Case in point - I'd been wrestling with VEP and the dreaded Kontakt for two days - which is a LOT of time at 74 - trying to get the outputs working correctly.  Out of habit and being an old timer, I always do individual outs for audio.  Nothing was working.  In a combo of fury and panic I decided to try bypassing VEP and just running Kontakt - figuring my machine - Mac Studio Ultra - could handle it.  Sure enough!  After dealing with the incredible convoluted weirdness of Kontakt's tedious take on output architecture, I got it all working in about an hour.
This doesn't mean I don't miss or won't keep using VEP.  If nothing else, it's a great organizing tool and, once set up, it's incredibly plug and play.  
If I was a Vienna CEO, I wouldn't drag my feet too long on the VEP / Silicon problem.  
And I would design a better alternative to Kontakt.  They would have to widen the doors of their bank to make room for all the money they're hauling in.  The competition in orchestral virtual instruments is profound, but there's only one Kontakt and, to me, it's a sitting duck. 

VEP (licenser) / Pro Tools HD 2022.9 / Mac Pro Ultra 128G RAM / 2X Sonnet Echo Dual NVMe Thunderbolt Docks

Hi together,

I understand, that it may be a bigger undertaking to bring VEPro to M1. But I guess upgrading the Plugin alone can't be that hard. I have the server on a Windows machine but I cannot run Cubase on my Mac natively, ONLY because the VEP Plugin is not M1 compatible. Super annoying.

Hope they will bring it asap

@HONEYHILL said:

Hi together,

I understand, that it may be a bigger undertaking to bring VEPro to M1. But I guess upgrading the Plugin alone can't be that hard. I have the server on a Windows machine but I cannot run Cubase on my Mac natively, ONLY because the VEP Plugin is not M1 compatible. Super annoying.

Hope they will bring it asap

Could you please double check? I'm not a Mac user and today is a national holiday, so I can't ask my colleagues right now, but if I'm not mistaken the VEP plugin itself is already M1 compatible for quite some time.

@HONEYHILL said:

Hi together,

I understand, that it may be a bigger undertaking to bring VEPro to M1. But I guess upgrading the Plugin alone can't be that hard. I have the server on a Windows machine but I cannot run Cubase on my Mac natively, ONLY because the VEP Plugin is not M1 compatible. Super annoying.

Hope they will bring it asap

Could you please double check? I'm not a Mac user and today is a national holiday, so I can't ask my colleagues right now, but if I'm not mistaken the VEP plugin itself is already M1 compatible for quite some time.

Ugh! this is pretty depressing when someone from VSL doesn't even know their own products compatibility status. No, the VEP plug in is not Apple Silicon native, only the AU version will run in a native DAW. 

The solution of having VSL code the plug itself to be native first and foremost was suggested in this thread a couple years ago. It makes total sense, and would have been and ideal solution until the rest of the application could make it over, it did not happen. 

@Michael Canavan said:

Ugh! this is pretty depressing when someone from VSL doesn't even know their own products compatibility status.

Yeah, right, especially since answering questions in a forum is my only job...

Like I said, I'm not a Mac user, so I usually don't care about Mac issues and forward them to colleagues who are more qualified answering these. Today is national holiday, so most of us don't work right now.

@Michael Canavan said:

Ugh! this is pretty depressing when someone from VSL doesn't even know their own products compatibility status.

Yeah, right, especially since answering questions in a forum is my only job...

Like I said, I'm not a Mac user, so I usually don't care about Mac issues and forward them to colleagues who are more qualified answering these. Today is national holiday, so most of us don't work right now.

So you're a platform loyalist, Ugh! Why are you the only person from VSL that is replying in this thread then? It makes your announcement of Apple Silicon in beta that much more useless that you "don't care about Mac Issues". 

Why would anyone work for a cross platform company and not follow their own companies compatibility issues, that have been going on for two years now? I'm sorry but this is one of the worst most dismissive responses I've seen from a company in years. I'm not trying to be harsh, but I have no idea if you're paid or not for participating in the forums, I'm glad someone does that's not even an issue. It isn't as much of an issue to me as the fact that you openly admit you don't know or care about issues for half of your own companies customers.

