Big Sur

[datacommando]

3 minutes ago, mmarkuz said:

 

... at least they support Big Sur, even if it's just Rosetta... reading comments in the forum seems like HX Edit & Logic do not work at all

Well, surprisingly, there are reports here, and over on The Gear Page, that this stuff does work, both with and without Rosetta. IIRC, the main sticking point is the new M1 Mac architecture.

 

YMMV.

[Yardrath19]

Finally it's done !! Thanks Line6 for your work. I hope, considering this episode, the company will provide us with more information in the future ! Thx again. 

 

 

[ebodave]

1 hour ago, Yardrath19 said:

Finally it's done !! Thanks Line6 for your work. I hope, considering this episode, the company will provide us with more information in the future ! Thx again. 

 

 

Is it done? It doesn't seem to work on my GarageBand. Do I need to do something different to make it work?

[datacommando]

5 minutes ago, ebodave said:

Is it done? It doesn't seem to work on my GarageBand. Do I need to do something different to make it work?

Hi,

 

Your post seems a little vague. 
 

What is it exactly that “doesn’t seem to work” on your GarageBand?.

 

What do you think you might need?

 

“Is it done?” - you did read the release notes, didn’t you?

 

HINT: 

• HX Edit and Helix Native now add support for macOS 11 Big Sur

Hope this helps/makes sense.

 

[ebodave]

4 minutes ago, datacommando said:

Hi,

 

Your post seems a little vague. 
 

What is it exactly that “doesn’t seem to work” on your GarageBand?.

 

What do you think you might need?

 

“Is it done?” - you did read the release notes, didn’t you?

 

HINT: 

 

• HX Edit and Helix Native now add support for macOS 11 Big Sur

Hope this helps/makes sense.

 

As you might know from my previous posts, I'm a MASSIVE DOOFUS when it comes to technical stuff. Forgive me: I got all excited when I saw everything was fixed and completely forgot the idea that there might be more to it. I will now go and do all the sensible stuff.

[datacommando]

3 minutes ago, ebodave said:

Forgive me: I got all excited

Ah, yes, we all get a little giddy when the new toys arrive - easily done  ;-)

 

I did try to leave a reaction to your post, but for some strange reasons the demons that inhabit this forum have told me that I have used up my quota of reactions for today. Killjoys - I didn’t realise there are limits on reactions, that will teach us not to try to be spontaneous!

 

Have fun with your new gizmo.

 

 

[ebodave]

6 hours ago, datacommando said:

Hi,

 

Your post seems a little vague. 
 

What is it exactly that “doesn’t seem to work” on your GarageBand?.

 

What do you think you might need?

 

“Is it done?” - you did read the release notes, didn’t you?

 

HINT: 

 

• HX Edit and Helix Native now add support for macOS 11 Big Sur

Hope this helps/makes sense.

 

Ah now hang on...on the notes for Helix Native it actually just says HX Edit supports BS...I've tried downloading Native 3.10...it appears to be where it said it would be (in Library)...but when I try to use it in GB I still get the grey screen of doom. Help!

[datacommando]

45 minutes ago, ebodave said:

I've tried downloading Native 3.10...it appears to be where it said it would be (in Library)...but when I try to use it in GB I still get the grey screen of doom. Help!

 

Hi,

 

"Tried downloading Native 3.10" makes it sound as if you didn't succeed!

 

If you did succeed then the installer for HX Native would be in your "Downloads" folder on your Mac. It is named "HelixNative3.10.dmg - A standard Mac disk image that you double click to install. This should install "Helix Native.component" into the Components folder inside the Plug-ins Folder which is inside the Audio folder within the Library folder on your drive. Restart your Mac after Installing the plug-in, then launch GarageBand.

