Hey everyone,

so finally got the guts to upgrade my iMac from intel (2019) to a iMac M3 (24GB, 1TB).
I can't really understand those rants about the incompatibility of plugins.
I'm pretty suprised about the fact that also outdated plugins still work.
Such as HeadCrusher (free) and ArtsAcoustic Reverb.

Anyway I keep testing!

 

Those are not what people mean, or few 32 bit plugins like the Sonnox and Soundtoys plugins. But what they are usually talking about are libstdc++ dylib 6.0.9 iLok bypassed 64 bit plugins from around 2015. Not only do they work, but it's all the best stuff. Most of the best plugins never get anything but bug fixes in new versions. And it's a few hundred plugins.

All Softube, all 2015 PA, All McDSP, all Kazrog, Audioease Altiverb 7, iZotope, Slate vcc, all Zynaptiq. stuff like that. There is a lot of stuff they still cannot get to work. But Crossgridder or Parallels Desktop running a Windows VM can get Windows 64 bit versions of them working, just not natively. So you need a machine with more resources than if they could run natively.

there are ways around everything. Do people trade in their old computers? You run a network cable from one to the other for Audiogridder. Or just sling files back and forth over your wifi. People can be very lazy.

 

Last edited: Dec 31, 2023

Softube and iZotope plugins work very well!
On the other hand, you can't get the latest hardware and expect old plugins will run.

I'm happy when older plugins will work, but I don't expect it.

 

You have options to get plugins with iLok working, but they have to be Windows. And you need to do some extra steps, and run a VM with a true Windows OS image for some of them. You need Parallels Desktop for them, because you cannot get them to work via Crossgridder. afaik, anyway.

You can get a free lite Windows from Oprekin website, or one of these other Windows X-lite type of stuff. Install the Windows plugins in the VM or Bottle, and away you go. Some are prevented from running in an emulation like Wine. Like VM-guarded. Those require a full installer OS of windows. But it is much nicer to have everything right inside Logic.

So you are right, we should not expect anything from anyone. Or we will wake up on some holiday morning disappointed when Santa does not show up. If Mac versions are too time and human resources hungry, that's our problem. With enough RAM, it's not that bad. But you are loading a full VM image of Windows; so it does need to be a lot of RAM.

 

Last edited: Dec 31, 2023