Apple Fix Audio Unit Bug in Mac OS X El Capitan 10.11.1

Following on from the “Oh no! Don’t upgrade to El Capitan unless you want to stop using many audio unit plugins”, to “El Capitan 10.11.1 BETA looks to be fixing it…” we’re happy to announce the latest update for public consumption is out. And better still it looks like most of the problems are no longer.

We’ve only done brief tests here, but the initial results are promising… Microsoft Office no longer crashes! Yes, we’re saved! OK. Only joking. We’re here to talk audio… so, yes, it looks like Apple has done some fixing under the hood and audio unit validation now works as expected. So, your Native Instruments, Arturia, etc. plug-ins should all be behaving themselves.

Some developers will likely issues some of their own patches and updates, so stay tuned to their communication channels.

Look how happy these NI plug-ins are in El Capitan OS X 10.11.1!

We’re not sure about the audio hardware issues we reported, so if you find any persistent issues let us know in the comments below.

And here’s an excerpt from Apple about the update:

The OS X El Capitan 10.11.1 update improves the stability, compatibility, and security of your Mac, and is recommended for all users.

This update:

• Improves installer reliability when upgrading to OS X El Capitan.
• Improves compatibility with Microsoft Office 2016.
• Fixes an issue where outgoing server information may be missing from Mail.
• Resolves an issue that prevented display of messages and mailboxes in Mail.
• Resolves an issue that prevents certain Audio Unit plug-ins from functioning properly.
• Improves VoiceOver reliability.
• Adds over 150 new emoji characters with full Unicode 7.0 and 8.0 support.
• Resolves an issue that caused JPEG images to appear as a gray or green box in Preview.

For detailed information about the security content of this update, see Apple Security Updates.  https://support.apple.com/kb/HT201222

If you’re planning to update, we’d recommend you back up your Mac and then update to the new version of El Capitan via the Mac App Store.