 

There are quite a few user on here who are managing to use both Helix Native and HX Edit on Big Sur although can be sluggish. Some also used the Rosetta option to run this stuff, but hey I decided to steer well clear of this debacle that Apple unleashed with the latest OS. In fact I have been using Apple computers right from the first Mac Plus way back in the 80s and have used just about every model released up until I updated to an iMac Retina 5k 27" at the same time as I bought my Helix in 2016. I have refused to update beyond High Sierra OS as everything was such a nightmare to keep up with. If it ain't broke etc. I am certainly glad I avoided making the move to a M1 machine until I know it all works.

 

You could check in the Helix Native section of the forum for an answer, but it's rather quiet in there as there is only a couple of us who seem to care.

 

Oh yeah - that quote that I put in bold text is taken directly from the main release notes under the sub heading "Other Changes and Improvements in 3.10" available here:

 

https://line6.com/support/page/kb/effects-controllers/helix/helix-310-release-notes-r969/

 

 

[gary1604]

With helix now done, maybe the licence manager and pod farm will not be far behind..?

[Gyrfalcon]

So I'm still having problems of course.  I've installed Native 3.1.1 and I get an Incompatible Audio Unit every time I start Logic.  Using Big Sur M1 MB Air.  Anyone else having this and/or know of a fix?  It seems I can go to the plug ins manager and re-enable it and it then works, but the error and it's annoyance are as persistent as Tim Cook's desire to hose me out of cash.

[steve_rolfeca]

Did another audit of the M1 and Big Sur situation this week, using the Sweetwater compatibiity list as a starting point.

There's been some progress since the beginning of the year- there are now a number of audio vendors that are not only boasting hardware/firmware compatibility with Big Sur, but also have their control software up and working now, either with Big Sur on Intel, or in some cases, either natively or under Rosetta on M1.

The pace has picked up since the end of March, and there are now at least a dozen vendors that have full or close to full compatibility with M1.  The situation with plugins has also improved.

However, there are still over 150 popular audio companies that are not compatible. Many of them haven't posted a meaningful update to their websites since the original "don't update yet" messages they posted in November or December of 2020.

I wish the situation was better, and I wish that Line 6 was ahead of the overall trend instead of mid-pack, but there it is.

I've been watching audio vendors struggle to keep up with OS changes (especially since Apple went to annual updates) for over 20 years, and the last couple of years (Catalina and Big Sur plus M1) have been the toughest transitions that I can remember.

I can only hope that M1 will turn out to be stable once everybody makes it over to native code without Rosetta.

[the_bees_knees22]

I just installed big sur on my backup laptop.   wow....it's so....ugly lol.   What the heck?   What was Apple's design team thinking lol
 

[steve_rolfeca]

15 hours ago, the_bees_knees22 said:

I just installed big sur on my backup laptop.   wow....it's so....ugly lol.   What the heck?   What was Apple's design team thinking lol
 

These are the challenges that every level of a corporation faces, when the underlying business model is built around planned obsolescence.

Instead of your smartphone getting cheaper and more reliable with each generation, prices on so-called flagship phones have been inching up for years, yet a new phone is somehow always easier to get and more attractively priced than a repair. They've been pulling the same nonsense with MacBooks. Just to pick one example, every new generation gets an improved keyboard that supposedly fixes the atrocious reliability problems, except that a year or two later we're seeing disturbing reports about the improved models, lawsuits over equally bad keyboards, ribbon cables that were arbitrarily shut out of replacement warranty programs, etc.

Sucking us into this nonsense takes some world-class sleight of hand.

One of the ways they funnel us into their trap, is with annual OS updates and ever-increasing backwards incompatibility. 

The programmers at Apple are evidently struggling just as much as we are to keep up.

 

If you can't come up with a revolutionary new user interface in time for the fall release, and management won't let you do something obvious like incorporate a touchscreen into a laptop (something that's a routine feature on Chromebooks!), at least you can screw around with the way it looks, and move a bunch of icons around to confuse people when they open the System Preferences...

I make about a third of my annual income off supporting Apple products, and I still love a lot of their stuff.

