u-he has announced that it has updated its plugins to add native support for Apple Silicon hardware.
They say that the updates will massively improve performance on the latest generation of Macintosh computers, and that they’ve also optimized GUI speed and added lots of tweaks and improvements to our plugins on all platforms.
Here’s what’s new:
- Native support for Apple Silicon
- Improved browsers, easy drag & drop soundset installation
- New resource management in Hive – most presets will use even less CPU
- Support for MTS, a new project-wide microtuning standard
- New designs for Triple Cheese (freeware) and ZebraCM (magware)
- Better overall performance for all plug-ins on all platforms
Super excited about the MTS support. At last.
Wow, Diva is truly galloping now on my Apple Silicone Mac mini 🙂
What sort of performance improvements are you seeing?
I’m not an M1 Mac owner yet, but I’ve been waiting to see how much of an improvement you get, and if people run into show-stopper issues.
I haven’t heard people complain about show-stopper problems, but also haven’t heard anything that makes me think it’s time to make the jump yet, either.
I can now run 8+ instances of a diva patch when my 2019 Intel iMac struggled to run even one without suffering. It is absolutely night and day. In terms of the overall experience with the M1 (I’m on a 13″ MBP) it’s largely seamless. Even when using Ableton (which is running on the Rosetta 2 translation) I get better performance.
I’m using an M1 Mac Mini and I’m able to get 17 instances of a 6-voice poly patch with “Divine” accuracy without any surges or dropouts. I could probably get much more using lower resolutions like “Draft” accuracy. That’s pretty impressive I think, considering how CPU intensive Diva is, especially with Divine accuracy.
How does the M1 Macbook compare to the M1 Mac Mini in terms of speed and power?
Exact tech in both units. Both have fans so they have similar peak speeds. Both have same choices for on chip ram. Only difference is the casing/form factor.
Performance never matters. Creativity and skill are key!
Performance matters big time as soon as you make a living with your creative work. All the skill in the world won’t help you hold a deadline when your equipment slows you down.
Zebralette was also updated and runs natively on ARM64.
Because of the mention of ZebraCM in this news item, I purchased the latest issue of Computer Music (first magazine I’ve bought in quite a few years). After a really convoluted process, I was able to install ZebraCM… version 1.1, not the 1.1.1 released this week.
That one will be out Real Soon Now.
“ZebraCM: (available from Computer Music soon)”
https://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=569081
No idea how it’ll appear on FileSilo.
This is such great news. Love the U-he stuff. Diva and Zebra are so versatile.
If we now get plugins that used to be very taxing on most systems to run much more effectively on the new M1’s, that changes everything, especially for composers, and for postmixers (like me). I would love to be able to run big native sessions without workarounds, or linked servers. No fans (yiha!).
If Apple decides to release an M1 Mac Mini that is as expandable as the last Intel models were with a good amount of ports at about the same price point, that would be a game changer. They effectively killed their pro line with too little usability at too high a price for a lot of creatives that are not doing very specific video tasks, as I think a lot of others, like the VFX gals and guys are basically using PC’s exclusively already, and this change would open a whole world of possibilities. More realtime processing, more instruments, better sound quality, and this will also spark new design directions: the flexibility in using cpu heavy plugins on lots of tracks might also create different workflows for almost every task.
It won’t be expandable, as the ram is soldered to the cpu, and the ssd chips are soldered to the main board. But there will be thunderbolt ports so you can toss as much extra storage on as you need. I don’t see that changing since that’s how they gain the increases in speed. (common ram integrated into the cpu)
I am very interested in the next iteration of the mini. Especially with my choice of DAW, Bitwig, which is now native M1, yet also will load plugs that aren’t yet native. Exciting times.