Plugin-Alliance plugs crashing Logic under 10.7.5/Ventura

[fisherking]

4 minutes ago, analogika said:

I've been really happy with their stuff, and since I've usually only upgraded OSen once my plugins are certified, it's been rock-solid. 

in all seriousness (i do that sometimes), i just generally go for the plugins i want, knowing that, at some point in the future, i could lose something if it doesn't get updated. but i like changing things up, so my plugins change occasionally anyway. and i always find a replacement for something that no longer works, or... simply go in another direction. tech is mostly a free-for-all; so it goes.

[Atlas007]

It seems that nothing last forever, after all… 💭

[JTone]

It's easy to write "I told you so"... But I bought a new Mac Studio and unfortunately it came with Ventura on it. Apple makes it very hard to downgrade a machine that comes with a specific OS to a previous one. I suspect I am not the only one.

We're kind of stuck in between Apple's annoying policy of shipping machines with the latest OS even if it's still very new, and Plugin Alliance being the only major plugin vendor to still not update their products to support the new OSs.

I also tried PA's support and got the "Sorry, we don't support and don't know when we will" answer. Very disappointing.

Anyone knows a good tutorial on how to safely downgrade a Mac without losing data? Can it at all be done?

 

[des99]

9 hours ago, JTone said:

Anyone knows a good tutorial on how to safely downgrade a Mac without losing data? Can it at all be done?

Traditionally, you generally can't downgrade a Mac to a lower OS than it shipped with, for hardware support reasons. You'll have to google around whether your particular machine can be downgraded, and how - if people have done it, you'll see posts on eg macrumors forums and stuff, and those things will be your best resource for Mac-hacking.

Edited February 21, 2023 by des99

[analogika]

As a rule, Macs can not be downgraded to OS versions older than the one that was current when that particular Mac was first released. (The only exception I can think of was one particular generation of the Pro desktops that were basically just a firmware upgrade for new CPUs about fifteen years or so ago.)

That means that a machine that was released when Monterey was current, but that now shipped with Ventura, MAY be downgradeable — through a complex process involving completely resetting the machine, AFAIK. 

HOWEVER: I'm told that since major macOS upgrades also update the machine firmware, the older macOS may only be installable if the machine's firmware also supports it — which it may not, if the machine was built after the release of the new OS. 

It's a bit of a mess, and a rather huge undertaking.

 

At this point you're probably better off just working your way around the offending plugins until they're finally updated. 

 

 

 

[analogika]

On 11/9/2022 at 7:24 PM, analogika said:

The only conceivable situation where I'd risk it at this point is if I HAD to replace this machine on short notice — but I'd be prepared to kick a bunch of software at least temporarily (I keep my mission-critical MainStage concerts free of third-party plugins precisely for this reason). 

…and of course, I jinxed it. This is EXACTLY what happened (luckily I was well-insured), and I'm now typing this on a brand new 14" M2 Pro machine. 

 

9 hours ago, JTone said:

Plugin Alliance being the only major plugin vendor to still not update their products to support the new OSs.

My personal list of installed software on my machine not yet officially Ventura-certified by vendors: 

AIR

Audio Damage

Baby Audio

BOZ

Cymatics

discoDSP

HOFA

IK Multimedia

iZotope

Nomad Factory

Plogue

Plugin Alliance

Softube

Tokyo Dawn

Toontrack

Waldorf

 

The only plugins I'm seeing issues with so far are Waldorf and Plugin Alliance, though. A couple of Waves refused to validate in Logic in one of my two user accounts at first, but after several attempts and a restart, the issue miraculously fixed itself. 🤷‍♂️

 

[fisherking]

11 minutes ago, analogika said:

…and of course, I jinxed it. This is EXACTLY what happened (luckily I was well-insured), and I'm now typing this on a brand new 14" M2 Pro machine. 