 

That doesn't change the fact that it's getting harder to stomach being complicit in what they're doing with every passing year...

[Wondo100]

I was on here searching for word on if it is okay for me to upgrade to Big Sur. I thought with the latest Helix update, that we could go ahead and do this, but I am hearing this is still not a safe thing to do????

 

I am also thinking of getting a new iMac with M1, but may now wait until later until there is some confidence in the compatibility. They may be releasing the 27" iMac soon. 

 

Please let me know if you think that upgrading to Big Sur is safe now. 

[phil_m]

2 hours ago, Wondo100 said:

I was on here searching for word on if it is okay for me to upgrade to Big Sur. I thought with the latest Helix update, that we could go ahead and do this, but I am hearing this is still not a safe thing to do????

 

I am also thinking of getting a new iMac with M1, but may now wait until later until there is some confidence in the compatibility. They may be releasing the 27" iMac soon. 

 

Please let me know if you think that upgrading to Big Sur is safe now. 

As far as using Big Sur with the hardware, it’s fine. I’ve been running HX Edit on my M1 Mac Mini for a few months now. Native is still laggy on M1 machines running Big Sur, and hopefully that should be addressed soon.

[martinstrang]

I really wanted to download helix native to my computer today and start the free trial, but reading the boards I might not do it yet since I'm in Big Sur.

I agree with others that companies should jump the wagon as apple developers and work faster delivering the latest compatibility because Line 6 is not the only one, we

all depend on several software/hardware brands to prioritize with the latest features instead of waiting months until the last one we use catch up to upgrade them all.

 

In my case I work with the latest version of Logic and as soon as Universal Audio has compatibility with OSX I upgrade. In fact, UA did it muuuch better this time. I've been

having big sur compatibility for several months now. I don't have time to waste, I continue working with what actually works with my setup. Normally, pretty much almost

everything works fine.

[the_bees_knees22]

10 hours ago, martinstrang said:

I really wanted to download helix native to my computer today and start the free trial, but reading the boards I might not do it yet since I'm in Big Sur.

I agree with others that companies should jump the wagon as apple developers and work faster delivering the latest compatibility because Line 6 is not the only one, we

all depend on several software/hardware brands to prioritize with the latest features instead of waiting months until the last one we use catch up to upgrade them all.

 

In my case I work with the latest version of Logic and as soon as Universal Audio has compatibility with OSX I upgrade. In fact, UA did it muuuch better this time. I've been

having big sur compatibility for several months now. I don't have time to waste, I continue working with what actually works with my setup. Normally, pretty much almost

everything works fine.

I made the switch.  It's been fine for me so far.  Line6, cubase, UAD stuff, all my plugins have all been ok.  I've been on big sur for the past couple of weeks.    I haven't ran LUNA on big sur, but so far zero issues with anything.   

if you're in the middle of a project though, I wouldn't switch.   

 

[Drybonz]

Hey, great work on this... macOS 12 gets announced/released in a couple weeks.  Way to keep up.

[datacommando]

9 hours ago, Drybonz said:

Hey, great work on this... macOS 12 gets announced/released in a couple weeks.  Way to keep up.

Hey, great work on this...

 

Line 6 staff DO NOT monitor these forums.

 

You are shouting into an empty room. 

 

Try posting on TGP in the digital and modelling section, or that huge 30,000+ Helix Family group thing over on FarceBurk - management people from Line 6 are known to post there quite regularly. You might get lucky, and it’s always good to know where you target audience might be when you need ‘em.

 

Hope this helps/makes sense.
 

 

[krimple]

I am running an M1 Macbook Air, and have set Logic Pro to run in Rosetta. The Helix native plugin comes up quickly and is responsive. When I run Logic as an ARM app (without Rosetta) itself it is lightning fast, but the Helix native plugin stutters and spins out.

 

So, for now, it's Rosetta for everything.  I'm fine for the moment.

