New to Mac - VST or AU? :P

[Dewdman42]

Edit: I am running LPX.3.2 on El Cap, with no issues whatsoever. I've noted a lot of people having issues with Sierra. I ain't touching it.

I was running El Cap until recently, afraid to upgrade. LPX 10.3.2 worked pretty much fine, there are some bugs related to the Scripter, that causes it to crash, or at least it did to me, running LPX10.3.2 on El Cap. I'm really into scripter, so I upgraded to Sierra and those bugs are gone. So far sierra has been working totally fine for me, so I'm happy with it, but honestly, aside from that one scripter javascript related fix...I could just as easily been satisfied to stick with El Capitan.

I do not plan to upgrade to high sierra for at least a year becuase I have a feeling the new file system is going to explode with internet with complaints about this or that software which is broken. They will sort it all out eventually. General rule with OSX, don't upgrade unless you really really must.

[Dewdman42]

Yeah, both VST's and AU showed up in Mac Reaper.

Thanks for the tips guys, really appreciate it. I still won't shoot any money in that thing though. It's really merely to check out Mac, not at all meant to be a replacement for my main Windows machine. Got it for free, and it should stay for free. Actually, i'm really happy i can use all my purchased audio software on it. Seems to be all compatible.

fair enough. the only other thing I'd say is this... mac is pretty cool, but the only real reason I switched from windows to mac was because I wanted to run particular software that is only available on the mac. Logic, Mainstage, Digital Performer, etc These are killer packages...they run only on mac. Reaper, Cubase..they will be the same as you get on windows...except now you'll have it on two machines. (shrug)

Anyway good luck

[jancivil]

I do not plan to upgrade to high sierra for at least a year becuase I have a feeling the new file system is going to explode with internet with complaints about this or that software which is broken. They will sort it all out eventually. General rule with OSX, don't upgrade unless you really really must.

I'm def not an early adopter of very many things, but I have purchased 3 machines now with Sierra on them and everything I have just worked. Most of this is new versions of things, but I have not had issues with any NI for instance. Not yet, I'll have to go through many changes to make Kore 2 work here, I'm sure.

I would research anything older for compatibility at the vendor's site, note well. I don't have anything so old the installer has balked.

[Dewdman42]

I was referring to "high sierra" which is the next one coming and i predict some kaos because of the new file system

[jancivil]

Oh. I wouldn't have any compulsion to move to that, no.

[sprnva]

APFS is optional with High Sierra. If you have a hard disk it won't even offer it by default as it's optimised for SSD.

The real fun will come next year with 10.14 where they're likely to drop/limit support for 32-bit software.

As it is, Logic 9 doesn't work on 10.13 so Sierra is the end of the line for me for the time being. I don't use Logic enough to upgrade to X but at the same time I don't want to lose it either. I don't see any benefit in going to 10.13 anyway.

[sin night]

As it is, Logic 9 doesn't work on 10.13

Good to know. I still have Logic Express 9, though I don't use it anymore since I switched back to Cubase a few years ago. I usually wait to see compatibility reports before upgrading, but this sounds like a no-go for me.

Maybe I should change my mid-2011 Mac Mini with a new one and keep it as a legacy machine... Logic Express 9, Reason 7, DCAM Synth Squad, Alpha and a few other older plugins could be a very decent setup for a slave legacy machine...

[jancivil]

I saw someone report *all* their 3rd-party plugins in Logic failed due to the case-sensitivity of the new file system. everything I read was just weird and I'm not enough of a geek to grasp some of it.

[sin night]

I didn't (and I won't) try the High-Sierra beta, but this is strange indeed...

I did a brief research and I found this faq page about APFS which says that it's case-insensitive by default on Mac (it's the same with HFS+, I would add).

In my view, this looks like an error on the user side. Maybe the user did choose to configure the Mac filesystem as case-sensitive (unless there's a bug that chooses the wrong case behaviour... but I highly doubt a problem like this could ever reach the beta level before being fixed).

The first lesson I learned when I got my first Mac almost ten years ago, it was not to use a case-sensitive filesystem on Mac. In the first two days I reinstalled OSX as case-sensitive (because, with a pretty strong Linux background, I did want a case-sensitive machine, right?) and then back as case insensitive because there were things not working as expected. Lesson learned.
In my experience, it's more than likely that something breaks on a Mac with case sensitive filesystem... For example Maschine (and maybe other NI products) can't be installed on a Mac with case-sensitive filesystem.

[justin3am]

If you update an existing macOS install with one of the High Sierra beta's it will leave your file system in HFS format. If you do a clean install to a hard drive which has not been partitioned, it should default to APFS without encryption or case-sensitivity. At least that has been my experience. I've got 10.13 Beta 7 installed on two test systems at the moment.

[jancivil]

thanks for that, good to know.
It's touted as 'low-latency' and faster, so...
I absolutely have to wait it out to see what doesn't work in it first.