macOS Big Sur 11 public beta released, what works and what doesn't

[Tronam]

I'm still on Mojave, like a lot of users. Catalina was an absolute car crash of an OS. Big Sur? F*** that

it wasn't as much of a car crash as the exaggerated reports have been.
I've upgraded my studio machine yesterday and there's absolutely zero issues with it.

on topic:
apparently u-he plugs won't open on Big Sur.

I think the biggest issues were most acute early on, but have been mostly ironed out by now. I waited until recently to test out the Catalina upgrade on a separate drive and haven’t encountered any errors across 200ish plugins.

If Big Sur is mostly a refined Catalina I think the transition on Intel systems should be pretty smooth for most. Apple silicon is still a total wildcard, but I’ll be very curious to see how it deals with plug-ins which haven’t yet been natively recompiled.

[leeleema]

I'm still on Mojave, like a lot of users. Catalina was an absolute car crash of an OS. Big Sur? F*** that

it wasn't as much of a car crash as the exaggerated reports have been.
I've upgraded my studio machine yesterday and there's absolutely zero issues with it.

on topic:
apparently u-he plugs won't open on Big Sur.

I think the biggest issues were most acute early on, but have been mostly ironed out by now. I waited until recently to test out the Catalina upgrade on a separate drive and haven’t encountered any errors across 200ish plugins.

If Big Sur is mostly a refined Catalina I think the transition on Intel systems should be pretty smooth for most. Apple silicon is still a total wildcard, but I’ll be very curious to see how it deals with plug-ins which haven’t yet been natively recompiled.

Out of interest, how is Catalina handling music libraries now? When
Apple completely cut out itunes, there didn't seem to be an adequate replacement. Those of us who have large collections of music and don't have any need of a subscription/cloud based music model (Apple Music) and use other music programs such as Serato, reliant on the itunes database, were a little put out by that.

[Tronam]

Out of interest, how is Catalina handling music libraries now? When
Apple completely cut out itunes, there didn't seem to be an adequate replacement. Those of us who have large collections of music and don't have any need of a subscription/cloud based music model (Apple Music) and use other music programs such as Serato, reliant on the itunes database, were a little put out by that.

The media did a poor job of reporting on this. iTunes was just split up into multiple programs: Music, Podcasts, AppleTV, and the syncing/backup functionality was integrated directly into Finder.

[leeleema]

Yeah but third party programs like Serato and other DJing software were not compatible with the Catalina itunes replacement, right? I remember reading that a lot of professionals who assumed continuous compatibility with the new OS were rather put out when they automatically upgraded.

[Tronam]

Yeah but third party programs like Serato and other DJing software were not compatible with the Catalina itunes replacement, right? I remember reading that a lot of professionals who assumed continuous compatibility with the new OS were rather put out when they automatically upgraded.

That’s an interesting point. My 110GB old school music library came over without any issues, but I do have a couple of iTunes scripts and plugins I’ve used for quite a few years, so I’ll have to go see if they’re now broken.

[Atlatnesiti]

First report:
macOS Big Sur Version 11.0 Beta (20A5354i)
MacBook Pro (16-inch, 2019), 2.4 GHz 8-Core Intel Core I, 32 GB 2667 MHz DDR4

The following DAWs open and appear to work without any obvious issues.

• Bitwig 3.2.7

• Studio One 4.6.2

• Ableton 10.1.14

Any specifics you'd like me to test?

I’ll add to this list the following:
Cubase 10.5 Pro
Reason 11
Korg Gadget 2
Wavelab 10
Logic X Pro (of course)
NI Komplete Ultimate 12
Arturia 7
... and pretty much all VST’s and AU’s that worked for me under Catalina...

[abernathy]

I just installed Big Sur on my laptop to test (not my main machine). Korg Collection 2, P900, bx_oberhausen, TAL, Eventide and Valhalla plugins all seem to be working. My beloved Diva, Repro, Legand and Obsession don't show up at all even after reinstalling them - they don't appear in Plug-in Manager. I'm liking the look and feel of Big Sur so far - like Apple is bringing some fun back to macOS.

[billcarroll]

I just installed Big Sur on my laptop to test (not my main machine). Korg Collection 2, P900, bx_oberhausen, TAL, Eventide and Valhalla plugins all seem to be working. My beloved Diva, Repro, Legand and Obsession don't show up at all even after reinstalling them - they don't appear in Plug-in Manager. I'm liking the look and feel of Big Sur so far - like Apple is bringing some fun back to macOS.

Are you using Logic and AU? I can confirm u-he plugins are missing in Logic 10.5.1.

[abernathy]

I just installed Big Sur on my laptop to test (not my main machine). Korg Collection 2, P900, bx_oberhausen, TAL, Eventide and Valhalla plugins all seem to be working. My beloved Diva, Repro, Legand and Obsession don't show up at all even after reinstalling them - they don't appear in Plug-in Manager. I'm liking the look and feel of Big Sur so far - like Apple is bringing some fun back to macOS.

Are you using Logic and AU? I can confirm u-he plugins are missing in Logic 10.5.1.

Oops, I left out that detail! Yes, the latest Logic. I think Urs has confirmed that the latest Big Sur beta broke u-He plugins.