Has Steinberg banished Me?

O.K. Maybe I’m a bit dramatic in my title, but I need some advice.
I wanted to update to Halion 7 on my Mac, but I don’t meet the system requirements as I’m running Catalina which as far as my computer will allow, Big sur is the minimum required for H7.
Question, if I purchase H7 will it still work, is anyone else in the same boat?
And, what happens when Cubase 13 is released, will it mean a new computer for me?
Thank you all for your opinions and suggestions :+1:t3:

I would attempt to install the HALion 7 trial and see whether it works for you. If it does, you are on your own so far as support goes - you are outside the officially supported versions and you may still run into weird issues. If it doesn’t work at all, there is your answer.

Steinberg has got stricter on which OSes are officially supported in the past couple of years. Any version that is out of manufacturer support is not supported so, on Windows, only Windows 10 and 11 are supported.

Apple does have an annoying habit of dropping support for older but still usable hardware.

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Thanks David, that’s a good idea, I should’ve thought of that myself.
Oh well!

Excellent advice, David_W!

Groovechild, you are not banished, you are just in the same situation as scores (see what I did there?) of musicians. The neverending cycle of new shiny stuff coming out requiring new shiny platform to run on. To paraphrase Jane Austen, it is a truth universally acknowledged that one does never immediately update to the latest Mac OS release. Back in the day, Apple used to be THE multimedia production platform, but it is no longer the case. Windows has been extremely stable and flexible for years now, Win systems are cheaper and you get more customizability and bang for your buck. The whole deal with trying to match up the right Mac OS with Rosetta and right chip (Intel/M1/M2) and 32 or 64 bit, then a compatible VST version, then making it all work with the audio interface which is also suddenly not supported by Apple has been exhausting. Especially as a Steinberg user, there is no real hard incentive to stay on Mac. I was just thinking about how some of my music production software and plugins have been running fine since Windows 7, some of them even since Windows XP. Unless you are a die-hard Logic user, a Windows based system may not only be less headache but also cheaper. Notice all those videos of score composers out there running Cubase; a lot of PC users there.

It is fair for Steinberg to stick with supported OSs only; if the OS vendor stops supporting its own OS, there will be no updates or development kits, there is no reason for Steinberg (or for any developer for that matter) to try to make its software backward compatible with an unsupported platform.

I started with PC in the days of E Magic and Artari and then moved over to Mac when Cubase SX was introduced and have been Mac ever since.
All my other devices are also Mac so Apple have got me by the sort and curlies so to speak ( see what I did there? No neither do I) :rofl::rofl:
Thanks for your opinion, it was an interesting read and food for thought.
:+1:t3:

Love me some Jane Austen. Have to rewatch “Pride and Prejudice” or “Sense and Sensibility” to find that quote. Hahaha.

I forgot to mention I also have absolute 5 which costs the same price to update , but unfortunately there’s not any trial version to test it on my Mac to see if it works before committing to a purchase.
What now? :thinking:

I would say a lot of content on Absolute is just the libraries, which are probably going to be still compatible. The major software update is Halion, and you can at least test that. Not a full solution, but at least it gives you some answers. I do not think the other instruments received a major version update, so those should still be compatible. However, H7 specific library content will only work with H7.

Thanks Adam, appreciated :+1:t3:

You can trial everything new - as Absolute 6 is Absolute 5 plus HALion 7. There are no other changes in Absolute 6, other than the licence moving to Steinberg Licensing.

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Hi everyone, just wanted to update you all on what’s happened after installing H7 trial for anyone else thinking of doing the same thing.
Installed H7, took a few hours, restarted my Mac and then tried it in stand alone, worked great, no issues so loaded C12 Pro, opened H7 VST instrument, and worked great again, no problems.
So, so far so good. :pray:

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