@afterlight said:

I'd love to see how many people check this thread daily. I know I do. 

VSL reeeeeally dropped the ball on taking this long. I keep hoping that Apple would completely discontinue intel just to force them to either deprecate Ensemble or to update it. I wish they'd make it a paid update and focus on it, even if it doesn't have Synchron player updated, so many of us rely on it. 

Yeah it caught me off guard. The main thing with Apple Silicon is the GUI differences from Intel Mac and Windows, so I wrongly assumed that because VEP was a modern looking application that the GUI framework was portable to Apple Silicon in a timely manor. For instance Arturia upgraded their plug ins for VST3 and resizable GUIs previous to Apple Silicon being announced, so it was obvious they would be light years ahead of NI who had old GUIs and frameworks for them from in some cases 15 years ago according to their reps. That's not the case though, they obviously have some lower level stuff to deal with, like how NI waited so long they're dealing with VST3, Apple Silicon and resizable GUIs all at once. 

 Arturia and Audio Ease are the big ones on my list left now. 

I check this page at least once a week.  I always thought VSL was one of the better tech companies, not so much any more.  I would have been so happy if they rolled it out in phases, all I need is the VST plugin to be native.  I, like many other people, host all the samples on a PC.  So I only need the bridge to be native.  Then of course they could have rolled out the host software later.

That seems like such a simple concept, but here we are...still waiting...

@Michael Canavan said:

Yeah it caught me off guard. The main thing with Apple Silicon is the GUI differences from Intel Mac and Windows, so I wrongly assumed that because VEP was a modern looking application that the GUI framework was portable to Apple Silicon in a timely manor. For instance Arturia upgraded their plug ins for VST3 and resizable GUIs previous to Apple Silicon being announced, so it was obvious they would be light years ahead of NI who had old GUIs and frameworks for them from in some cases 15 years ago according to their reps. That's not the case though, they obviously have some lower level stuff to deal with, like how NI waited so long they're dealing with VST3, Apple Silicon and resizable GUIs all at once. 

 Arturia and Audio Ease are the big ones on my list left now. 

Developing a stable VST3 host that plays well with most VST3 plugins isn't easy apparently. A lot of developers dislike the VST3 standard and the forced transition to it was very problematic for many of them. 

For me VEP doesn't inspire much confidence lately. After the switch to iLok I keep seeing a lot of new issues - on top of the long-standing problems of VEP7 - on this forum and elsewhere.

I'm disappointed because VEP is a mission critical software for a lot of professionals. This should be the biggest focus of VSL.

Another unfortunate thing that didn't help is that the "big guys" already have 2019 Mac Pros so the pressure isn't as strong. If Apple had moved to AS without releasing the 2019 MP the story would be a lot different with much more complaints and drama.

@rockdude9k said:

I check this page at least once a week.  I always thought VSL was one of the better tech companies, not so much any more.  I would have been so happy if they rolled it out in phases, all I need is the VST plugin to be native.  I, like many other people, host all the samples on a PC.  So I only need the bridge to be native.  Then of course they could have rolled out the host software later.

 

That seems like such a simple concept, but here we are...still waiting...

To their credit, on top of VST3, GUIs for modern times, and Apple Silicon.... VSL also recently had to switch from eLicenser to iLok. They IMO shot themselves in the foot inadvertently by not doing VST3 earlier, at least one port would be out of the way. 

  the main WTF? moment though is as you state, them not porting the plug in over ASAP. This is IMO a huge financial loss to them since people would have bought the software just to use depreciated or incompatible VSTs on a server machine while running the VEP AU, MAS or VST3 plug in, in their DAW. 

@Another User said:

For me VEP doesn't inspire much confidence lately. After the switch to iLok I keep seeing a lot of new issues - on top of the long-standing problems of VEP7 - on this forum and elsewhere.

I'm disappointed because VEP is a mission critical software for a lot of professionals. This should be the biggest focus of VSL.

Another unfortunate thing that didn't help is that the "big guys" already have 2019 Mac Pros so the pressure isn't as strong. If Apple had moved to AS without releasing the 2019 MP the story would be a lot different with much more complaints and drama.

Mostly VEP can't be beat for big projects, I'm betting in the larger setups even the fastest computers out there benefit from taking out hosting tasks from the DAW. 

Still checking every morning... Any news? It has been already 2 years 2months since first M1.

