macOS Sierra 10.12: Better News for Musicians & Producers

It's not all doom and gloom for Mac musicians and producers who want to be on the cutting edge with their OS updates. While we reported the day macOS Sierra was released to exercise caution before upgrading if you use audio unit plug-ins and music software, there are some users who have reported a clean bill of health (and no dramatic hassles) with Apple's latest Mac OS.

Billy Olsson contacted us last night. He's been running macOS Sierra in BETA for the last few months, finds it works well and has discovered a workaround to get some plug-ins and hardware drivers which are not yet fully supported to run fine.

"macOS Sierra is working perfectly with UAD + Plugin Alliance. You just need to reboot while holding CMD + R and open terminal, write in csrutil disable and then reboot... Thats the fix.. It disables the system integration protection but it will make the drivers and shizzle work."

Billy Olsson demonstrates that UA plugins can work fine on macOS Sierra 10.12.

While this fix might not be everyone's cup of tea, "The (gulp) Terminal??" I hear some voices squeak with a hint of trepidation... it'll be good news for those brave users or anyone who has already upgraded to the new OS.

As always we'd highly recommend you backup / clone your Mac before updating. Furthermore, we wouldn't recommend updating before checking manufacturer and developer websites for all drivers, hardware and software you rely upon to find out whether they are macOS Sierra 10.12 ready.

As far as we know, even without the above workaround, all Waves, Xfer Records (Serum), IK Multimedia, Tone2, and many other AU plug-ins are functioning fine in macOS Sierra now.

Sylenth 1 64-bit version appears to be an exception to this. So, if your Mac-based music making workflow rests heavy on Sylenth it might be worth holding back from pressing that tempting update button in the Mac App Store.

Whatever you decide... make great music no matter what OS you're running. And, yes, that applies to all you Windows peeps too.