Any issues not upgrading?

[B2RPW]

After replacing my LCD screen today, I started the process to upgrade the FW drivers so that I could consider upgrading both pro tools and my mac os that have all been frozen for two years. I'm not a mac guy and not a system engineer so I got scared after about 5 mintues and called it off. I'm currently running Mac ox 10.8.5, Pro tools 10.3.9 and IF-FWMKII v1.30f6 and DM4800 firmware 1.6. Everything is stable.

Does anyone see any issue with just freezing my system in time as is and never upgrading? It seems that if I upgrade my mac OS to 10.9 or higher than protools 10.x will no longer work and I'll need to pay to upgrade to PT11. But I'm worried if I upgrade to PT11 then my plugins will stop working or require me to rebuy them (waves gold bundle plus a few individual waves, Izotope Ozone 5, Steven Slate mix bundle, mastering chain, trigger 2, eventide Ultrachannel, Scuffam S gear, Addictive keys VI, a few other random plugs).

I'd be ok if nothing ever really changed, but I'm in a multi-user factility and I'm worried someone is going to upgrade seomthing one day that breaks everything else and gives me a big and expensive headache not on my timetable.

Or do I just swallow the pain now and upgrade my OS, protools and the mixer, then see how it affects my plugs?

Any suggestions on the best way to freeze everything as is so that no one can update anything except standard stuff like browsers, flash, java, etc.?

 

[cmaffia]

FWIW - I'm on PC but if I had to freeze my Windows 7/Cubase 8.0 and all of my current plugs and VST's for the next 10 years, I don't think I'd be missing much. My system and outboard gear can create just about anything I hear in my head at the moment and is rock solid stable. Why fix what's not broke?

 

[Gerk]

A couple of things I can suggest here.

1. If it ain't broke don't fix it ... if everything is doing what it's supposed to be doing and you don't need to upgrade for client purposes and things work fine you might be bringing a lot of hurt onto yourself that you don't need to.

2. If you do decide to upgrade, make sure that you either have a second partition with a cloned backup on it, or you have another drive with a cloned backup. To make a backup clone you can use things like SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner. That way you can easily just go back to the previous version.

I'm not a protools guy, but I do know that a lot of people aren't super happy with the latest versions.

Lastly for freezing things so that they can't update it's kind of all or nothing. If it's an admin account then they can upgrade anything they want to, if it's a non-admin account then they can't upgrade anything. I would honestly not give an admin account to staff if they don't need it (but that might mean juggling things around on your end as you don't want to necessarily change the login info because all of the preferences and settings are already associated with whatever account(s) that is being used. If you do want to go with this approach (and I honestly suggest that you do, because someone just deciding to upgrade PT and breaking the whole studio is not good!) then you should make a new admin account (from the current account) and keep that username and password just for yourself, then logout with the current account, login with the new admin account, and then change the other account from admin to a standard account.

Hope this helps.

 

[B2RPW]

Thanks Gerk for the help. If I did create a new admin account for myself and left everyone else on a standard login, would I still be able to use protools and all my plugins on the new login? Shouldn't cause any problems right?

Also I do need to figure out how to make a clone as you suggest. GravityJim always says that as well and I just never took the time to figure out how to do it and then how to use it once I have it. I guess I need to invest some time on this. Wish my studio had an Easy button...

As much as I love recording and have tons of patience to learn new plugins and other recording software, I hate sys admin stuff.

 

[B2RPW]

FWIW - I'm on PC but if I had to freeze my Windows 7/Cubase 8.0 and all of my current plugs and VST's for the next 10 years, I don't think I'd be missing much. My system and outboard gear can create just about anything I hear in my head at the moment and is rock solid stable. Why fix what's not broke?

Have you considered windows 10 yet? I had such an awful experience with windows 8 with our work computers i vowed never to upgrade my laptop off of windows 7, but now its pushing windows 10 on me. I'm uber skeptical, but just wondering if you've investigated it or made the plunge or plan to upgrade.

 

[Gerk]

I would suggest that you test it out with a couple of sessions. After you've created the other admin account it's easy enough to go back and turn admin back on with the other account if it's required ... but that said there's no reason I can think of that it would be. The only thing is that it means that users won't be able to update browsers and plugins so you would probably just want to make sure you do that once a week or so (flash is nasty, I banish it from all of my systems and just use Chrome but that's another story).

Search out SuperDuper (my preferred one), they have great docs that come with it. You should also keep that clone going as a proper backup anyway. With all the time and effort invested in getting the system all tweaked up properly it would suck to lose anything to a crash or dead drive. Once you do the initial clone you can then have it just do incremental ones and have them scheduled to automatically happen during downtime (I was going to say overnight but that depends on the hours you run in the studio!). Backups are super important!

 

[Gerk]

I wouldn't suggest anyone doing pro audio move to windows 10 (yet). Give it a bit of time to stabilize. Again if it ain't broke ... and windows 7 was solid for audio work. I ran windows XP SP2 on my audio system for almost a solid decade at one point ...

 

[B2RPW]

I would suggest that you test it out with a couple of sessions. After you've created the other admin account it's easy enough to go back and turn admin back on with the other account if it's required ... but that said there's no reason I can think of that it would be. The only thing is that it means that users won't be able to update browsers and plugins so you would probably just want to make sure you do that once a week or so (flash is nasty, I banish it from all of my systems and just use Chrome but that's another story).

Search out SuperDuper (my preferred one), they have great docs that come with it. You should also keep that clone going as a proper backup anyway. With all the time and effort invested in getting the system all tweaked up properly it would suck to lose anything to a crash or dead drive. Once you do the initial clone you can then have it just do incremental ones and have them scheduled to automatically happen during downtime (I was going to say overnight but that depends on the hours you run in the studio!). Backups are super important!

Going to man up and do it, thanks!

 

[B2RPW]

I wouldn't suggest anyone doing pro audio move to windows 10 (yet). Give it a bit of time to stabilize. Again if it ain't broke ... and windows 7 was solid for audio work. I ran windows XP SP2 on my audio system for almost a solid decade at one point ...

Actually I wasnt' even talking about pro audio, just general use, although I do use Reaper on my laptop. But for sure I'm never the first one to upgrade to anything. I always wait for the first adoptors to solve the teething problems first.

 

[Arjan P]

For my regular non-audio laptop I find Windows 10 to run perfectly, and everything still worked as it did under Windows 8.1. The only thing to make sure is thoroughly go through the preferences (especially privacy ones) to make sure you only share what you want to share. Much info on this around on the interwebs..

For audio work, don't go W10 yet! The inner audio workings of Windows was changed between 8.1 and 10, and quirks have not yet been ironed out. Many audio software vendors also warn against it for this reason.

 

[vodka tonicE-man]

anyone know how you change your user name on this forum?