Any brave souls tried Catalina on your DAW machine?

Configure and optimize you computer for Audio.
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I have been testing the beta the last couple days. I had a drive clone I can fall back on in case anything breaks.

Since I was already all 64-bit, nothing broke DAW-wise. Bitwig, Ableton and (of course) Logic Pro X are all fine. Overall it looks like CoreAudio, AUs, etc., have not changed at all.

No plugins broke that I have found so far, although I did not load them all. I did check a variety of them from different developers, including U-He, Arturia, NI, iZotope, Eventide, Valhalla, Klanghelm, PluginAlliance, Soundtoys, Fabfilter, Xfer Records, and Xils.

I had to update to the latest SafeNet HASP HL driver for my Hauptwerk dongle to work, as the old version was 32-bit. I also had to update eLicenser's Control Panel for my eLicenser dongle to work.

Hauptwerk was a bit problematic because by default, Hauptwerk installs organs and settings into a folder at the root of the hard drive. In Catalina this is not possible. Nothing can touch the root of the system volume. Anything that was there before the upgrade gets moved to /Users/Shared/Relocated Files/System. It was easy enough to move my /Hauptwerk directory to /Users/Shared and update the Hauptwerk config file to update the paths.

So: If you have created folders in the root of your system volume, and rely upon those folders for audio production, this will cause you problems. You will need to move them to standardized locations, and adjust.

Sonarworks Reference 4 will not install. The update fails when trying to install the Reference Systemwide driver. However, the already-installed VST and AU continue to work for me. If you need to install from scratch, you will have to wait for an update from Sonarworks.

I use RogueAmoeba's products, but they are not critical to my music production. Audio Hijack is not officially supported, and the old version breaks in Catalina. However, if you install the just-released update for AirFoil, it will install a new version of the ACE audio redirector driver that is working on Catalina, and this allows Audio Hijack to work again. I expect they will have updated versions of Audio Hijack, SoundSource, and LoopBack that are fully supported fairly soon.

I use XLD for encoding audio, and its AAC encoding was broken, but there was a fix that solved the problem on the SourceForge support forums for XLD.

As for non-audio stuff, I had to update the following to get them to work: Default Folder X (beta version), Nisus Writer Pro, Logos Bible Software (beta), and Backblaze (beta).

Current versions of the following, which I use on a regular basis, worked fine: Adobe CC Suite 2019, MS Office 365 desktop apps, Firefox and Chrome-based browsers, World of Warcraft Classic, Bartender 3, Better Touch Tool, Karabiner, iStat Menu, Parallels 15, Dropbox, PyCharm and other IntelliJ-based IDEs, Mellel, Duet Display, and Mellel.

New and very significant findings: The new Gatekeeper security model has now been extended to AUs and (theoretically) VSTs. I believe this is mostly an issue for AUs. If your AU is not signed, gatekeeper blocks it entirely. It won't load, and there is no way in Finder or the DAW to fix this. The workaround for Apps (right-click, open) does not work with plugins for obvious reasons. For example, none of the Airwindows AUs would load after I updated them. There is a relatively easy solution. In Terminal, run this command on the AU component package:

Code: Select all

xattr -d com.apple.quarantine <path-to-AU-component>
Wildcards also work:

Code: Select all

xattr -d com.apple.quarantine airwindows/*
There is another Gatekeeper issue involving signed code. Apple's new notarization requirement for signed apps ALSO applies to AUs. If those AUs are signed past a certain date, but are not notarized, Logic Pro X will NOT load them. autool will crash, and the plugin will not validate.

The workaround for this issue is a lot more painful, and I won't post what I did here in detail, except to say that the only way past this is to patch the binary in the AU component, removing all code signature information, and then removing the code signature information from the AU package. At this point, you can run the xattr command above, and the plugin will now load as an unsigned plugin.
Last edited by teilo on Thu Sep 12, 2019 5:41 pm, edited 2 times in total.

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I would like to offer a dissonant opinion to the one that is emerging in this thread, and that is one of calling bullshit on developers who are not ready for Catalina. The narrative they present us with is of this sudden difficult "situation" they now find themselves in, that will require our "support" and our "understanding" because Apple -- for reasons that are absolutely inexplicable -- made changes to their OS yesterday.