[steve_rolfeca]

13 hours ago, krimple said:

I am running an M1 Macbook Air, and have set Logic Pro to run in Rosetta. The Helix native plugin comes up quickly and is responsive. When I run Logic as an ARM app (without Rosetta) itself it is lightning fast, but the Helix native plugin stutters and spins out.

 

So, for now, it's Rosetta for everything.  I'm fine for the moment.

This is big news.

 

I'm sure you lose some track count under Rosetta, but really, how many of us run enough simultaneous tracks and plugins to seriously stress Logic Pro on an M1 Mac anyway?

 

My day job is tech support for one of the few remaining software companies that still provide a Mac option for Veterinary practice management.

 

We are part-way through our final beta testing on M1, and it's going well. Even under Rosetta, the base model M1 MacBook Air is blindingly fast when it comes to processing medical records- faster than anything else I've ever seen, price no object.

 

Compared to our past struggles after the release of Sierra, Mojave and Catalina, it's been very satisfying to reach compatibility with both a new OS and a completely new hardware platform only 6 months after the M1 release.

[steve_rolfeca]

On 5/24/2021 at 8:51 PM, Drybonz said:

Hey, great work on this... macOS 12 gets announced/released in a couple weeks.  Way to keep up.

 

I appreciate and share everyone's frustration with the slow pace of development at Line 6, as well as other vendors like Focusrite, etc.

 

However, we all seem to forget that Mac market penetration is still vanishingly small.

 

Apple might be the richest company in the world, but the last time I checked,  HP, Lenovo and Dell still controlled 65% of PC sales. Apple's share at the time was still well under 8%.

 

As I mentioned in my previous post, the veterinary software I'm involved with, is still only compatible under Rosetta. Our database is programmed in 4D, and God only knows when 4D will offer us an ARM-compatible version.

 

I don't expect 4D to commit  big $$$ to the development process until Windows on ARM is a stable, mass-market product.

 

This isn't just about whether Macs are viable from a performance perspective. If you expand your thinking to include business environments, there are other factors to consider. For example, competent Windows IT technicians are everywhere. High-quality Mac IT support is much harder to find, especially if you're outside of a major metropolitan area.

 

I understand 4D's position in this. And Line 6's as well:

• Big Sur and M1 Mac users represent a tiny fraction of personal computer owners:
• Out of that fraction, only a few are heavily in niche computer applications like Veterinary medicine or digital guitar modelling.
• Of those few, how many would commit to a Mac-only environment if their business or their family income depended on it, especially given how accessible and affordable Windows PC's are?

 

 

[Drybonz]

...and yet they love to have that "Mac compatible" on the packaging for their products.

 

Maybe it should read "Mac compatible as long as you haven't updated your OS any time recently".  I wonder how that would affect sales?

[datacommando]

9 minutes ago, Drybonz said:

 

...and yet they love to have that "Mac compatible" on the packaging for their products.

 

Where did you see “packaging” emblazoned with that? All the software that you are complaining about is downloadable - it doesn’t ship in a box AFAIK!

 

Get a grip on reality.

[Drybonz]

lol... meaning that they claim mac compatibility.  I think everyone here, except you, knows what I meant.

[datacommando]

10 hours ago, Drybonz said:

lol... meaning that they claim mac compatibility.  I think everyone here, except you, knows what I meant.

That is a perfectly valid thing for Line 6 to claim - it is Mac compatible - all my stuff works just fine on a 2016 iMac 27” 5k Retina with High Sierra.

 

Although, there are quite a few posts on here that state everything functions on Big Sur and I have seen comments that people have Native running on the M1 Mac Mini with little or no problems. Many report that running with Rosetta is the way to go for the time being. Furthermore, Line 6 are currently working on this stuff.
 

[phil_m]

17 hours ago, Drybonz said:

lol... meaning that they claim mac compatibility.  I think everyone here, except you, knows what I meant.

