Windows DAW MAC-blocked. What still works?

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at0m
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Windows DAW MAC-blocked. What still works?

Post by at0m »

Hi,

I'm out of the loop, still using an old XP box with Scope and Cubase from back in the day. That machine works great for me: it does precisely what I need it to do: Record and mix my own gear and some sessions of a band from time to time. Needless to say that machine, since running a prehistoric XP, is MAC-blocked on my router. It worked great for me 20y ago, and it still does. I transfer mixdowns from there to my linux fileserver/mediacenter, and from there to the web (mostly soundcloud or my VPS) it goes. Actually all my machines run linux, except the main audio workstation.

Recently, I've been offered to buy a someone's DSP cards, and I'm thinking of building an extra Scope box for them. Something more modern. And there's no way am I going to let the SpyOS which recent Windows versions have become get access to the internet.

So that makes me wonder: can we make a list here of music software that doesn't require internet access, and for some that do, maybe include "last version" that works without phoning home? Scope is a beautiful example of something that, I imagine, would never require internet access.

I hear Steinberg is doing away with their dongles, and will require internet access. How about Ableton Live, and your fav plugins? Do those still work without connection? And when they do, is that a one-off for registration or is it periodic or? And what about the OS? What Windows versions require an MS account, and what versions do not?

Thanks in advance,
at0m.
more has been done with less
https://soundcloud.com/at0m-studio
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valis
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Re: Windows DAW MAC-blocked. What still works?

Post by valis »

Ableton Live can be authorized then left offline, Bidule requires only a key. Not sure about Bitwig, but if Live is an option that should be a consideration as well imho.

With Steinberg, I never updated past Nuendo3/Cubase5 (SX era) for Steinberg, so can't speak further for their DAW. And once Wavelab went tabbed interface, it lost some of the fluidity that made it my favorite. For straight audio editing, I moved on to Audition (I sub to Creative Cloud which *does* want to be online, but Audition is licensed on those machines as a result) and Soundforge (I also own Acid). Magix has a launch app thingy, but in my experience those apps haven't needed to call home either. Acid has some loop store integrated now that likely will want to...which is similar to what IK does now with the custom shop.

On that front, plugins:

I believe IK can also be brought current ("restore my gear" in custom shop, on each relevant product page) and then things work fine there as well.

I'm still on Waves 10/11 on Windows (and Waves 9 on my 10.11.6 era Mac Pro), so can't speak of their current stuff there (v12?). I can say my older versions work fine once authorized via their cloud app, so offline should be fine.

PluginAlliance, Voxengo, PSP (some are ilok now), Output and many others seem to be fine for offline use, I have so many it's hard to know what specifically you'd be interested in here.

Apps that I know call home ,but haven't left offline to know if enough failure here is a problem are: Cherry Audio stuff, VCV Rack, MeldaProductions, and generally any app that asked for an online login to do quick authorization probably will eventually try to call home.

Tbh my MacOS machines from prior years (10.11.x up through 10.14.x) don't care about being online once Logic and Live are installed, and the only plugins that seem to care are the ones that call home directly. Izotope, NI, Waves & iLok based auth (whether disk or usb key) continues to work. I do keep the machines online but have used Little Snitch to only manually allow most software for years, so I know what tries to call out and when.

Before ending this, Airwindows is no longer mac-only, and you can sub to his patreon for incredibly cheap. You might want to find it, he just gives you a zipfile rollup of all of his stuff to date and you can put together things from the component level if you want. I use Bidule for this...but any modular plugin host will do fine.
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Re: Windows DAW MAC-blocked. What still works?

Post by Xite Knight v2.0 »

at0m wrote: Fri Nov 12, 2021 2:47 pm Hi,

Needless to say that machine, since running a prehistoric XP, is MAC-blocked on my router
Just out of friendly curiosity, why not just pull the network cable out of your xp machine instead?
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Re: Windows DAW MAC-blocked. What still works?

Post by valis »

File sharing still works.
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Re: Windows DAW MAC-blocked. What still works?

Post by Xite Knight v2.0 »

Sure, I missed the Linux file server part
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