Are there any advantages to moving beyond Catalina for Pro Tools?
 

Hi all, my other 2 Macs are on Monterey, but my main production Hackintosh is still rocking Catalina with PT 2022.12 & Waves 14 etc

It's the stable-est, lowest latency operating, native rig I've ever run.

Apart from being able to use the latest Apple Apps, are there any advantages others have found *specifically* as a Pro Tools rig, to upgrading the OS?

Cheers

Ru

Re: Are there any advantages to moving beyond Catalina for Pro Tools?
 

Well, you could certainly lock down with your current computer, OS version, DAW version and plugin versions. How many years will you get? Five? Ten?

I did something similar with an older 2011 iMac with High Sierra and had it running quite well. However, other apps (e.g., Safari) got weird and eventually unusable. So I upgraded all.

Re: Are there any advantages to moving beyond Catalina for Pro Tools?
 

Catalina is pinnacle of Intel systems. However we should soon be seeing huge improvement on Apple Silicon fully native non-rosetta systems. Just sit back and relax, enjoy Catalina stability and upgrade when you think everything you need is ready.

Re: Are there any advantages to moving beyond Catalina for Pro Tools?
 

My only concern would be security. İf your hackintosh is connected to the internet, be sure you've configured the firewall well, and make sure you're using updated internet software, especially your browser. I'd recommend using Firefox, since safari won't receive any more updates. Firefox has a good track record of supporting older OSes.

Re: Are there any advantages to moving beyond Catalina for Pro Tools?
 

Firefox is, apart from the command line Lynx, the oldest browser still standing.

It was originally known as Netscape Navigator and was technically ahead of NCSA Mosaic, which later became MS Idiot Explorer. Edge is a new thing if we are supposed to believe MS. And I want to, being more awry seeing someone using Chrome rather than Edge.

And I feel awfully old telling stories from 30yr ago.

My point is, supporting Firefox is still just as valid as in the early days of graphical user interface. MS was the bad guy for a long time, but who is to say how Apple and Google (in alphabetical order) are using our browser data now.

Re: Are there any advantages to moving beyond Catalina for Pro Tools?
 

Directly to the OP question; No.
From what I can see and read about, there is absolutely nothing you and I are missing out on, you on Catalina, and me on Big Sur. Only reason I'm not still on Catalina is that my M1 Mini can't run anything earlier than Big Sur.

I'm expecting to stay put until the next generation of Macs come out (M3?) and I'll be forced to make another jump.

Of course, there might be a PT release in the near or far future that introduces functionality that we would like to have, and won't be qualified to run on Catalina. But for me, even PT2020 has everything I need.

Re: Are there any advantages to moving beyond Catalina for Pro Tools?
 

Ok thanks all, yeah this was pretty much the conclusion I had come to. I just wanted to see if anyone jumped in & said that a later O.S was made PT any more responsive.

Will stick with Catalina for now, but am getting Monterey & Ventura partitions added for when the time comes.

re: Apple silicon, great that PT should fly on it (I have am M1 home/test rig), but I have 40 channels of D-Command that Avid have just made redundant, so won't be moving my studio rig to that any time soon, if ever, unless anyone there has a change of heart.

Re: Are there any advantages to moving beyond Catalina for Pro Tools?
 

Just ignoring the whole Hackintosh or ASoC/Intel thing...

Catalina is the only OS I ever completely skipped over. Mojave was great. But Big Sur, Monterey and Ventura have been the best experiences for me ever... Hands down.

I mean the overly locked down system is a PITA, especially if you have hardware drivers that require changing the OS's security protection level. But once that's done, and the constant allowing of your Apps to do things on your system, it's the most optimized, stable and responsive I've ever experienced in 30 years.

Not to mention all the latest security updates.

Re: Are there any advantages to moving beyond Catalina for Pro Tools?
 

the Pro Tools Aux I/O features (introduced in 2022.9) require macOS Big Sur or later.
i would say that is a compelling reason to move on from Catalina (if that is a feature that would help your workflow).

Re: Are there any advantages to moving beyond Catalina for Pro Tools?
 

One big advantage of Catalina is that you can use Carbon Copy Cloner to make full and updateable, bootable external disks.
Big Sur and Monterey change elements of the file system and mean that although you can still make a bootable external disk, you can't easily keep it up to date with incremental changes.

The only advantage in Pro Tools I know of to move to later OS's is the better behaviour of AVB on some later versions of Big Sur and all Monterey versions with Carbon.

Of course, later OS's have the extra emojis that no audio professional can live without.

Dominic