Questions & Answers

Big Sur Public Beta compatibility

+2 votes
1,845 views
asked Aug 7, 2020 in Recording Interface Series Feature Requests by claudioluce1 (140 points)
Hi , is there someone who tried to install the new public beta , and can confirm that Universal controller works with the new public beta?

It has some useful optimization regarding ram and CPU , so I would simply like to test it out ...

1 Answer

+2 votes
answered Aug 10, 2020 by revdlc (180 points)

Hi, I tried the first Big Sur public beta out yesterday, and I can confirm that Universal Control (v. 3.3.0.59348) does NOT work! I suspected it would not, because it utilizes a kext (kernel extension) that will no longer be permitted in Big Sur.

In my case, I have a Firewire StudioLive 16.0.2 that broke at first with Catalina, and PreSonus wrote a new Firewire driver that restored my mixer to me  smiley. That made me very happy as there's nothing quite like that mixer for my use. The Thunderbolt audio interfaces are nice but are limited to a very short cord, whereas I use a 15 foot firewire cord that puts my mixer where I want it, and the latency of USB is greater than that of Firewire, not so good for adding voices. I'm not sure that PreSonus tech support can recreate that Firewire kext for Big Sur, but I'm hopeful!

Other apps that use kexts, like LittleSnitch, SoundSource, and Audio Hijack are also broken in Big Sur, but most other apps seem to function as expected. There is a problem recording video from within Final Cut Pro, but that will be fixed, I imagine, on the next beta. Importing video works fine...

I hope someone from PreSonus reads this and gives us a roadmap for what's coming!

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