I don't think the latter is true. You should be able to use the direct links to older versions, on Macs that originally shipped with such older versions.

I upgraded and Ableton works fine and so far (knock on wood) the plugins I've tried so far are working: FabFilter, Arturia, Baby, Kazrog, Korg Arp, Native, Softube, Waves and Wavesfactory. Softube are a little slow when changing certain settings.

Of course! Not calling you guys out. In fact, let me take this opportunity to say I absolutely love Valhalla reverbs, and recommend them to everyone I know

Just giving people more info about what works out the box in Big Sur.

Appreciate the insight.

Hmm, interesting. Are you using AUs or VSTs? And which DAW?

Trying to figure out what else could be causing my problem. I even installed all of Arturia's latest updates, and they're still not displaying.

Have you tried turning it off and on again?

In all seriousness, the tricks that developers were able to do to get Audio Units to show up in Logic after installation for Mojave no longer work in Big Sur, & they may have stopped working in Catalina. No idea why, as it is unclear why auval wasn't tracking these things after installation in the first place.

So, after installing AUs, I'd suggest rebooting your Catalina / Big Sur Mac. This seems to be the only sure way to get auval to recognize the plugins for Logic. If anyone has a better method, please let us know, and I will pass it on to the super secret plugin developers group. We'd all like this to be improved.

Logic 10.5.1 / AU

I'll boot back into that system tonight and see if it's improved.

Yeah Logic has long had this issue with not recognizing newly installed Audio Units without a restart, would be very nice to see improvement there.

Appreciate it.

Interesting. I also updated to Logic 10.6.0. Perhaps the issue is more between the plugins I listed and the new Logic? Arturia, Softube, and Waves all would not display at all.

Sorry, I have to correct myself. I´m running Logic 10.6.0/BigSur on my Air. My main computer is a late 2012 iMac i7 and it´s too old to run BigSur and also Logic 10.6. So it is my iMac still running Logic 10.5.1.

Guess you have some other issues in your setup then - it might be conflicting plugins.
You can take the hard route - remove all your plugins from the pluginfolder and then put batches of 5 or 10 plugins back at the time.
This way you can narrow down, which plugin(s) might be causing the trouble. You don¨t have to restart your mac every time - you can just log out/in.
Boring thing to do, but it has solved problems for me in the past. No guarantee though :-)

Logic 10.6 here. NI, Arturia, and Waves (D16, PSP, Soundtoys, Exponential, Audio Damage, Pulsar, etc) all good here.

Is this on Big Sur?)

Okay, so I have to eat my words. I posted yesterday that quite a few plugins and instruments were not working properly for me under Big Sur. Turns out I needed a few more updates, and a restart. 99% of my plugins and instruments are running great. Here are the couple issues I do still have:

• Omnisphere is giving me bad UI lag in the plugin and Logic itself when it's instantiated. If I remove it, the lag is gone.
• Native Access is being screwy, and not recognizing some libraries when I re-link them, and even after reinstalling them. The restart fixed some of them, but some are still coming up as not found.

Thats about it. Valhalla is working great as well @ seancostello .

Big Sur is super snappy and feels great compared to Catalina. Love the UI redesign, feels like a breath of fresh air.

Really glad to read that MattyJoe. I think Apple front-loaded the pain onto Catalina which caused a lot more dead plugs than this. I haven't had any plug-in not work. A graphics glitch in the meters in PSPInfinistrip is all I have in the naughty column. Native Access is crashing, but that's an app not plug-in. All of my NI stuff works though I haven't probed the library link situation deeply.

Well, this thread is about peoples experiences with Big Sur isn't it?

I updated today and got all my third party plugins working however when i try and drag a piece of audio or midi within the arrange page the shadow has completely disappeared so i have no idea where i am dropping it to.. Any ideas?

