What's the word on Ventura and DP and common plug ins?

[James Steele]

I'm going to make this same post in a number of threads where this UADx issue has come up. I don't know that this is the answer, but I'd ask people try this. My thinking was that UADx plugs do something unusual. It appears UA programmed some mechanism so that when you simply open a project containing UADx plug-ins, the UA Connect app is automatically launched. Honestly, that feels pretty damn intrusive to me. I never liked how UA sets UAD Meter & Control Panel to automatically run at boot either.

I could barking up the wrong tree here, but try this:

• Manually launch the UA Connect app. Let it do its thing and settle.
• Launch Digital Performer 11.21
• Open a project that does not contain any UADx plugins
• Close that project without quitting DP
• Open the project that does contain UADx plugins.

Note the first step highlighted in bold above. This is the only difference with my previous "workaround." I just did this four times in a row and it worked all four times. Hardly proof at this point, but maybe some folks could try it and let me know. It might do nothing. It might not work 100% of the time, but it might help???

[cuttime]

Short answer: If you're using DP, don't do it
***
MOTU does indeed know about these issues. Awaiting a fix.

Thanks for your input. I thought it strange that MOTU was giving DP a clean bill of health in MacOS 13 on their website.

[James Steele]

Thanks for your input. I thought it strange that MOTU was giving DP a clean bill of health in MacOS 13 on their website.

Yeah, I’m not sure what’s up with that. Especially when you consider that DP’s niche is with the film/TV scoring pros. It seems like being able to push out QuickTime movie bounces would be indispensable with that crowd.

Perhaps M1 Macs are not quite ubiquitous enough to increase pressure on MOTU. If just one high profile scoring pro switches DAWs on account of this going on for too long, that would be one too many. Because new Macs SHIP with Ventura pre-installed this seems like it should be fixed *yesterday*.

[Black-Man]

Hmmm... I disabled the UADx Pultec plugin suite and DP on Ventura is behaving a LOT better. No more crashing, just occasional crash on startup. Before... I literally instantiate a UADx plug and bam... crash.

[HCMarkus]

Hmmm... I disabled the UADx Pultec plugin suite and DP on Ventura is behaving a LOT better. No more crashing, just occasional crash on startup. Before... I literally instantiate a UADx plug and bam... crash.

Thanks for reinforcing my decision to abandon UA

I was starting to get a little tempted by their Native packages. Like I really need more compressors, EQs and reverbs.

[Black-Man]

Thanks for reinforcing my decision to abandon UA

I was starting to get a little tempted by their Native packages. Like I really need more compressors, EQs and reverbs.

I had UADx by default (Dimension D, 1176, LA2 and Pultec EQ). I noticed there are 3 UAD processes running in the background. 2 of them, I expect as they are related to the UAD console/'phone home' app. The third is UAD GPU... which tells me they are emulating their proprietary shark gpu dongle in software. Strange architecture decision, but I assume they thought that was easier than re-writing from scratch but probably explains why its broken and any significant Mac OS update will result in more broken-ness in their emulator. LOL

[James Steele]

Hmmm... I disabled the UADx Pultec plugin suite and DP on Ventura is behaving a LOT better. No more crashing, just occasional crash on startup. Before... I literally instantiate a UADx plug and bam... crash.

Thanks for reinforcing my decision to abandon UA

I was starting to get a little tempted by their Native packages. Like I really need more compressors, EQs and reverbs.

I would imagine these issues will get fixed at some point. It’s not hampering *me* personally. My workaround is working and I tend to favor the DSP plug-ins anyway.

[James Steele]

The third is UAD GPU... which tells me they are emulating their proprietary shark gpu dongle in software. Strange architecture decision, but I assume they thought that was easier than re-writing from scratch but probably explains why its broken and any significant Mac OS update will result in more broken-ness in their emulator. LOL

Isn’t UA using iLok for CP for the Native plugs? Not sure why they’d have to emulate a dongle in that case?

