I’m in the very beginning stage of moving from Windows to a Macbook Air M3. At this point I’m just basically gathering and installing most of the plugins I had in Windows (but using this as an opportunity to thin out the collection of plugins). During installation, several say that you need Rosetta just to install them. Is Rosetta a thing to avoid? Am I correct to assume that the need for Rosetta for the installer doesn’t say anything about the need for Rosetta in the plugins themselves? Should I avoid plugins that require Rosetta? And, in general, other than following what’s in the Mac optimization doc I found here, is there anything else I should be thinking about that wouldn’t be obvious to a Windows user? Thanks!
Some considerations → [blog] Cross-platform usage and moving from one platform to another
Specifically addressing Rosetta, people have successfully run the Intel version of GP under Rosetta along with all Intel plugins.
What you should not do is run GP natively and also try to use Intel AU plugins. It is that situation that can cause issues. Apple automatically loads Rosetta for Intel AU plugins that need to be loaded into a host running natively (Apple Silicon) and that configuration is not reliable (and so we don’t support that use case since there is nothing we can do about it)
Best practice is to use only plugins that are available Apple Silicon format (or are “Universal”)
I personally avoid using AU formats (even on Mac) and just use the VST or VST3 formats.i think they are more reliable as they tend to get tested with many more DAWs
2 Likes
You can easily check your installed plugins, if they require Roestta, or if they are implemented for Apple Silicon, or even worse things (like 32 bit) with
https://www.thinkersnacks.com/as-pluginfo.html
Just install and use the filter as shown on the top level of the linked page
Meanwhile I’m safe for all AU and VST3 plugins - I even try to avoid VST 
I always use the VST format if available.
2 Likes