Hello everyone,

I'm new to this supportive community and truly appreciate the collective knowledge I see here.

As an aspiring film music and pop composer/producer, my current setup has been a trusty companion for 11 years: a late 2012 iMac with a 2.7 GHz Intel Core i5 and 16 GB RAM. While it's served me well, I've deliberately avoided OS updates beyond OS 10.12 Sierra due to performance concerns.

However, recent frustrations with incompatible applications on Sierra have made a new system essential. I've decided to invest in a new Mac Mini M4 (10-core CPU, 10-core GPU, 24GB RAM, 1TB storage), which I hope will be a significant upgrade. This Mac is currently the most affordable option for my needs. I use Logic Pro extensively for film projects, and it's important that it can efficiently handle my Kontakt libraries, which are stored across three external HDDs.

My primary concern, given that I rely on numerous plugins from "sister sites" (as I'm not yet in a financial position to purchase them all), is their compatibility with the M4 architecture.

Therefore, I would greatly appreciate it if anyone could provide insights or confirm whether the following plugins and VSTs (and any common ones you might know of) are generally compatible with the new M4 Macs:

Plugins:
Waves
Fabfilter
Valhalla
Izotope
Melodyne
Cableguys - Pan Cake 2
cytomic - The Glue
TB Pro Audio - DSEQ
Wavesfactory - Trackspacer

VSTs
Kontakt
Omnisphere
Keyscape
ReFx - Nexus
SwarPlug
IK Multimedia - MODO Bass
Naughty seal Audio - Perfect Drums
Reveal Sound - Spire
Serum
Diva


Any guidance on this would be immensely helpful as I prepare for this significant upgrade for upcoming indie films and Indie pop projects.

Thank you in advance for your assistance!

Best regards,

Adam Smith (not the economist)

 

Every Plugins & VSTs from this list (from sister site) works in the Latest M4 Chip Macs in the MacOS 15 Sequoia...

Except Modo Bass 2 (not crkd yet)
Haven't tried SwarPlug, Perfect Drums & refx Nexus!

 

Yes. There has been some conflicting information mentioned recently about MacOS 27 Tahoe. It will be the last version of MacOS where any Intel-only apps will run via Rosetta 2.

You can always downgrade a Mac to whatever MacOS version it shipped with, but not earlier versions. Once MacOS 28 ships on them, you will not be able to install older versions of MacOS and intel support will be gone unless someone puts together a way to virtualize them. After that you will need to use Parallels.

That was done months ago.

 

The plugins work.

 

I don't know if the old Perfect Drums was ever Apple-silicon compatible, but DW Soundworks is.

 

1990 people bought hardware
1995 people bought software
2010 more people are using warez than registering their software
2015 half the new software products are remakes, aquisitions or ripoffs
2020 there is no new software anymore, everybody is stealing the stolen ideas, half the music is only repetitions, too
2025 people started to ask others to install and test cracked software for them in order to create AI based 1990´s music without doing any work on their own.

 

My story:
1990: studio is packed of vintage gear
2000: sold everything, to just use a computer and mix in DAW
2020: Buying again all the glorious gear from the old school era, digital audio recording is done on the iPad, the computer is always off.

 

Last edited by a moderator: Jun 27, 2025

Not again!!??