My personal list of installed software on my machine not yet officially Ventura-certified by vendors: 

AIR

Audio Damage

Baby Audio

BOZ

Cymatics

discoDSP

HOFA

IK Multimedia

iZotope

Nomad Factory

Plogue

Plugin Alliance

Softube

Tokyo Dawn

Toontrack

Waldorf

The only plugins I'm seeing issues with so far are Waldorf and Plugin Alliance, though. A couple of Waves refused to validate in Logic in one of my two user accounts at first, but after several attempts and a restart, the issue miraculously fixed itself. 🤷‍♂️

fwiw, all my izotope plugins are silicon, and all are working (that's the only developer from your list whose plugins i use)...

[analogika]

6 minutes ago, fisherking said:

fwiw, all my izotope plugins are silicon, and all are working (that's the only developer from your list whose plugins i use)...

Yes, they're Apple-Silicon native (except Trash 2, which sadly will never be updated), but they are not certified for Ventura yet, at this point. 

That list doesn't mean that they won't run, just that the developer hasn't made an official statement of compatibility or provided. 

As I said, from my testing so far, it's only Waldorf (won't authorise) and PA (random crashing) causing issues. I think BOZ' El Clapo had some occasional audio glitches, but  I haven't followed up in detail, yet. Everything else seems to be working, including some stuff that supposedly stopped working in Catalina years ago but just never broke for me (Vacuumsound, Ohmforce). 

Edited February 21, 2023 by analogika

[fisherking]

7 minutes ago, analogika said:

Yes, they're Apple-Silicon native (except Trash 2, which sadly will never be updated), but they are not certified for Ventura yet, at this point. 

That list doesn't mean that they won't run, just that the developer hasn't made an official statement of compatibility or provided. 

As I said, from my testing so far, it's only Waldorf (won't authorise) and PA (random crashing) causing issues. I think BOZ' El Clapo had some occasional audio glitches, but  I haven't followed up in detail, yet. Everything else seems to be working, including some stuff that supposedly stopped working in Catalina years ago but just never broke for me (Vacuumsound, Ohmforce). 

i've used so many plugins, over so many years, that ran fine in new OSes, but just weren't officially certified for that OS. honestly, if it works, i work, and for me... that's what matters.

[des99]

12 minutes ago, analogika said:

As I said, from my testing so far, it's only Waldorf (won't authorise)

Which plugins? I think these are just serials, so can you authorise on a different OS (or retrieve your auth file from the previous system) so the plugin is already authorised?

[analogika]

34 minutes ago, fisherking said:

fwiw, all my izotope plugins are silicon, and all are working (that's the only developer from your list whose plugins i use)...

Sure! I was just replying to @JTone's assertion that Plugin Alliance was "the only major plugin vendor to still not update their products to support the new OSs". 

Which they certainly aren't.

And most work just fine, without any official statement or update, as you write. 

[JTone]

56 minutes ago, analogika said:

Sure! I was just replying to @JTone's assertion that Plugin Alliance was "the only major plugin vendor to still not update their products to support the new OSs". 

Which they certainly aren't.

And most work just fine, without any official statement or update, as you write. 

 

You are right. I should have written “they are the only major plugin vendor which I experience issues with their plugins so far”. 
 

Plugins from major vendors like Softube, iZotope and Waves may not be compatible yet, but all of their plugins that I own run smoothly on Ventura. 

 

[John Scalia]

This is STILL the case. Ugh

[Dave Blackburn]

As it was the 6 month-aversary of Ventura's launch yesterday I wrote to Plugin-Alliance support again to express some frustration that their excellent plugins are still crashing Logic, usually upon opening the edit UI. I got back the same form letter that their stuff is not yet Ventura compatible and they do not recommend moving to it.

I note that we are now on OS 13.3.1, three iterations into this OS, and P-A seem to be the one plugin company (albeit a consortium of developers) that can't seem to get with the times. If this goes on much longer I expect many of us will abandon their P-A tools and use others more stable...surely that's bad for business.

[des99]

All I can say is about three weeks back they posted about this on their Facebook, and said there was one last issue the devs were working on before they could issue their Ventura compatibility update.

