10.6.8 vs 10.7 in regards to pro audio

Question

Hello Friends

I have one program ( Reason ) that says they are going to make me upgrade from 10.6.8 to 10.7 if I buy their newest version.

My other commonly used programs/instruments/samplers ( PT10, Logic 9, Play, Omnisphere ) say 10.6.8 is fine. Kontakt tells me 10.7 but I have never had a problem using it in 10.6.

I have heard 10.7 ( and 10.8 ) is/are more of an apple marketing upgrade and media producers are avoiding it as it is resulting in lower performance than 10.6.

I guess my question is if anyone has taken the 10.7 plunge and seen adverse performance in regard to any of their audio processes.

Cheers

Matt

Answer 1

10.8 is a very polished OS but not all of its bugs have been ironed out. 10.6.8 is the last iteration of a still very mature OS that hasn't got the latest and greatest software you most likely wouldn't need.

The performance of both, regarding audio, is roughly the same. However the stability of audio software that relies on older APIs (Pro Tools and Logic are among these, and so is Live in older versions) can be degraded on 10.7 or 10.8.

The software vendors usually draw the line regarding what they are happy to support, not really what the minimum requirements are.

I currently run OSX 10.8 and use Logic, Pro Tools, Ableton Live, Adobe Audition, and Renoise, and feel with 10.8.3 Apple have managed to iron out a lot of issues. Logic still has its graphics problems, but I can live with that since it has gone back to fairly responsive.

If this was two weeks ago I would have said stay on 10.6.8. Now 10.6.8 vs 10.8.3 is fairly level, but that says a lot more about 10.6 than about 10.8. If you're not prepared for the hassle, I say stay on 10.6 for some more time.