Apple did not change their platform yesterday. They seeded the beta for Catalina in the first week of June. And yet I'm getting all of these messages from plugin developers who are "advising me" to not upgrade my entire OS. Translation: Ignore the hundreds of security patches -- some of which are quite substantial -- the new features, the bug fixes, and everything else. Just hold on all that until we can get our act together for our EQ plugin that hasn't seen an update in five years.

UAD did this little dance with Mojave and it was laughable. They seriously acted as if they had absolutely no idea that anything about the audio subsystem was changing. Total nonsense. Their hardware was completely inoperable for months because they didn't have their shit together -- not because Apple sprung something on them. Xcode had been available for months. Mojave had been available for months. In fact, I'm sort of expecting an email from them. Or maybe they learned their lesson? I almost dropped their entire platform. Steinberg (hardly a small independent developer) did the same thing with Cubase. "Thank you for your understanding." Give me a break.

Apple is hardly perfect, and I could write a post a lot longer than this one about that. But good grief, if I get one more email from a giant audio company asking me to "support them" during this difficult time . . . You've got to be kidding me. What you're actually doing is proclaiming the many ways in which you care more about moving product than good engineering and QA. And since it's often the same suspects every time this comes around, I'm starting to understand this little game of "who's ready and who isn't" as way to cull my plugin folder.

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sramsay wrote: Wed Sep 11, 2019 7:09 pm I would like to offer a dissonant opinion to the one that is emerging in this thread, and that is one of calling bullshit on developers who are not ready for Catalina. The narrative they present us with is of this sudden difficult "situation" they now find themselves in, that will require our "support" and our "understanding"
I agree. I can't believe I got emails from Native Instruments suggesting that I don't upgrade to Catalina as they're still "working on making our software fully compatible with MacOS 10.15"

You would think preparing for a major upgrade to one of the operating systems they support would take priority over other projects, but that doesn't seem to be the case based on what they have released between the announcement of Catalina and now...

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teilo wrote: Sun Sep 01, 2019 4:21 amSonarworks Reference 4 will not install. The update fails when trying to install the Reference Systemwide driver. However, the already-installed VST and AU continue to work for me. If you need to install from scratch, you will have to wait for an update from Sonarworks.

I use RogueAmoeba's products, but they are not critical to my music production. Audio Hijack is not officially supported, and the old version breaks in Catalina. However, if you install the just-released update for AirFoil, it will install a new version of the ACE audio redirector driver that is working on Catalina, and this allows Audio Hijack to work again. I expect they will have updated versions of Audio Hijack, SoundSource, and LoopBack that are fully supported fairly soon.
Good catch. Have been putting off finishing a Mojave partition, because I thought that rather than my normal one-year-behind-the-curve policy, I'd just jump straight into Catalina. However, these issues above would be problematic for me. Reference 4 should be ok, as I'd just update from Moj, and it's already installed. However, SoundSource is extremely important to me :tu:

Cheers!

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NI is a really good example of what I'm talking about. They have things in their portfolio that I don't think have been touched since the Clinton administration. Yet they've released at least two major software products since the Catalina beta dropped. You can't tell me that they have spent any serious time on Catalina. And now, as they prepare to lay people off, I (a very loyal customer who has donated thousands of dollars in "support" to them over the years) start to think, "You know what? Here's another solution. How about I install Catalina and uninstall your products. I know this shows a lack of "support" on my part, but, you know, f**k you."

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It's not even their software roadmap and whether or not they consider a product to be end of life or not. What bothers me is that if they intend to update their software rather than declare any of it not supported under Catalina, why did they wait until the last minute to suggest that their users don't update their operating system to the most recent version?

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I'm slightly confused by the new notarization requirement.
Does this mean all older software (including plugins) which isn't notarized yet wil stop working in Catalina?