Their next plugin release is already explicitly marketed as compatible with Ventura, so it's obviously on the way, it's just PA tend to be rather slow at issuing updates, generally.

I expressly didn't update to Ventura for plugin compatibility reasons, most notably the PA stuff - I'll move when everything I need is working OK. (I know this isn't an option for those people who bought Macs with Ventura pre-installed.)

Edited April 25, 2023 by des99

[JTone]

3 minutes ago, des99 said:

All I can say is about three weeks back they posted about this on their Facebook, and said there was one last issue the devs were working on before they could issue their Ventura compatibility update.

Their next plugin release is already explicitly marketed as compatible with Ventura, so it's obviously on the way, it's just PA tend to be rather slow at issuing updates, generally.

I expressly didn't update to Ventura for plugin compatibility reasons, most notably the PA stuff - I'll move when everything I need is working OK. (I know this isn't an option for those people who bought Macs with Ventura pre-installed.)

Well, when you need to buy a new Mac like I needed to do at the end of last year, you often don’t have a choice. It came with the newest OS and when it does you can only rarely downgrade. That’s what happened to me. 
 

And it’s not about PA being slow. It’s fine if there were only minor compatibility issues. This is not minor. It’s HUGE. And the way they just refuse to even acknowledge it is disgraceful. 
 

I’ve been heavily depending on their plugins for my business, a mistake I am not going to repeat.

 

Highly disappointed by their attitude, especially after clarifying to them that I am a professional who needs their products to work and not just some kid playing in a bedroom. If they want to work mainly with the amateur market, bless them. I doubt that any pro will ever trust them again to be reliable and dependable. 
 

that’s a shame because their plugins are really good. 

[des99]

1 hour ago, JTone said:

Well, when you need to buy a new Mac like I needed to do at the end of last year, you often don’t have a choice. It came with the newest OS and when it does you can only rarely downgrade. That’s what happened to me. 

I understand, which is specifically what my last sentence was referring to.

(In this case, I'm pretty sure you can downgrade current machines to Monterey, but that's not really the point, and most people are not going to do that of course.)

[analogika]

10 hours ago, des99 said:

I understand, which is specifically what my last sentence was referring to.

(In this case, I'm pretty sure you can downgrade current machines to Monterey, but that's not really the point, and most people are not going to do that of course.)

Downgrading an M2 Pro to Monterey is not possible. 
 

i was in the same boat but opted for the M2 Pro back in February. 
 

Had my business crucially depended upon PA working flawlessly, I would have opted for a refurbished or remaining stock M1 Pro. Those can very likely be downgraded. 

[JTone]

14 hours ago, analogika said:

Downgrading an M2 Pro to Monterey is not possible. 
 

i was in the same boat but opted for the M2 Pro back in February. 
 

Had my business crucially depended upon PA working flawlessly, I would have opted for a refurbished or remaining stock M1 Pro. Those can very likely be downgraded. 

The issue isn’t about downgrading. Does it make any sense to make significant hardware decisions just because one company refuses to acknowledge and fix a serious issue that so many of its clients face?

[des99]

50 minutes ago, JTone said:

Does it make any sense to make significant hardware decisions just because one company refuses to acknowledge and fix a serious issue that so many of its clients face?

You keep saying they refuse to acknowledge there is a plugin compatibility issue with Ventura. This is not true - they specifically say on their website there is a Ventura issue and their plugins are not currently compatible with it, and they are specifically working on it, and have said this on their social channels - and I do not have reason to believe they are lying. So it's not that they refuse to acknowledge or fix it, they both acknowledge it, and are in the process of fixing it, the work has just not yet been finished/released.

A good argument could be made to suggest they should have started this work earlier, and have it done a long time ago, but we don't know what their development priorities are (and global updates are harder for them as it's not just one in-house development company, it's a whole bunch of different developers with their own schedules and priorities to manage). PA do seem generally to be fairly slow with updates, generally, which can certainly be frustrating.

Hopefully they'll get the fixes out before too long and we can all move past it.