[Black-Man]

Isn’t UA using iLok for CP for the Native plugs? Not sure why they’d have to emulate a dongle in that case?

They use iLok. By "dongle", I meant their Shark GPU in the satellite and apollo interfaces which in effect act as a dongle to their software (and obviously providing DSP... which in this day and age is superfluous).

[James Steele]

Yeah... I get it. It may be superfluous at some point, but until I they release ALL their plugs as native, if you like a certain one that isn't native, you don't have much choice. I really like their 480L and there is no Spark version. I'm at peace with my decision to get a TB3 Satellite OCTO last year.

As for as emulating the SHARC GPU as a form of copy protection, what I'm saying is I don't know why they'd build that into the native version of their plugs since the UADx plugs use iLok? Unless it was just too much effort to strip the code that checks for the presence of a SHARC chip and they chose to emulate it instead? But then it would be checking for a SHARC DSP AND an iLok, right? Doesn't seem to make sense.

For now it seems the workaround for opening projects with UADx plug-ins is working. It's a bit of a hassle. It seems that instances of UADx plugs calling the UA Connect app to launch is playing a role.

[Black-Man]

Yeah... I get it. It may be superfluous at some point, but until I they release ALL their plugs as native, if you like a certain one that isn't native, you don't have much choice. I really like their 480L and there is no Spark version. I'm at peace with my decision to get a TB3 Satellite OCTO last year.

As for as emulating the SHARC GPU as a form of copy protection, what I'm saying is I don't know why they'd build that into the native version of their plugs since the UADx plugs use iLok? Unless it was just too much effort to strip the code that checks for the presence of a SHARC chip and they chose to emulate it instead? But then it would be checking for a SHARC DSP AND an iLok, right? Doesn't seem to make sense.

I really loved using my UAD plugins on my Mac Pro w/ the GPU card. I hemmed/hawed about getting a Satellite, but I figured with them porting to native (some more successful than others) I would let it go. The Pultec collection is a total cluster. All I have UADx is Pultec, 1176, LA2, Dimension D. Only Pultec crashes DP. I disabled it and DP stopped crashing. Go figure.

I think what they are doing is that since their plugins were architected to run native on that Shark GPU and with all that legacy DSP code it probably was easier for them to create a "GPU process" which emulates the GPU card. Then.... the porting of all of those plugins became x10 easier. The process is literally called UAD GPU. LOL

[shansen1]

Izotope just updated Ozone 10 to native. They promised to follow up other plugins soon.
Arturia just updated their V Collection 9 to native, and promised the the FX Collection to follow soon.

[HCMarkus]

Sort of nice to see iZotope noting DP:

Supported Hosts (DAWs/NLEs):

Logic Pro, Ableton Live 10.1 — 11, Pro Tools 2021 — 2022, Cubase 11 - 12, FL Studio 20, Studio One 5, REAPER 6, Bitwig Studio 4, Adobe Audition CC, Premiere Pro CC, Nuendo 12, Digital Performer 11*.

* Compatible in Digital Performer 11 on macOS/AU only.

Of course, Logic Pro is also AU-only. But where does that leave DP on PC users?

Also, iZotope just updated their installer to Apple Silicon Native. Ozone 10 was already AS-Native. Ventura compatibility is new to the latest update.

Version 10.4.0 released March 21, 2023
Compatibility Updates & Improvements

Added macOS Ventura support.
Added AAX Apple silicon native support.
Added Apple silicon native support to Ozone 10 installers. Rosetta is no longer required to install Ozone 10 on an Apple silicon Mac.

Finally, Arturia has been AS-Native for some time. They just announced Ventura compatibility.

[RodneySauer]

I updated my MacBook to Ventura 13.3 today, and it did not solve the "movie (or any other Core Audio) bounce to disk" bug. So I guess we're waiting on an update to Digital Performer to fix that.

[RodneySauer]

I updated to DP 11.22 today, and the Quicktime movie export crash that's been happening under Ventura has been fixed.