Will the intel drivers for my Universal Audio Apollo hardware work on AS?

[G.McGilli]

I have a fair amount of audio hardware that uses intel drivers installed into MacOS.

Will these run on AS computers through emulation?

Or will I have to hope the hardware manufacturers create new AS drivers if I want to upgrade to a new AS computer in the future?

thanks!

 

[casperes1996]

It kinda depends how the drivers are written, but if they are written in accordance with Apple's best practices, yes, it will work through Rosetta 2

 

[Tech198]

Just like Rosetta, i don't reckon Rosetta 2 will be any different, At least in terms of it will always stay around, because Apple just uses it during transition to make sure everyone gets over smoothly..

Ultimately, it would still be up to the developer to make one compatible long-term, when Rosetta 2 does go away

 

[Mikael H]

I have a fair amount of audio hardware that uses intel drivers installed into MacOS.

Will these run on AS computers through emulation?

Or will I have to hope the hardware manufacturers create new AS drivers if I want to upgrade to a new AS computer in the future?

thanks!

In the long term drivers will have to be at the very least recompiled for AS. If the hardware is still supported this will probably happen. Older hardware will go the way of the dodo sooner or later.

 

[jerryk]

This article may be of interests regarding audio drivers

Apple Silicon - How This Will Affect You And Other Audio Professionals | Production Expert

In this article, we are covering more developments that have come to light including news that Apple Silicon Macs will not be using 3rd party graphics processing, Arm processing will be coming to the Windows platform, progress on audio software running on Apple Silicon using Rosetta 2 and when and w

www.pro-tools-expert.com

 

[G.McGilli]

My main Apollo X8 device is TB3 so will be interesting!

 

[haralds]

It depends on what level of the system they access. Plenty of lower level stuff will not work.

 

[Jorbanead]

It should work under Rosetta 2, but I can also almost guarantee that UA is already working on support for both Big Sur and Apple Silicon. A large number of people in the audio industry use Macs. That being said, if you depend on your interface for work, I would wait until most (or all) of Apple's lineup have converted over to AS. By then there will definitely be a consensus on the new machines and chips.

 

[ydeng]

I have a fair amount of audio hardware that uses intel drivers installed into MacOS.

Will these run on AS computers through emulation?

Or will I have to hope the hardware manufacturers create new AS drivers if I want to upgrade to a new AS computer in the future?

thanks!

It will not work.

Rosetta can translate most Intel-based apps, including apps that contain just-in-time (JIT) compilers. However, Rosetta doesn’t translate the following executables:

• Kernel extensions
• Virtual Machine apps that virtualize x86_64 computer platforms

 

[q64ceo]

It may work. While Thunderbolt usually uses PCIe, my Thunderbolt 3 dock had a sound output that connected to the Mac using a USB interface. Open up System Information and click on USB in the left pane. If you can see it in the list then it should be no problem.

 

[Waragainstsleep]

I would expect anything new enough to run over Thunderbolt 3 is likely to get recompiled for AS Macs.