I’d like to introduce myself by saying that I got BFD3 up and running on a new M1 MacMini with Digital Performer 11 as a host running in Rosetta. So far, there have been no authorisation issues like other users here have been experiencing. The migration process went smoothly and a quick email to support@bfd got me my old BFD2 library back. Nothing to complain here.
Now I’m curious, if I could migrate the LicenseManager, install and authorize BFD3 on my MacBook as a second machine. I could not find any info on the FAQ page of inMusic. Any suggestions or experiences?
Under the old T&C’s BFD1/2/3 was licensed to run on ‘up to’ three machines and I don’t think there have been any changes in that regard. I have it running on my desktop and my laptop.
How is the M1? Been a windows user from the start but when I saw the M1 I thought, if anything was going to make me jump ship it cold be that.
Thanks for your reply Steve. I’ll try my luck then.
The M1 Mac Mini is really cool. Literaly: not generating heat at all or annoying fan noises, like my old Mac Pro & MacBook Pro. I can finally record soft passages on my accoustic guitar in my home studio whithout having to worry about background noise coming from the computer. And it’s processing power is superior to my old Macs at a fraction of the price. Mind you, I bought it with maxed out RAM and 1TB internal drive, so the whole thing cost me about EUR 1.500 in total. BUT, 10 yrs ago I paid about 4 grand for my old mac pro, so I’d say the new Apple machines are quite a bargain. The only downer is the limited USB/ Thunderbolt ports - just 2 each. But that can be remedied with a hub or two.
Hope this helps in your decisionmaking. What DAW Software do you use currently and what for?
Last May I spent £1,750 on a bespoke DAW from scan UK. It is great and totally silent especially as it’s all SSD drives but it’s absolutely huge and weighs a ton.
Then a few months after buying it I found all these people on youtube going absolutely nuts about the new M1 chip and after reading about it, and how cheap it was I almost wish I’d waited.
It was always the cost of macs alone that made me chose windows and not a preference of os but the M1 chip seems to make it quite affordable and indeed cheaper now than my bespoke windows computer.
It would be a pain moving from windows to apple as I’d have to learn a completely new OS and a lot of the software I use is still (AFIK) windows only.
I run cakewalk bandlab as my main DAW, it works great with BFD2/3 and I doubt I’ll move to another sequencer for a long time now that bandlab is free.
The real hype will be when they release the M1X chips. Those Macs won’t have the RAM limitations of the first gen M1 and the multi-core performance should be insane.
I’m sure some day in the future I’ll get there, but for now I’ll be using Intel, as I’ve got a legacy FW400 audio interface and software. I also like the ability to boot into Windows when I need it.
It will be an interesting future though, when the M-series chips have made it through their infancy and software devs have caught up.
The M1 chips utilize memory differently now and is more efficient, as I believe, it shares memory with the GPU? I think the memory is actually on the M1 chip itself, so there’s no bottleneck. So really, 16GB on an M1 is probably closer to 32GB of traditional memory in performance.
Honestly, 32GB is a little tight when loading up some large orchestral libraries. I’d prefer at least 64GB, but only 32GB was available at the time my last Macbook gave up the ghost. I still have another 3 years or so to go, anyway, so, I assume the technology will have worked itself out by then.
