Come 2025, I will be able to afford a new audio production computer and I am highly considering a Mac computer* on the recommendation of several of my Japanese composer friends. Like a Mac Studio M1 Ultra or something in the area of $1,500. I've been trying to research this for a few months now and I think it would have enough RAM and processing power for what I want to do; so now the topic shifts to putting plugins/instruments from the sister site or torrents onto it.

I haven't used a Mac since the late 90s, I have no idea how modern Macs work versus the Windows computers I know and have successfully gotten R2R stuff and I have no access to try a modern Mac out before dropping $1,500 on one (the closest store even selling Apple computers is 90 fucking minutes away); how easy/complicated is it to get plugins from the Sister Site working onto an M-chip Mac? Is it as simple as getting edited plugins to work on Windows or do you have to go through 10-20 complicated steps as if you're putting custom firmware on a Nintendo Switch?

Thank you!

* - The option of sticking with Windows PC instead of Mac is of course still on there; it's the possibility of a Mac computer allowing me to more easily do more audio stuff and living up to its hype that makes it worth consideration.

 

Mac Studio M4 is supposed to release somewhere in Q2 2025, so I would wait,
even right now, Mac Mini M4 Pro already outperforms current Mac Studio M2 Max,

R2R is not interested in Apple's fuckery (they keep changing dependencies every year) so only plugins that don't need patching (and just keygen) will work natively on Apple Silicon, definitely forget about anything iLok protected on Mac, and forget about any legacy stuff (which is 32bit or Intel only),
you'd better take a look around MSJ forums to study some principles further

 

With the correct information, it's all very easy. 99% point and click. Just keep in mind, while a couple iLok plugins have been released; most have not. But with a Studio mac, you will have plenty of resources to run Windows copies of many of them using virtualization methods.

Making music is no easier on either platform. But you can rest assured you will not be wasting time doing any hardcore gaming, playing around with malware scanners, reinstalling your operating system 3 or 4 times a year, the joyful comparing of specs of randomly selected hardware components, etc.

 

ive yet to find a reliable, easy, hassle and latency free way to do this. Do you have a method?

 

There's plenty of stuff available for Mac, just next to no modern iLok stuff.

The rest you'll learn as you go, there's not much point going into the details now because you don't even have a Mac to this stuff to. It's not hard, but there are a few security hoops that you can run into like Gatekeeper, signing, in some extreme cases SIP but these are all part of the Mac thing and you'll learn Mac stuff as you do Mac things.

 

only "reliable" method being (paid) Parallels that can virtualize Windows for ARM for which no plugins really exist, so it will emulate x86 Windows inside.....
...terrible way to waste money

 

Wait, what? I knew the M4, from my distant and limited vantage point, was supposed to be pretty good (10 cores) for $600, but I hadn't heard anything about that. How does it outperform?

On plugins: I think I only have one plugin that requires iLok and that's my Omnisphere 1.5. I use that a lot but I would able to use it on my current computer in a roundabout way. The plugins I intend to use mostly consist of Kontakt 6.7, Sylenth 1, Synth1, NI Komplete... 9? I think and I'd like to use UVI Falcon on it. Falcon is probably the most modern one I want to make use of regularly, the others are older ones that are pretty reliable for my "brand". Maybe modern EastWest stuff, but I think that one I would have to purchase and I hadn't decided yet. As for mixing plugins? I'd love to start exploring those now, but most of what I use there are free stuff that is reliable to me.

 

Yeah if you're lucky they might work in Crossover/WINE but you wont be getting anything of that sort to work outside of its own internal Windows environment, just like it was with the virtual machines.

Sorry kids, there is no x86 virtualization on the ARM Mac's at all. Even when there was with Intel's, you weren't using those with Mac apps, they ran in their own little bubble inside VirtualBox/Parallels/VMWare Fusion/etc. At best you got to use standalone apps or a Keygen to make a key for a Mac app. I mean if you were really brave you could TRY running a whole DAW in it, but good luck with that, you cant even use ASIO inside one.

 

AFAIK there are no cracks for Sylenth or Falcon. Omnisphere and kontakt are good to go, komplete im not so sure.

 

No. Each method adds it's own small variable amount of latency. If you are mixing, it doesn't matter. I don't like the CPU cost of running synth plugins via virtualization more than any additional latency anyway. That's why I have legit versions of all the iLok synths I use. Most of the best iLok R2R releases I wish we had on Mac are mixing plugins. Other than Falcon3. People do use the R2R version of Falcon and do not complain about it though. I probably wouldn't care all that much.

Omnisphere 2 is not an iLok synth. Or my legit copy would be on my iLok. I do not mess with Sylenth, but there is a 32 bit version for Mac I could run. I have not seen anyone claim the 64 bit version sounds any better than the 32 bit version. So 32lives! it would be if I cared.

If you *really* must play a part on your controller with no latency, you select a native plugin that is similar to the one you want to use (minus the latency), you record it that way and switch the synth.