  You deserve this dressing down, pay attention to your own products issues on both platforms, and don't act rude when people call you out for not knowing two year old information about your own product. You're literally adding flame to the fire here. 

I am not part of our support or marketing team. This is a user forum; if you like to get support here is our official support channel: support@vsl.co.at

I do my best to be helpful in forums just because I like doing music and I also like our products.
And just because I don't use an Apple device I "deserve this dressing down"? No thanks, I'm happy to leave this conversation. Have a nice day.

Regardless of what Apple has said so far, M1 users are still early adopters, especially with regards to audio production.  In my view, it's still most sensible to remain on Intel Mac hardware for serious audio production, for at least one more year.   This is not only because of VSL software which is clearly not transitioned yet, but numerous other software and plugins which are still not native.  You MIGHT be able to get some rosetta functionality, but me personally, I won't get an Apple Silicon Mac until I know that I can run pretty much everything I want or need to run in native mode without ANY rosetta shenanigans...which the industry is simply not there yet in many cases.  They will all get there eventually..including VSL, but all I can say is that you have to be patient.  I feel the pain for anyone that jumped on the M1 bandwagon, but what I can say is that my cheese grater is still running absolutely everything without problems...and that is a solution that anyone can still choose to follow today.  Even the current Apple MacPro is still Intel and will run everything just fine.  It was your choice to be early adopter.

@Ben said:

I am not part of our support or marketing team. This is a user forum; if you like to get support here is our official support channel: support@vsl.co.at

I do my best to be helpful in forums just because I like doing music and I also like our products.
And just because I don't use an Apple device I "deserve this dressing down"? No thanks, I'm happy to leave this conversation. Have a nice day.

 It's a mess, and it will be a mess until VSL complete the transition, it's why you see people talking about other solutions in this thread, or the guy above my post just slamming VSL. It's really too bad, because I'm probably not alone in having kept a Mac Pro with 12 cores being a great server withe an Apple Silcon laptop that will be a great DAW host once everything is Apple Silicon ready. 

@Dewdman42 said:

Regardless of what Apple has said so far, M1 users are still early adopters, especially with regards to audio production.  In my view, it's still most sensible to remain on Intel Mac hardware for serious audio production, for at least one more year.   This is not only because of VSL software which is clearly not transitioned yet, but numerous other software and plugins which are still not native.  You MIGHT be able to get some rosetta functionality, but me personally, I won't get an Apple Silicon Mac until I know that I can run pretty much everything I want or need to run in native mode without ANY rosetta shenanigans...which the industry is simply not there yet in many cases.  They will all get there eventually..including VSL, but all I can say is that you have to be patient.  I feel the pain for anyone that jumped on the M1 bandwagon, but what I can say is that my cheese grater is still running absolutely everything without problems...and that is a solution that anyone can still choose to follow today.  Even the current Apple MacPro is still Intel and will run everything just fine.  It was your choice to be early adopter.

While I can mostly agree with this, but it's been 2 1/2 years since Apple Silicon was announced, along with developer Minis, and 2 years since the first M1 Macs came out. I was around for the first transition from PPC to Intel machines, and I remember only NI dragging their feet a little, they had foolishly not headed Apples warnings to switch from Codewarrior to to Xcode. 

  Part of the problem is Rosetta this time works really pretty well, a maybe 10% CPU hit on average, but it doesn't work at all for VST and MAS if the DAW is not in Rosetta. So the hit is compounded when your DAW is also in Rosetta. Anyway I thought the VEP plug in would be a rather quick port considering the opportunity for VSL to pick up new customers as people used VEP to transition, but that's not the case apparently. 

I don't think we should hit Ben too hard.  He's just a screener - a relay for which messages seem possibly important.  More similar to the greeter outside a big box store. 
And Ben - I use VEP with a Mac Studio Ultra with Pro Tools running in Rosetta and - even running in Rosetta its' so far beyond my old Mac Pro that, to me, waiting is crazy.  Everything that was awful and time consuming before is gone now.   
I can do massive orchestral VI sessions without any crashing etc.  
The push to Apple Silicon is important though.  Pro Tools is Alpha testing their M1 compatible version, so it will be out early in 2023.  When that happens, I might not be able to use VEP at all

@Ben said:

I am not part of our support or marketing team. This is a user forum; if you like to get support here is our official support channel: support@vsl.co.at

I do my best to be helpful in forums just because I like doing music and I also like our products.
And just because I don't use an Apple device I "deserve this dressing down"? No thanks, I'm happy to leave this conversation. Have a nice day.