I don't know if it works on Big Sur, but for the past year, I have been using PlugInstall, and it seems to work really well, and only costs $1! It makes it so you don't have to restart your computer in order to get newly installed plugins to show up:

https://pluginstall.com/

-TKB

so, after keeping up with this thread for a few days, i've decided to upgrade too, since it looked like everything was working for everybody. and i can confirm that it actually works! i didn't check for NI software yet as i don't have any of their stuff installed atm (but i'm going to install a couple kontakt player libraries), but all the rest – FabFilter, Soundtoys, AudioThing, PA, Sonimus, Spectrasonics, Wavesfactory, PSP, DMG, TAL, u-he, GForce, Sylenth1, Sonic Charge, Valhalla, Kush, Transatlantic Plate Reverb, Aroma, Blue3, NoiseAsh, oeksound etc. – they all work! Soundtoys take a little bit more time to load, it seems, but this hopefully will be fixed in their update which is already on its way.

the only plugin that have stopped working for me is illformed Glitch 2 (blank GUI). but it wasn't officially supporting Catalina either (even though it did work on it). looks like it won't be updated anytime soon and we have to switch to Effectrix or other alternatives. which is kinda sad since Glitch was my favorite. but it seems that dev isn't able to develop it anymore.

oh, and Ableton 10.1.30 works flawlessly as well.

overall, so far Big Sur gave me MUCH less headache than Catalina on its release day. and it's only 11.0.1 so there'll def be more fixes and updates.

so no regrets!

TL;TR Wait 11.1

Big Sur is great, just wait for 11.1 (coming soon), very promising for audio production and video. Graphics use way less CPU, and APFS on SSD is mind blown.

Your DAW is key player here, because plugins are hosted, they aren't like regular apps. I use and prefer only VST, some from 2015 and works perfect.

Some plugs can use old OpenGL api and that is real deal breaker, thy slow and crash your DAW, ideally DAW and plugs use new graphics api Metal.

OpenGL is deprecated, but is available on Apple silicon.
OpenCL is deprecated, but is available on Apple silicon when targeting the GPU. The OpenCL CPU device is not available to arm64 apps.
NowI know why some plugins on Big Sur have graphics glitches

source:
https://developer.apple.com/document..._apple_silicon


Spec: MacBook Pro 2013 with
Intel Iris Pro 1536 MB, I7 16GB RAM, SSD

Revision 1:
Cubase after longer work can leak (I think only on older macs, not sure) I contact one one guy (Apple Employee) to test on better machine and see is only my issue.
Logic Pro 10.6 tested and only have green light from me, which was to be expected, so I left it for last.

Revision 2, 23 Nov 2020:
Good news for Cubase, I checked on Cubase site I they claim compatibility fo 10.5 and 11 from day one :woot:with Big Sur 12 Nov. So I dug further and found that some plugins appear to leak after a certain amount of time. It's very hard to spot which one. First for sure now is Roland Cloud Synths.
If I test only audio tracks with NI and Cubase only efx all works perfect. Green light for Cubase.

Revision 3, 24 Nov 2020:
Diva crashing sometimes in VST and VST3 with Cubase 11
Works ok with Logic Pro 10.6 as AU
Beta 11.1 is much faster and stable, fixed sluggish graphics on older macs (not affected all)

DAWs tested:

Cubase 11 - The beast is back, can be best version for macOS 10.14 + and 11+
Studio One 5.1.1 - works fine much snappier and faster compared to Mojave/Catalina but on my machine I need to disable graphic acceleration to work same as on Catalina.
Performer 10.13 - not ready yet
Ableton Live 10 (for most people it works, I personally have not tested)
Logic Pro 10.6 - no single issue, best version yet, very good performance on small buffers



Plugins tested:

Arturia efx and vst OK
FabFilter, PA, d16 works perfect
NI Massive, Reaktor, Absynth FM all ok
KORG seams work fine for now but need more tests
Synapse audio Dune 3, Obsession, Legend OK
u-he Zebra, Diva (AU only) rest OK
PSP find only one issue with selecting presets and saving, but they works great
DMG Audio OK (need opengl enabled option)

laggy with graphics and sometimes glitches (this can slow down DAW and eat cpu)

Gforce imposcar (crash on preset change), others still testing...
Steinberg Groove agent, Retrologue others VSTi are fine, see more
XilsLab all synths slow UI, but works somehow for now, code for UI was always sloppy anyway
HY-Plugins - slow UI, useless for now
Roland Cloud - memory leaks and unstable

What I found is, newer versions of Plugins and DAWs that were compatible with Catalina have a great chance to work (Intel Macs), most older code and plugins with OpenGL can cause glitches on display.
OpenGL to Metal and Intel to M1 transition is most sensitive part.