Komplete, idk either. You would have to run it down component by component. the OG Massive, Kontakt and Komplete Kontrol are really all I use from NI.

The ironic thing about this type of move though, is why PC owners considering going with a Mac never seem to think about is this. When you buy a Mac, your PC does not move out of the house because you are cheating on it. You need both to have ethernet adapters and a cable. That is the most latency free solution anyway.

 

Last edited: Dec 7, 2024

Thanks for the insight! I know its stupid, but i cant stand latency even when mixing. I sometimes like to "zoom in" on a particular piece of a song. say 1 bar where the kick and bass are fighting. I'll then press play and stop rapidly, while adjusting things. For whatever reason i like this better than looping. I think its because the little bit of silence sort of acts as a cleanser for my ears, and i can better hear the changes im making.

 

I do the same thing with my kick and basses. Sometimes I use the delay feature in Logic's Region Inspector to do that same thing. It's like adjusting clip gain in other DAWs. Or I will turn the ratio way up to infinity if possible on my compressor, or I will use an enveloper and you definitely have to listen to that without latency. But we have all those plugins native anyway. If you are going to sidechain compress kick and bass, it really has to be native plugins. Most of the time I use Pro-C2 for it.

Most of the iLok "mixing plugins" I would really use Windows R2R releases of aren't shared anyway, for whatever reasons. GoldClip/OrangeClip, Sonnox, etc. I remember when I heard the first news about the Audiogridder/Crossgridder methods. Only then did it occur to me how few released iLok mixing plugins I really even wanted or needed. Oeksound Soothe, Spiff, Soundtheory Gulfoss, Eventide BlackHole. It's a pretty short list since I do not play guitar. If I did, I would be staying on Windows.

 

M4 Mac Mini ($600) is boring, laughable 256GB storage and 16GB shared memory,
M4 Pro Mac Mini is interesting but still laughably tiny storage and memory for the price,
M4 Max MacBook Pro is the laptop workhorse, overpriced indeed, but comparable to desktop workstations while using much less power,
obviously graphics and AI performance is way inferior to nVidia/CUDA, but that's a different story

 

Unfortunately, any 32bit software is dead since macOS Catalina (2019), so only old Intel Macs running Mojave or earlier versions can run 32lives. No chance on any Apple Silicon Mac.

But running Windows plugins on Windows 11 arm in Parallels Desktop via AudioGridder works good, for mixing the latency is ok. The only problem is the Logic Pro - JUCE incompatibility resulting in AudioGridder client (or other JUCE made plugins) to crash if they are the first plugin opened.

 

I'm coming from a 2013 i7-3770 (not even a K!) computer with 20GB in RAM - and, hell, it still kicks ass for many of my needs, but my audio jobs are becoming bigger and requiring more advanced stuff than my i7-3770 can comfortably handle; additional, bizarre real-life complications that didn't exist before 2019 are making it harder to devote the kind of time I used to have to do quality work on the i7-3770. The paltry storage would be a problem, but I'm sure I could get around it.

 

I'm using a 2010 Mac Pro 5.1 with dual Xeon processors and 96gb RAM as my DAW computer and Logic 10.4. I have a 2017 15in Macbook Pro with i7, SSD and RAM upgraded with Ventura on it; and I prefer to use the 5.1 Pro instead. It's basically impossible to hard crash it, even if the DAW would crash; which it never does anyway. I have an Asus i5 and ssd laptop with Win 10 X lite, Audiogridder and a few plugins. I almost never use it either. But to be fair about the Mac 5.1, I have a good amount of external hardware synths, samplers and drum machines. Offloading some CPU load to hardware or to the Mac laptop comes in handy if a project starts getting big and demanding. My 5.1 is similar to this guy, but I have not updated its MacOS version on purpose. Though I do consider it from time to time:

 

oh I see,
I still got older rig of i7-3770K with 16GB ram running fine, but indeed it's an aging platform, lack of NVME boot support being one of them, lack of Windows 11 compatibility being another,
nowadays Intel offerings are mess (13th, 14th gen is suicidal, and latest series are mediocre in performance), so I understand your interest in Apple SIlicon Macs - that said I would definitely avoid "old" M1 Ultra and rather wait for M4 Max Mac Studio
- but be prepared to pay extortion fees for at least onboard memory upgrades and some internal storage upgrades, as well as additional fast (SSD) external storage if you work with lots of virtual instruments and sound libraries - and once you factor all those costs in, you'd quickly get into prices of workstation-tier platforms like Intel Xeon and AMD Threadripper which are likely to provide way better (and consistent) multi-threaded performance and uncomparably better connectivity (with all those PCIe lanes),
if I were in your situation, I would keep an eye on used 12th gen Intel (i7-12700K, i9-12900K) gaming PCs (local) deals, because gamers are now jumping onto AMD X3D variants of Ryzens, and it could save you in event of sudden 3770 death you got