[JTone]

2 hours ago, des99 said:

You keep saying they refuse to acknowledge there is a plugin compatibility issue with Ventura. This is not true - they specifically say on their website there is a Ventura issue and their plugins are not currently compatible with it, and they are specifically working on it, and have said this on their social channels - and I do not have reason to believe they are lying. So it's not that they refuse to acknowledge or fix it, they both acknowledge it, and are in the process of fixing it, the work has just not yet been finished/released.

A good argument could be made to suggest they should have started this work earlier, and have it done a long time ago, but we don't know what their development priorities are (and global updates are harder for them as it's not just one in-house development company, it's a whole bunch of different developers with their own schedules and priorities to manage). PA do seem generally to be fairly slow with updates, generally, which can certainly be frustrating.

Hopefully they'll get the fixes out before too long and we can all move past it.

I’m not sure if you’ve read some of my previous comments in this thread. 
I have been in contact with their support and they won’t say anything beyond “we do not support Ventura and we don’t know when we will”. They even refused to say if I was the only one who encountered the problem (at that time I still haven’t found anything online about it), if it also exists with other OS versions or if they have ever heard of it before. Nada, nothing except the standardized “we do not support Ventura” reply.

This is very different from saying “we know of the issue, it’s a compatibility issue, we are working on it but still don’t have a clean due date”. 

As I said, this seriously diminished my confidence in PA and I haven’t purchased a single plugin from them since (and I was a very heavy user of their stuff before). 

BTW, when you say that they are a group of developers, while being true, this particular issue seems to be only with the Brainworx brand. So it is actually a single developer group that seems to have this issue in their plugins. 

[Dave Blackburn]

That is actually encouraging, and Brainworx seem like a major brand so maybe it will be ready soon. The crashing however occurs with any PA plugins, so I still use them for their sound, but Command-S like crazy so I can resume where I was when it inevitably crashes. First world problems, writ large.

[Renan C. Anjos]

Cards on the table:

PA showed us their tendency to carelessness towards their previously launched products. Six months passed - months in which several new plugins were released and marketed upon - and yet not a single update for the old ones.

It's beyond "waiting for compatibility to update" now. We had all the major companies already updated to Ventura (and, even before that, their plugins worked fine). It's just a lack of common sense. And honestly, as consumers, we should not give them any sort of pass.

[analogika]

When a developer says, “we do not support X and don’t know when we will”, that is basically explicitly saying: “There may be issues, and we are working on finding any and fixing them before we give the go-ahead. 
Until then, you’re on your own, and any problems you encounter may be unworkable until we figure out what they are and how to fix them.” 
 

That’s not some secret knowledge or weird code. That’s what “unsupported” means. 
 

PA are by no means the only “major” vendor to not have announced full Ventura support, BTW. iZotope, Waldorf, AIR, and a number of others haven’t, either. Slate Audio came around just recently. 
 

They're just one of few who actually have issues. 

[JTone]

42 minutes ago, analogika said:

When a developer says, “we do not support X and don’t know when we will”, that is basically explicitly saying: “There may be issues, and we are working on finding any and fixing them before we give the go-ahead. 
Until then, you’re on your own, and any problems you encounter may be unworkable until we figure out what they are and how to fix them.” 
 

That’s not some secret knowledge or weird code. That’s what “unsupported” means. 
 

PA are by no means the only “major” vendor to not have announced full Ventura support, BTW. iZotope, Waldorf, AIR, and a number of others haven’t, either. Slate Audio came around just recently. 
 

They're just one of few who actually have issues. 

There is a better way to address your clients. Trust me, I know - I have been on the other end of client relationship for a very long time, serving in executive positions of sales, marketing and customer support in large corporates.

Saying "we've a seen similar issue happening to other clients, we know that this is a major concern and we are working to resolve it" is very different than saying "we do not support and don't know when we will".

As for other companies, although not officially supported, I did not encounter any show-stopping compatibility issue with any other plugin, and I own hundreds.