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No_Use wrote: Wed Sep 11, 2019 8:46 pm I'm slightly confused by the new notarization requirement.
Does this mean all older software (including plugins) which isn't notarized yet wil stop working in Catalina?
I think it's only something that's a new installation and you get the warning first time you try to run it.

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sramsay wrote: Wed Sep 11, 2019 7:21 pm NI is a really good example of what I'm talking about. They have things in their portfolio that I don't think have been touched since the Clinton administration. Yet they've released at least two major software products since the Catalina beta dropped. You can't tell me that they have spent any serious time on Catalina. And now, as they prepare to lay people off, I (a very loyal customer who has donated thousands of dollars in "support" to them over the years) start to think, "You know what? Here's another solution. How about I install Catalina and uninstall your products. I know this shows a lack of "support" on my part, but, you know, f**k you."
as long as you dont also use live you're good...

https://www.musicradar.com/news/heres-w ... 5-catalina

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That’s only for the previous version of Live - the current version should be fine.

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Forgotten wrote: Thu Sep 12, 2019 2:12 pm That’s only for the previous version of Live - the current version should be fine.
dont care not rich enough to own a mac (only have a kagool in coats even)

my phone just "alerted" me to that under my news feed, next to some business about that fat weeble we have as pm. priorities :hihi:

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that said, im not against owning a mac, if someone wants to donate 4 grand :) (theres some other bits i want too).

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Unfortunately some folks don't seem to understand that devs have already a good amount of things to fix that went broken in earlier MacOS versions (and yes, it's essentially every new MacOs version that messes something fundamentally up - even things they've introduced just the version before get changed or removed). It's not easy to fix things again for a new MacOS. I'd rather spent my time on other my products than being one of the fanatic day 1 release supporters. I'd also like to see the day 1 patches before and wait until that OS rolled out to a bigger audience before they f*ck up things again in their "fixes". There's no rush to be uptodate...

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el-bo (formerly ebow) wrote: Wed Sep 11, 2019 7:20 pm
teilo wrote: Sun Sep 01, 2019 4:21 amSonarworks Reference 4 will not install. The update fails when trying to install the Reference Systemwide driver. However, the already-installed VST and AU continue to work for me. If you need to install from scratch, you will have to wait for an update from Sonarworks.
Good catch. Have been putting off finishing a Mojave partition, because I thought that rather than my normal one-year-behind-the-curve policy, I'd just jump straight into Catalina. However, these issues above would be problematic for me. Reference 4 should be ok, as I'd just update from Moj, and it's already installed. However, SoundSource is extremely important to me :tu:
Sonarworks has a beta out now that mostly resolves this problem. Unfortunately, the AU version does not work in Logic Pro X or anything that loads AUs using that same API. This is due to Apple's new notarization changes. I am updating my post to note what this is about. I DID manage to get it to work by stripping the Reference 4 AU binary of any code signatures. I don't recommend anyone try this, but it did work, and Sonarworks has been running great for me now.

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teilo wrote: Thu Sep 12, 2019 5:34 pm
el-bo (formerly ebow) wrote: Wed Sep 11, 2019 7:20 pm
teilo wrote: Sun Sep 01, 2019 4:21 amSonarworks Reference 4 will not install. The update fails when trying to install the Reference Systemwide driver. However, the already-installed VST and AU continue to work for me. If you need to install from scratch, you will have to wait for an update from Sonarworks.
Good catch. Have been putting off finishing a Mojave partition, because I thought that rather than my normal one-year-behind-the-curve policy, I'd just jump straight into Catalina. However, these issues above would be problematic for me. Reference 4 should be ok, as I'd just update from Moj, and it's already installed. However, SoundSource is extremely important to me :tu:
Sonarworks has a beta out now that mostly resolves this problem. Unfortunately, the AU version does not work in Logic Pro X or anything that loads AUs using that same API. This is due to Apple's new notarization changes. I am updating my post to note what this is about. I DID manage to get it to work by stripping the Reference 4 AU binary of any code signatures. I don't recommend anyone try this, but it did work, and Sonarworks has been running great for me now.
Thanks! Seeing as I use R4 in both Logic and SoundSource, this is a no-go for me. No problems! I can definitely wait :tu:

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