Possibility of simultaneous macOS x64 and ARM64 installations?

VCV Rack
1

Is it possible to install both macOS x64 and macOS ARM64 versions on the same machine at the same time? And if so, how?

There are a few reasons I would like to do this

  • Compare the performance of the two versions. I’m especially interested to see if the ARM64 can support larger patches, given that x64 only supports a single thread.
  • I want to begin exploring the ARM64 version, but not all plugins are available yet, and I want to be able to continue access to my old patches that use plugins that have not yet been compiled for ARM64.
2

If you install rack free and rename it it works

For a while I have been rack free arm and rack pro x86 and that worked well for me too. Once Andy’s cf100 and entrain are in the library though I will move pro to arm

The only thing a bit funky is the apps have the same bundle id so double click gestures in finder are a bit luck of the draw

3

Rename the executable? a folder? …

And then I suppose you must set up different user folders as well?

4

The folders differentiate plugins by arch

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5

And yeah just rename the app

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6

easy, just append x64 and arm64 to the binaries and be done, user folder is same, plugins are in separate folders (installer takes care of that) I have both running fine

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7

The 240 sdk does this for you also

8

Thanks @baconpaul and @fractalgee

I renamed the binary and all works perfectly as you said. Very easy.

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9

What about the AU and VST plugins in Rack Pro? I don’t think it’s as simple as renaming with plugins?

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10

depends a bit on host… hosts should not care about filename, rather pluginId

Id suspect hosts that supports both architecture may well have an issue loading two plugins with same pluginId from different files (though they’d support it from a universal binary) but if your host is running host arm OR intel (rosetta) exclusively it may work, as it’ll fail to load the other architecture anyway. but ymmv depending on host.

I hope that a future version of VCV will support universal binaries (standalone, plugin and module), this makes life quite a bit simpler for end users.

as for OP, I really do thing the VCV library needs to incorporate ‘architecture’ support as a primary attribute - so users only see modules in the library they can actually use.

I get the ideal is all modules are cross compiled for everything, and over time Im sure this will happen (to some extent), but there are always going to be some modules that are unavailable for various reasons. I get its tricky to ‘retro fit’, but even if defaulted incorrectly, at least going forward things would improve.

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The thing I don’t get about this scheme of installing two versions (x64 AND Arm versions of VCV rack) is this: When you open VCV as a VST in a DAW, how does it know which version to use?

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depends on which flavor you install last. If you want arm64 vst then install that version after the x64 one.

13

Well… I just spent several hours trying to fix the problem of having Both ARM and Intel versions of VCV 2 Pro. It works find for Standalone, But I can find NO WAY to have DAW Plugins that will support both Versions. It seems like an odd bug! My strategy was to not only change the name of the App (with _X64 and one with _ARM added to the app names in Finder), but also to try changing the Plugin filenames as well, so that I can have a file “VCV Pro 2_X64.clap” and “VCV Pro 2_Arm.clap”. I tried the Same for VST’s But once I do that, Neither plugin opens in the daw. With CLAP … I just get an error and with VST2 or VST3 It just spends an eternity loading the plugin (never happens) .
My guess on the reason for this is that The VST plugin files point to the same library… no matter which plugin is called from the DAW which conflicts with the core code base.
It would sure be nice to get this fixed! I was hoping to be able to have Instruo modules available in my DAW Plugin,

14

Yup, that’s my understanding as well. The VST/AU…/whatever DAW plugin points to the Rack installed in the default location. So you can switch by renaming the Rack x64/arm64 directory/app to the default name (with the DAW closed, obviously), but there’s no way you can use both at the same time. But that might actually be fine, because I don’t know how many DAW’s allow you to happily mix plugins of different architectures in the same session (someone’s probably gonna yell “Reaper”).

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15

Maybe you read this elsewhere already, but I recently found out you just need to install the most recent Mac version (2.5.2 as I write this). If you want to use it in the X64 mode, go to the Apps folder, right-click on “VCV Rack Pro.app”, select “show info” (or Command+i) and check the box “Open with Rosetta”. I tested it by deleting both plugin folders and restarting Rack. The automatic update of the plugin folders creates a plugin folder based on your choice (with/without Rosetta): either plugins-mac-arm64 or plugins-mac-x64. Based on my very humble knowledge, I assume running with Rosetta will make Rack a bit slower.

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16

Only a bit, tops 20% but probably lower than that. Rosetta2 is a modern engineering miracle.