Old iMac + El Capitan upgrade + PT 9 = Trouble

[allegrarc]

The title pretty much says it all. I have a 27" iMac from around 2010 with 16 GB of RAM. I never upgraded the OS until today. I've been working with Pro Tools since I got the computer, and it has been rock steady. For some reason I decided to update the OS to El Capitan. The first sign of trouble was the computer didn't see the interface, a Focusrite Liquid Saffire 56, but a driver and firmware upgrade took care of that. I thought I was out of the woods, but when I opened a session, it said several plugins had been inactivated because of inadequate system resources. I rely on plugins a lot, so this is an issue. Oddly, for the most part it wasn't the more exotic ones that gave it trouble, it was a lot of the basic Digidesign plugins, like BF compressors and Xpand. Also, when I go to select an alternate plugin, the whole list does not appear. I have to move the cursor down or over to make the choices appear. It seems the old iMac just does not have the horsepower to run both El Capitan and Pro Tools. Is it possible to downgrade the OS? Or is it possibly a compatibility issue which upgrading PT might take care of?

[bradch00]

In my simple minded opinion, I would say roll back to whatever version of OS X you were on before. The first reason is compatibility, I don't believe PT9.x is compatible with El Capitan. What release of PT9 are you on?
I am hesitant recommending you go PT12 for the same reason, compatability. Although the certified hardware list is only based on systems Avid has tested and is not complete, the age of your iMac may be against you going forward to PT 12.
Hardware compatability grid; http://avid.force.com/pkb/articles/e...m-Requirements
What OS version and release were you running before upgrading? How do you backup your system?

[Darryl Ramm]

You screwed up. Pro Tools 9 will not work in El Crapitan. Everything you are describing here, including plugin behavior is exactly as expected, and is well documented/discussed for years on DUC.

you have to check compatibility before you decide to upgrade.

And doing in-situ upgrades is not recommended. You are normally better off doing full clean OS X installs and reinstalling apps. a smart way of doing that is on a spare external drive and get everything working there first, that way you are only ever a reboot away from recovering from problems.

You either can upgrade to Pro Tools 12.5 (you also need to upgrade all plugins to AAX) , roll back to your last working backup, or go back and do a full manual reinstall of your previous OS X install and all your apps and plugins.

[JFreak]

This article says PT9 is compatible up to Lion. For El Cap, you need PT 12

[allegrarc]

Rolled back the OS to 10.6.3 and restored from backup. Pro Tools seems to be working OK now, but Focusrite Saffire Mix Control crashes. Baby steps.

[Darryl Ramm]

There has been lots of posts on DUC about different Mix Control issues in the past, so always worth searching DUC for. (And just for grins https://support.focusrite.com/hc/en-...re-on-Mac-OS-X)

Focusrite support staff, including those that hang out on DUC can be very helpful, or you can always contact Focusrite support directly. Folks will want to know what exact versions of the drivers/Mix Control you are running on OS X 10.6.3.