Can I run Cubase 13 on my trash can mac?

Cubase
1

My computer is a Mac Pro Trash Can, late 2013 and am running Catalina, 10.15.7. I purchased this new in the Spring of 2014. It has faithfully served me for all these years, I have two thunder bay drive systems with 7 different drives. Universal Audio Apollo with the desktop and the satellite, tons of plugins, Logic Pro, Studio One 6 Pro, Digital Performer 10. I’m well set and everything works well in my audio world.

The computer has been able to do everything I need it to and I’m not in a hurry to replace it due to the cost of a new Mac Pro.

I would like to upgrade my Cubase 12 to Cubase 13 and am wondering if my machine will handle this. Does anyone have any experience with this?

Thanks for any opinions.

Sam

2

Hi,

I would recommend you to download Cubase 13 Trial and test it on your specific machine with your specific projects, to be 100% sure.

3

Exactly, nice to see a C13 two month trial, very useful. I just went though a month of that on a well-loaded 2019 mac pro. Was a dog to begin with & especially after having auto-imported earlier C12 settings.

After I deleted all those, then re-launched and rebuilt the caches and preferences from scratch, it began to behave a little better. Have now just committed & purchased athough I think there’s still a few bugs here & there & as reported elsewhere on this forum.

Otherwise to answer your question:
C13 should run just fine on a trashcan and still Intel like mine. The only thing I would question is the age of the OS and in gereral, newer releases tend to prefer a newer OS. Not so sure it would be usful to upgrade to the latest Sonoma -apple tend to break 3rd party apps & drivers with their releases … however, I can verify that C13 (and all of my other tools) do run very well on macOS Monterey boot disk & certainly far better than Sonoma. Seems to be the last best system for me, pehaps you may want to try that?

Otherwise, also ensure all of your plugins and VIs are updated and running the latest versions; In my experience, this was the main cause of interference in running up C13- old plugins.

Of course you could ingore all of that and just install the C13 demo. I would however just let it build its plugins cache & prefs from scratch - drag that C12 prefs folder to the disktop, keep the templates.

4

Appreciate. Will look at all of this.

Will Apple still let me have Monterey? I thought they only allowed the
newest OS for download.

Thanks,

Sam

5

Hi,

You are not forced to update the system, you can keep the older version.

6

Sure, you can download any OS from the Apple webstore:

https://www.macworld.com/article/671911/how-to-get-old-macos-download-big-sur-catalina-mojave-and-more.html#:~:text=Apple%20only%20replaced%20Monterey%20with,from%20the%20Mac%20App%20Store.

However, if your trashcan is working well for you with Catalina, perhaps just leave it alone for now & install the C13 trial & see how that goes? The only thing I would check is for & install is latest versions of plugins /VIs first - that seems to be the thing that Cubase has the most problems with: in scanning and/or pluglisting plugs it doesn’t like. You could always update the whole thing to another OS later if you wanted.

I tend to agree with you, ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’. I have an old 5.1 mac pro still running Mojave with all the same plugs & DAWs; works fine, just a little slow.