KVR Audio

musiclover55547 · Post by **musiclover55547** » Thu Dec 31, 2015 3:26 pm

I have held off upgrading my main Mac HD to El Cap for many reasons, the primary one being other people's trials & tribs. However, I had the intuition last night to go for it, a good "rinsing" of the inner-workings of any OS is generally a good thing every few months.

Of course I made a SuperDuper backup, and I set to implement.

I am extremely happy I did. I am receiving a significant boost in performance as measured by geekbench, I can run well over 100 tracks The automation latency is down to being barely noticeable, almost nonexistent.

Since the installation was on top of my main Yosemite drive, I can report almost no glitches and 90% of the AU plugins are working untouched. For the other 10%, it's been a painless reinstallation of the software.

The synths were all fine, including Serum, Synthmaster, Hive, Arturia, Spire, Dune 2, and all the Kontakt Libraries. All of my third party drum libraries / programs are working without a hitch.

I'm quite amazed, and then I shifted to effects. Just about all of them work, a few problems with Melda and FXPansion, however, none with Nugen, Klanghem, or even iZotope.

Logic's performance is smoother, the automation is not producing lateny, and I almost feel as if Metal Graphics must be contributing, though it's not really all that realistic. However, I am not compaining one bit.

It's early to give a full report, but for now, full steam ahead.

I was not even remotely expecting this performance boost. It's like 20%. I'll be doing the same with the performance DAWs after the holiday, but for now, if you are on the fence, back up, and I'd say go for it. With the proper back up, be it Time Machine, SuperDuper, or other, you have nothing to lose and a lot to gain.

I just hope BWS is playing well; they just optimized performance on OSX, so not only do I have high hopes, I have faith they will not be ditching my home platform for a more WIN-driven ecosystem. Instuments (Kontakt, Alchemy) that took multple seconds to load are now in a matter of a sec or two. That really impresses me. I also hope I have no VST issues, but I haven't yet.

Cheers!

BDeep · Post by **BDeep** » Thu Dec 31, 2015 4:44 pm

You shouldn't get any VST issues either. The main problem with El Cap was with the AUs, but that was resolved with the 10.1 or 10.2 update. Everything has been smooth since.
The only issues I found were with Circle and Reviver, both of which had updated versions ready to go by the time I upgraded. Now I waited a while to upgrade too, mainly because MS Office gave issues with earlier versions of El Cap, and I couldn't afford to have that crash on me.
Haven't seen much of a performance boost with Live though, I think it's pretty much the same as before. Not that I'm complaining, OS X has mostly maintained its performance from version to version.

Anyway, for anyone on the fence, it's safe to upgrade, unless maybe you rely on older and non-maintained software. But in that case Yosemite would likely have been an issue as well.

macmuse · Post by **macmuse** » Thu Dec 31, 2015 10:03 pm

@musiclover

What year/specs on your computer? I've been on the fence myself but don't want laggy performance. Right now Yosemite is OK other than beach ball sometimes.

musiclover55547 · Post by **musiclover55547** » Fri Jan 01, 2016 7:09 am

I'm on last year's iMac 5K, 24G Ram, i7, internal SSD HDD with 7200RPM HDD external drives, primarily for samples, Apple Loop Libraries, and video. Backup too.

The iMac 5K is performing better than many Mac Pro's, and this years model hasn't changed a ton. However, the fusion drives used to include a 128G SSD. It's down to 25G. I kid you not. What are they thinking?

Someone mentioned an ad on Gearslutz, however, the other day offering a 4T SSD for $369. That's insane! It's Thunerbolt, too, so perhaps having the SSD internal, though beneficial, is not as much a requirement these days. I'm getting good data transfer speeds with just the 7200HDD.

macmuse · Post by **macmuse** » Fri Jan 01, 2016 5:45 pm

Was Yosemite laggy for you on that computer, beach balls etc?

Trying to get a basis... Mine is an older Mac Pro 8 core, Yosemite is ok for the
Most part but sometimes get the beach ball for no apparent reason, which started with Mavericks.

musiclover55547 · Post by **musiclover55547** » Fri Jan 01, 2016 5:49 pm

Yes, to a degree, and the on-screen (not audio) automation lag has decreased immeasuably to the point it's nonexistent on most projects.

macmuse · Post by **macmuse** » Fri Jan 01, 2016 6:02 pm

OK that's encouraging, thanks. If Y had issues for you on your newer computer, that sounds like the same experience I have on mine...so El Cap may not be any worse here (that's always the hesitation).

I had read reports of old Steinberg (VG which I still use sometimes) and Adobe breaking though.

BDeep · Post by **BDeep** » Fri Jan 01, 2016 6:16 pm

I think performance wise, if you have Yos, El Cap might make it better but almost certainly not make it worse.
But yeah, check for compatibility, especially with older applications and such.

Upgrade -- Logic 10.2 to El Cap; ABL & BWS to follow after New Years