Hi Ben, I just wanted to say that while i share Michael's frustration about how long it's taking VSL to get an AS Native VEP going, that frustration is ENTIRELY directed at VSL and I have nothing but gratitude for your chiming in with an update when all we've been getting is silence from VSL for months.  While I'm frustrated by the VSL silence that's not your fault!! and I think there's a bit of unfair "shooting of the messenger" going on here.  I hope you'll continue to post on this forum and keep us updated as it really helps and does not go unappreciated.  Thanks, Evan.

@Michael Canavan said:

While I can mostly agree with this, but it's been 2 1/2 years since Apple Silicon was announced, along with developer Minis, and 2 years since the first M1 Macs came out. I was around for the first transition from PPC to Intel machines, and I remember only NI dragging their feet a little, they had foolishly not headed Apples warnings to switch from Codewarrior to to Xcode. 

  Part of the problem is Rosetta this time works really pretty well, a maybe 10% CPU hit on average, but it doesn't work at all for VST and MAS if the DAW is not in Rosetta. So the hit is compounded when your DAW is also in Rosetta. Anyway I thought the VEP plug in would be a rather quick port considering the opportunity for VSL to pick up new customers as people used VEP to transition, but that's not the case apparently. 

The last transition from PPC to intel was not nearly as well executed.  Many people, including me, were left high and dry with expensive PPC Macs that would not run the latest tools and become worthless pieces of junk within one year.

This time around Apple handled things much better and the end result is that it is M1 users who ware still wanting and waiting for all of the software world to catch up.  Apple did things in such a way that Intel users would not be left behind..and so far 1.5 years later my Intel machine is still going very strong and still preferable to M1.  You must remember that software developers have to earn money and it costs them money to do any software change, including Apple Silicon.  They will always have to weigh all the factors of what is most important with the resources they have and do what is best for their business....this may mean that M1 users, whom are still the minority...have to keep waiting while other priorities still address the majority of users still using Intel.

I personally am thankful that Apple handled this transition much better then what they did last time from PPC.  We did not get left in the dust and all of us can transition to M1 in a more graceful manner when its time.  

Anyone that jumps onto M1 early and then complains that the software isn't ready, should look in the mirror and ask themselves why they purchased a new M1 before the software was ready.

I jumped in with Silicon because I need it for my workflow, my DAW no longer fully supports my 5,1 Mac Pro. I'm trying to figure out a strategy for getting along without a native M1 version of VEPro 7.

I've seen mention of the AU plugin working natively under Silicon-- is that correct? If so, is it possible to use it in Pro Tools and DP11? I imagine not, as people would be doing it, but if so, I could still run all my VSL software on my 5,1 slave.

If not I can run everything that's NOT vsl on my Mac Studio and give up my vsl libraries. Unless there's some convoluted way to get MIDI to VEPro 7 on my slave using Audio MIDI and the MIDI networking feature.

For example, could I run some kind of simple DAW in input mode on the 5,1 slave with the VEPro 7 plugin running, connected to the VEPro server on the same slave, and then send MIDI to the DAW from my Mac Studio? I could get the audio back to the Mac Studio either with Bidule or ADAT lightpipe between the slave interface and the master interface (MoTU 828es and 2408 Mk III). Is this crazy???

@dmansfield said:

I jumped in with Silicon because I need it for my workflow, my DAW no longer fully supports my 5,1 Mac Pro. I'm trying to figure out a strategy for getting along without a native M1 version of VEPro 7.

I've seen mention of the AU plugin working natively under Silicon-- is that correct? If so, is it possible to use it in Pro Tools and DP11? I imagine not, as people would be doing it, but if so, I could still run all my VSL software on my 5,1 slave.

If not I can run everything that's NOT vsl on my Mac Studio and give up my vsl libraries. Unless there's some convoluted way to get MIDI to VEPro 7 on my slave using Audio MIDI and the MIDI networking feature.