All in all I'm impressed with .0.1 release for the first time in apple history (ok maybe snow leopard)

NOTE: I will update the list and problems

I’ve also decided to go for it yesterday. No issues at all (so far at least), all my recent projects work fine.

All these work fine on Logic Pro:
U-he Diva
DMG Audio (Limitless, Equilibrium)
Arturia V5
SSL (strip, comp, drum)
Synapse Legend
Soundtoys
NI (Battery, Massive X)
Izotope (R4, Neutron)

More testing later today, very happy so far ☺️

I think it also depends on your version of Logic, I didnt realise that i was running Logic 10.4 and just updated to 10.6 and got Big Sur, really struggling with CPU at the moment
Half the project is in freeze and still my Slate Digital reverb crashes logic.
Serum is also crashing logic at certain times.
Fab Filters aren't working lol BUT everything else seems fine. Lol

I had to update because I was on Sierra and my interface was not working but If you're on Catalina i would recommend just staying there for a bit

My first issue with Mac Mini M1 and Big Sur wasn´t like I hoped it would.

Somehow it kept asking for wireless keyboard and didn´t respond to either my Apple keyboard with wire or other Apple keyboard that is wireless.
So I´m now running this M1 Mac Mini with my Windows keyboard, and using my Apple keyboard for Windows. You can´t make this shiz up.

I would not risk to try plugins just to play chance. I think it is better to wait the official confirmation on manufacturer web-site.

Users complain about Bluetooth connectivity issues with new M1 Mac mini

https://9to5mac.com/2020/11/24/users...w-m1-mac-mini/

First I thought the clicking/ticking noise was in the tracks I just got back from my session electric guitar "guy" in Nashville.

Then, after embarrassingly talking to him about that, and him checking his Pro Tools tracks that were just fine, I realized the issue was in some of my Logic tracks as well.

Then while recording, i started to get noise, then no signal at all.

Switched out the 88 for the 24. Same issues. Can't say for sure its Big Sur, but none of this was happening in Catalina.

Making a system disc with Catalina and I am going to use it to boot Logic and the Element units and see if the problem disappears. Will report back.

Please do.

As far as I know, Big Sur brought changes to USB drivers, but not Thunderbolt. There’s always the chance Apogee’s drivers themselves need updating, or the Element firmware needs updating.

Because of a lot of Big Sur’s under the hood changes, including the deprecation of kernel extensions, a lot of updates are needed from developers and manufacturers, and many peripherals will not work out of the box with Big Sur.

I wonder if that's a legacy issue with the mini since my 2018 mini has a problem with my bluetooth magic mouse when wifi is turned on. I use the mini ethernet plugged. You'd think they'd solve this issue in the current models, let alone the new ones! Which is insane because the reduction in ports is part of Apple's shove to go more wireless.

So, after the arduous process of migrating backwards from Big Sur to Catalina (using a partition on my internal hard drive to mount Catalina on via the Mac Terminal program—you don't want to know how), and of course re-installing tons of plug-ins, Waves, SSL, Apogee, etc., my Apogee units are back to being stable and working perfectly.

I would have to say that Apogee's compatibility claim when it comes to the Element units and Big Sur is at best marketing hype and at worst, a flat out lie. (https://apogeedigital.com/home-featu...ty-information). But, hey, maybe it only doesn't work on my 2018 Mac Mini. I don't know.

Anyway, I'll wait for the Apogee updates and hope for the best. Meanwhile, I will limp along with my worked-around system. I do love the Apogee sound though (especially given the incredibly inexpensive price of the Element units, given their specs). So, I put up with this.

@ rhymedawg unfortunately Apogee has earned themselves a poor reputation in recent years with this exact issue. They seem to have problems with drivers/hardware that go unacknowledged for a long time, and take a while to release updates with fixes.

In fact, this is what drove me away from the Duet to the Apollo Twin. I was getting constant audio dropouts with the Duet that were gone once I moved to the TB3 Twin.