It's okay for a vendor to say that it takes time to fully update all plugins to support a new OS. But it's also a very good practice to acknowledge that you have a serious issue that no there major vendor has, and send reassuring messages to your clients saying that you are working day and night to resolve it because YOU CARE.

Unfortunately the messages I was getting from support, along with the complete change in attitude that PA has been going through in the past few months showed me the absolute opposite. They seem to care only about turning the business into a cash cow than preserving long term loyal clients.

And last point (again, coming from someone who's been in the business of facing clients with issues). Even if your initial plans were to take your time with an upgrade to support a new OS, when a major issue like this one occurs, you better change your priorities and work on a solution, or at least a temporary workaround, and do it fast. Not doing that leaves a trail of very unhappy customers and damages PA's reputation.

[analogika]

Yeah, but Apple’s update cycle means that you’re basically constantly assuring customers. And just putting up a slightly terse but very clear message really does do the job, imo. 

[fisherking]

1 hour ago, analogika said:

Yeah, but Apple’s update cycle means that you’re basically constantly assuring customers. And just putting up a slightly terse but very clear message really does do the job, imo. 

developer betas exist so that... developers can get a head-start on whatever they need to do to be compatible with an upcoming OS. that happened last june... and the OS has been out officially for 6 months. imho, if compatibility hasn't been established by now, that developer is not doing their job.

[des99]

56 minutes ago, fisherking said:

developer betas exist so that... developers can get a head-start on whatever they need to do to be compatible with an upcoming OS. that happened last june...

I agree, but It's often not quite that straightforward - in some cases, the betas are so bad, or such a moving target, or with necessary things not done yet that it's often difficult for devs to make meaningful development progress - a lot of time, a dev might make some preliminary investigations in the betas, only to basically come to the realisation they can't do anything until the final version has been shipped, and only *then* start the work. I know plenty of devs who were almost forced into that approach because of the state of some of the betas.

As has been said, PA have always been slow/lazy with updates and bugfixes generally, and the whole Soundwide thing likely shook them up quite a bit (not to mention the flood), but I agree that whatever the issues are, they should have been dealt with long before now. But here we are anyway...

[fisherking]

1 minute ago, des99 said:

I agree, but It's often not quite that straightforward - in some cases, the betas are so bad, or such a moving target, or with necessary things not done yet that it's often difficult for devs to make meaningful development progress - a lot of time, a dev might make some preliminary investigations in the betas, only to basically come to the realisation they can't do anything until the final version has been shipped, and only *then* start the work. I know plenty of devs who were almost forced into that approach because of the state of some of the betas.

As has been said, PA have always been slow/lazy with updates and bugfixes generally, and the whole Soundwide thing likely shook them up quite a bit (not to mention the flood), but I agree that whatever the issues are, they should have been dealt with long before now. But here we are anyway...

i dunno. a beta is a beta: incomplete, flawed; a work-in-progress. but it does give developers a chance to at least get their feet with with an upcoming OS, so that, by the time the official release happens... they know what they're working with.

plus, again... 6 months official. still, as you say, 'here we are anyway...' 👍

[des99]

1 minute ago, fisherking said:

i dunno. a beta is a beta: incomplete, flawed; a work-in-progress. but it does give developers a chance to at least get their feet with with an upcoming OS, so that, by the time the official release happens... they know what they're working with.

Yes, and in many cases it does work like that, but in some cases, literally critical components that a dev *needs* stable and in place to develop for, link against and build to just aren't even in the betas. I've known several cases and developers who have hit things like this (not saying this applies to PA, I'm just saying that in some cases, developers literally can't code against the betas, or if they do, end up chasing their tail and having to completely re-implement things multiple times that worked in previous betas that now need changing because of the beta moving target).

I'm just making the point that some devs even have a policy that they are not even going to look into, or test for compatibility until an OS goes final. And that's their call to make, usually based on being burned by Apple before... and with a large catalog, and a ton of other development and business commitments all going on, it can be complicated to prioritise, schedule, and get it done.

2 minutes ago, fisherking said:

plus, again... 6 months official. still, as you say, 'here we are anyway...'

Indeed.