For example, could I run some kind of simple DAW in input mode on the 5,1 slave with the VEPro 7 plugin running, connected to the VEPro server on the same slave, and then send MIDI to the DAW from my Mac Studio? I could get the audio back to the Mac Studio either with Bidule or ADAT lightpipe between the slave interface and the master interface (MoTU 828es and 2408 Mk III). Is this crazy???

I can in fact confirm that AU plugin of VEP7 WILL work in DP when DP is run in native mode.  Just not MAS.  So you could build a template entirely out of AU instances of VEP connected to your server.  The problem with that of course is just that AU plugins won't allow for multiple (up to 48) midi ports like MAS so you need A LOT more of them if you intend on building a large template.

@Another User said:

Unless there's some convoluted way to get MIDI to VEPro 7 on my slave using Audio MIDI and the MIDI networking feature.

You could use The non pro version of Vienna Ensemble on your 5,1.  Send network midi to it...and mix the audio back into your M1 or wherever using various digital audio means rather then through the plugin...there might be some latency in there and you lose the elegant mechanism whereby normally VePro can do Plugin Delay Compensation to sync everything up perfectly.  But its certainly doable until VePro catches up with Apple Silicon.

@dmansfield said:

I've seen mention of the AU plugin working natively under Silicon-- is that correct? If so, is it possible to use it in Pro Tools and DP11? I imagine not, as people would be doing it, but if so, I could still run all my VSL software on my 5,1 slave.

If not I can run everything that's NOT vsl on my Mac Studio and give up my vsl libraries. Unless there's some convoluted way to get MIDI to VEPro 7 on my slave using Audio MIDI and the MIDI networking feature

So the VEP AU plug in runs in Rosetta on Apple Silicon Macs with the DAW running native. I suppose there's some convoluted way to run something like Blue Cats Patchwork in AAX to host the AU VEP plug in, inside Pro Tools, but if you're going this route the best bet is DP11 which hosts AU natively. The issue is like Even pointed out that MAS is just better, it's a whole lot of rewriting templates to get decent results and then VSL finally release the native Apple Silicon version with MAS etc. 

The better solution if all you do is orchestral work is to run the DAW in Rosetta, use the actual MAS etc. plugin you want to use, and use your 5,1 as a slave. 

Just curious if VSL would release beta version of AS VEP ? Lots of different software companies like Soundtoys, xfer, output, .. create beta programs so people with no critical projects/work can already try, and if there are any bugs, report them. 

Out of curiosity if this is of interest to anyone new to DP on M1, I just tested DP running VEP AU (DP Native) vs MAS (DP in Rosetta) using my full scoring template, with video attached.  

1 - DP in Rosetta, VEP MAS:

• Pros: much lower Real time processing load/cpu usage, with the advantage of having multiple midi ports per instance.
• Cons:  GUI is somewhat less responsive, or less smooth.  Noticeable graphics anomalies when changing tabs.

2 - DP Native, VEP AU:

• Pros:  DP runs very smoothly. GUI is quick and responsive. Excellent user experience by comparison.
• Cons:  Higher real time processing/cpu load with VEP in AU format (DP's load without VEP instances is minimal).  Only a single midi port per VEP instance. 

So, those are our options.  I am moving my scoring work to DP, and have an M1 Mac sitting here waiting, with scoring projects coming very soon.  DP simply does not run well enough on Windows (my i7 at least), to be usable (GUI is way too slow).  That leaves very few options.  

We really need native compatibility for VEPro MAS ASAP.  AU isn't a viable option for me and probably many other DP users.  Note that DP was native compatible not long after the first M1s were released.  It was native at least in November of 2020 - two years ago.  MOTU may have been better positioned to make the transition quickly, but if they can do it, others could have as well. To be honest, copy protection is only for the benefit of the developer (again DP's simple system is a good example).  It should never get in the way of customers or our work.  

VSL - we are at the point even a rough timeframe for native compatibility is better than nothing.  Many of us are having to consider costly alternatives to VSL and VEPro that, given the reality of our schedules, won't be temporary.  That could mean lost sales for VSL in the future, and probably already has for customers new to VEPro and VSL.