Universal Audio still has yet to release updates for their drivers and hardware that are confirmed for Big Sur, but they’re at least open and honest about where they’re at in the process. And once they announce compatibility, everything is always solid.

The 2108/2020 bluetooth/wifi/usb all sit right on top/next to one another in the left corner, this is where the interference comes from. USB 3 devices contribute to it too. Folks have had USB 3.0 stuff knock it offline, sometimes the Wifi knocks it off, sometimes the Wifi gets kicked offline, sometimes your drives disconnect etc. FWIW I had some random freezes with my BT Logitech mouse when I first got it, but havent seen one in months now. Wifi is on all the time, and my MOTU interface is the one thing plugged into one of the A ports. Pretty much everything else including a constantly running Time Machine drive are USB 3 in a separate hub on one of the TB ports. Nowadays my Mini is on the shelf above my desktop where the monitor sits, my drives and hubs are on the desk below to hopefully minimize any tin foil hat type of radio interference too.

I sincerely hope Apogee folks reading this. Consider this an open letter to you Apogee.

During this screwed up Covid year where we are all basically in quarantine, I decided to use all the extra time to update and refresh my whole recording setup. The first big change was to migrate from Pro Tools to Logic. I was kinda pushed into this because Avid obsoleted PT 11 when Mac iOS changed last year end. My options were to go to PT 12 for $600 with a one year renewal plan or buy a subscription for $25 per month (for life!).

On the other hand, I could switch to Logic for a flat $200 for life. Kinda of a no brainer. Another reason I decided to make this momentous change (‘cuz as we all know, learning a new DAW is a pain in the ass and time consuming) is the fact that for 15 years of using PTs, they forever lagged Mac iOS changes. I figured that since Logic was an Apple-owned product, they would make sure to keep it up to date with new iOS introductions (and wonderfully, that has proven to be the case).

Then I turned my attention to my gear. I was intent on three things: better sound, simpler (less wires, less equipment), and tight integration with the DAW.

The clear cut winner was Apogee.

With their DSP, I could do compression “in the box” and get rid of my compressors and all the attendant cabling. Moreover, you can run their stuff from within Logic.

Originally, I bought the Apogee Symphony Desktop (”ASD”) which would even have allowed me to print compression from within Logic using the “PrintFX” feature, but I ended up returning the ASD as I got tired of waiting for the software to come out to actually do PrintFX.

So, I ended up with the Element 88. The Element Control software is so simple, I could live with that.

Another reason I chose Apogee was based upon my impression that their management worked closely with the Apple Logic team and would also be timely in releasing drivers to keep their gear up to date with Mac iOS changes. Man has that turned out to be a bust. But, at least I could expect them to be forthright as Avid has always been and be manifestly clear about incompatibility.

Nope. Not so. Their language:

“Element Series

macOS Big Sur: Compatible*”

Their footnote:

“Element Series

Logic 10.5.1 channel strip not fully functional can’t select Inst, -10 and high shelf is grayed out
Clock source is not properly indicated in Apogee Control
Intermittent detection issues”

“Compatible” to me means compatible. But to them, the caveat of “intermittent detection issues” apparently means the following:

* Clicking and ticking sounds on tracks are audible and get recorded.
* While monitoring, sometimes one hears something like an airplane taking off smothering the tracks.
* Sometimes the audio just stops being audible all together.

Or at least that’s what I got on both my Element 88 and Element 24 ( I tested both to make sure it was not a unit issue. And yes, the Apogee driver updater indicated that the firmware on both units was up to date).

After the arduous process of creating a boot system for my 2018 Mac mini with Mac iOS Catalina, thus migrating backwards from Big Sur, all of these “intermittent detection issues” disappeared.

So, my message to Apogee: You make (to quote Steve Jobs) insanely great products. Why do you find the need to lie about them?

If the Apogee Symphony Desktop rollout is going to be all but indefinitely delayed in 2020, tell us and tell us why.

And don’t then ship the hardware without shipping the software.

And for god sakes, don’t tell us stuff is compatible with a new Mac OS when it is not remotely so. Rather, a responsible company (like Avid) would warn us specifically: DO NOT INSTALL THE NEW MAC OS!!!

About upgrading to Big Sur for Mac,i need some advice or experience from everyone.