided to buy my first MOTU audio interface a short while ago and sold my Apollo x8.

[mikehalloran]

Again, refer to this—it gets updated when there’s news:

https://motu.com/en-us/news/motu-and-macos-big-sur/

Bottom line: It depends. All Core Audio Compliant USB audio interfaces are compatible with Big Sur. It doesn’t matter the manufacturer. Some MOTU interfaces require drivers to function—they aren’t. Others (M2 & M4) are compliant except for Loopback — if you don’t need that function, you’re good but if you do, wait for the drivers.

With the MIDI units, the issue appears to be the installers, not the drivers. There are a couple of threads on making the MOTU Catalina MIDI drivers work over Big Sur.

[bkshepard]

Again, refer to this—it gets updated when there’s news:

https://motu.com/en-us/news/motu-and-macos-big-sur/

Well, it looks like they updated the date on the page, but it doesn't look like anything else was changed.