I finally decided to upgrade my 2009 Mac Pro last summer. I'm not an early adopter (although I did buy the Symphonic Cube when it came out!) so I thought a couple years should be enough for all my plug-ins and VI developers to catch up so I leisurely migrated my rig to a MAC Studio. I upgraded from VEP5 to 7 only to realize now that it still doesn't support M1! I was shocked to learn that, last thing I was expecting. Should be coming out any time now...

It is late January 2023. No VST3 support, no Apple Silicon support (not even the plugins). I really don't know what to say...

Yeah. One wants to believe. I'd be happy to pay quite a bit for the upgrade.

But it's starting to seem like there's actually a reason it might be impossible, or something, due to the changes in the way the memory works perhaps, or something similar. I guess perhaps it's also about updating everything - synchron player too, and MIR. And making the change to the sampler might be non-trivial. 

But over 2 years later, it's starting to seem like the community and customers deserve at least a timeline. I know they don't want to give a date. But a 'we will be able to do this' and a rough guesstimate of a quarter or even a year in which they might achieve it would go such a long way to helping those with large studios decide what hardware to even purchase.

  So in the last page directly above the people complaining there's been no indication of a timeline, there's a link to a guy who works for VSL saying that VEP Apple Silicon native is in beta. You can't ask for more than that really. We can guess it's anywhere from one to nine months away at this point, depending on whether they find a major bug in the beta or not. Hopefully that includes VST3 support since if someone wants to host a server on Apple Silicon Kontakt instruments aren't going to play nice outside of AU. 

To be honest, I just hope that the plugins can be Apple Silicon native, so that I can finally stop running Cubase in Rosetta mode and take full advantage of the powerful Mac Studio. The server software itself can stay as it is, since most people I know run their sample rigs on Intel-based machines (Windows or Mac). One can dream...

I have no doubt that people at VSL are working hard on it. But I hope that they also understand why their customers are frustrated and disappointed after such a long wait. Many pros have spent a lot of money on the Mac Studios (or even the new MacBook Pros), yet we have to keep running our DAWs in Rosetta because of VE Pro.

I believe it genuinely is incoming - or at least VST3 support within VEPro as Paul on this thread suggests...

https://www.vsl.co.at/community/posts/t59610-Kontakt-6-and-7

VST3 support is here. It really feels like Christmas morning here. I truly hope that it means Apple Silicon support is coming in the near future.

Has anyone tried running VEPRO as AU inside the Bluecat's Patchwork wrapper?  MIR3D works well here in Cubase 12 / Silicon mode that way.

@Watercolor Music said:

VST3 support is here. It really feels like Christmas morning here. I truly hope that it means Apple Silicon support is coming in the near future.

Not seeing this anywhere. 

@Watercolor Music said:

VST3 support is here. It really feels like Christmas morning here. I truly hope that it means Apple Silicon support is coming in the near future.

@Watercolor Music said:

VST3 support is here. It really feels like Christmas morning here. I truly hope that it means Apple Silicon support is coming in the near future.

Thanks Dan, that's great! Supposedly VST3 is better at releasing CPU back to the host so over the years here it should be a better choice for plug ins in VEP servers. Plus it means VSL are done mucking with it and can get busy on putting the Apple Silicon beta through it's paces. My and I imagine your big fear, is they do not port the MAS version, so I wait with baited breath. 

I think I'm ready to spend all my money on a maxed out M2Max MBPro 16", maybe in a month or so. Which means I'll be checking in here quite a bit also 😃 And yes, begging for a MAS version 😝 That laptop and my current iMac Pro as a slave should be all I need forever and ever 😎 . Ok, maybe I'll wait til March to check back in here. 😊

It's my understanding that the reason VEPro works is low-level code, directly addressing hardware - which when it was originally written was Intel.  Now that Apple Silicon is here, and it's a completely different hardware platform and architecture, it's got to be like writing the whole thing from zero.  Maybe the M-series CPU's don't deal with these direct calls as well.  That's all beyond me.  But I think of this like a team of developers writing an entirely new app that has the goal of enterprise-level reliability and the greatest efficiency and speed possible.  How long would one say that should take?  Especially if they have other things that people are clamoring for.

Some folks are acting like the folks at Vienna don't care about users' feelings about this.  Of course they do.  But they can't do anything about those big feelings except put out the best product they can, and for our part we can maybe not act like our feelings trump reality.