Big Sur & Protools 2020.11

[Obsidian Dragon]

Just for laughs, I loaded Protools 2020.11 on an old 12" MacBook (i5 with only 8 GB Ram) and upgraded to Big Sur (11.0.1) to see what happens. Avid is clear that Big Sur is not in the system requirements for Protools 2020.11. Nevertheless I did it for the sake of this community.

It installed fine. Started up without any problems. I created a session and imported a WAV and an MP3 file. I did some minor editing. It played back smoothly. So I'd say it was relatively successful.

To be clear, I did not load a heavy session or install any plugins other than what installs with Protools. I just played back from the laptop speakers (no audio interface). So take it with a grain of salt.

[Ben Jenssen]

So you installed PT 2020.11 on Catalina and then upgraded to BS?

I'll be holding off on both BS and .11 for some time. I have such a smooth running system now. If it ain't broke…

But I do have some time to waste, so I might be tempted to do a clean install of BS on a free disk, and then PT .11. Let's see if the PT installer will let me at all.

[musicman691]

Let's see now:
We've had WC as the abbreviation for Waves Central
Now we have BS as the abbreviation for Big Sur


What's the next weird abbreviation to come along

[Darryl Ramm]

2020.11 installs on top of a new install of Big Sur as well, so does the latest ILM and basic stuff appears to work. YMMV.

[Ben Jenssen]

Originally Posted by musicman691

Let's see now:
We've had WC as the abbreviation for Waves Central
Now we have BS as the abbreviation for Big Sur
What's the next weird abbreviation to come along

Apple should have thought about that.

[Darryl Ramm]

Originally Posted by Darryl Ramm

2020.11 installs on top of a new install of Big Sur as well, so does the latest ILM and basic stuff appears to work. YMMV.

And an update. (edited: updated to fix some comments)

Avid Complete Plugin bundle, all the standard Air bundles seem to install and I've not seen anything not working, but have only done some quick testing.

Superior Drummer 3 installs and seems to work.

BIAS FX 2 does *not* run as a stand alone app. Pity because I do like to use it stand alone. But the AAX plugin seems to work fine. A quick poke around inside BIAS FX 2 shows that unfortunately the developers compressed the binary with UPX (and in a way it can't be unpacked and fixed) and Big Sur breaks UPX and I expect Apple is happy that it does (a potential hider of malware) so not likely there will be any fix until PositiveGrid releases a fix. I wished developers would not do half-assed things like this.

BIAS Amp 2 and Pedal does seem to install and run as a stand alone app and as an AAX plugin.

And all BIAS installers require the user to override the initial install permission failure in System Preferences>Security & Privacy>General

I've not had time to install any other third party plugins.

I have had many more issues with Apple's own XCode and Spotlight misbehaving, and Google Chrome helpers doing their usual CPU hogging, maybe a little more than usual, on this systems than issues with Pro Tools related stuff. But that does not mean much and this is all on a quick test install. But What the heck I might clone it over to the boot drive and see how it goes. YMMV, be careful, *don't* do this with productions systems.

[Darryl Ramm]

One very minor bug with 2020.11 on Big Sur: in the new track dialog the track name displayed in that dialog is clipped and missing the lower half of the text. Does not happen with 2020.11 on Mojave. 2019 MacBook Pro 15" internal screen on default resolution settings. Now will pay more attention to other text entry fields to see if they have problems (I can't find anyhow, like text entry field for saving plugin settings etc. all seem to behave OK).

One other thing with 2020.11 is it seems to have fixed the partial bits of other characters that would show up in track names in the Mix window. That behaves properly for me on Mojave and Big Sur.

[Wolfgang Eller]

Be very careful with the iLok Manager and do not try to synchronise your iLoks within Big Sur.
I just lost my PT license!

[Darryl Ramm]

Originally Posted by Wolfgang Eller

Be very careful with the iLok Manager and do not try to synchronise your iLoks within Big Sur.
I just lost my PT license!

I'm not sure that is Big Sur specific, there are lots of folks on DUC having licenses evaporated issues on other macOS releases. Some maybe who accidentally surrendered licenses in a subscription upgrade, and others with likely something else bad bad going on. I've synced my iLok on Big Sur, just did it again and had no problems.

[Wolfgang Eller]

OK, finally I got the information from iLok that Avid revoked my license.

Not funny...