 

Apple certainly doesn't make it easy for anyone... I just bought a Mac mini because I liked the machine, but I kind of think the whole concept of updating the OS every year is just ridiculous on the surface of it. Why does anyone actually need that? It's mainly driven by Apple's desire to keep selling new hardware. The fact that they're talking about the next version of MacOS before there are tons of bugs with the current ones (like the fact that my Magic Keyboard loses Bluetooth connectivity so often with Big Sur that I gave up trying) is stupid. My wife has a MacBook Pro, and we both have iPads and iPhones, so we've certainly given Apple plenty of money over the years. I just find them infuriating sometimes.

[Drybonz]

3 hours ago, phil_m said:

I just find them infuriating sometimes.

 

I also often find Apple infuriating... but I'm here to talk about Line 6.  I find Line 6 very infuriating.  Apple is going to provide them with all the tools they need to be ready for the next macOS in just over a week or so.  Will Line 6 take advantage of this and be prepared when the next OS hits the public, to say that they are compatible?  Based on past performance... no... they will dump no resources into this, ignore their customers, a year will pass and they will finally have their software ready, just before macOS 13, or whatever the next phase is.

 

I find it infuriating that some forum users will suggest that the right thing to do is run a years old OS (High Sierra, etc), when other people want to keep their macs up to date.

[phil_m]

14 minutes ago, Drybonz said:

 

I also often find Apple infuriating... but I'm here to talk about Line 6.  I find Line 6 very infuriating.  Apple is going to provide them with all the tools they need to be ready for the next macOS in just over a week or so.  Will Line 6 take advantage of this and be prepared when the next OS hits the public, to say that they are compatible?  Based on past performance... no... they will dump no resources into this, ignore their customers, a year will pass and they will finally have their software ready, just before macOS 13, or whatever the next phase is.

 

I find it infuriating that some forum users will suggest that the right thing to do is run a years old OS (High Sierra, etc), when other people want to keep their macs up to date.

You do realize that HX Edit has been compatible with Big Sur ever since the 3.10 release now, right? It’s only Native that’s still having issues, at least as far as the Helix line goes.

[Drybonz]

12 minutes ago, phil_m said:

You do realize that HX Edit has been compatible

 

Yes

[surfsup1955]

On 5/27/2021 at 6:43 PM, Drybonz said:

 

I also often find Apple infuriating... but I'm here to talk about Line 6.  I find Line 6 very infuriating.  Apple is going to provide them with all the tools they need to be ready for the next macOS in just over a week or so.  Will Line 6 take advantage of this and be prepared when the next OS hits the public, to say that they are compatible?  Based on past performance... no... they will dump no resources into this, ignore their customers, a year will pass and they will finally have their software ready, just before macOS 13, or whatever the next phase is.

 

I find it infuriating that some forum users will suggest that the right thing to do is run a years old OS (High Sierra, etc), when other people want to keep their macs up to date.

 

I get it.  I’ve been 100% Mac OS and iOS for a long time and have been a Helix owner since their first machines (2015/16?) and this is the first long term OS incompatibility issue that I’ve seen.  Also, Line 6 was not the only company in the same boat.  Hopefully it was just a one off and due to the magnitude of Big Sur? 

[datacommando]

On 5/27/2021 at 11:43 PM, Drybonz said:

 

I also often find Apple infuriating... but I'm here to talk about Line 6.

Well, in case you hadn’t noticed - Helix Native v.3.11 was released on June 1st, with very little fanfare in these forums. It has been noted that it fixes the Big Sur issues of “sluggishness” etc.

 

Hope this helps/makes sense.

[Drybonz]

MacOS 12 developer's beta is now available.  Any company that wanted to could, as of right now, start testing their software for the new OS.  Companies that are on top of their game and want to be ready have all the tools and time they need as of right now.

[datacommando]

12 hours ago, Drybonz said:

MacOS 12 developer's beta is now available.

Will you ever be happy, or are you simply determined to be constantly miserable?