Pro Tools 11 and 12. Avid has pretty much abandoned musicians, in ISP Música’s view. As with other manufacturers, the economic crisis has made the musician market, with little purchasing power, of little interest to companies until further notice. They are concentrating their efforts on other sectors (in AVID’s case) such as production applications for professionals, and very especially audiovisual production.
In Spain, there is a serious lack of information for users and the media in these areas, and the company has gone from being the leader to causing a certain degree of panic. According to Pro Tools users, it seems versions 11 and 12 work with El Capitan, although they are throwing some errors with iLok for the time being. However, Avid’s official position is that Pro Tools does not work with OS X 10.11, nor do Sibelius, EUCON, ISIS and Media Composer. They confirm known bugs and compatibility failures in the systems
*Source for the following compatibility information: Apple
Apogee. The Duet FireWire and Ensemble FireWire audio interfaces are not and will not be compatible with El Capitan; the last OS X to support them is Yosemite. That leaves us with a long list of compatible devices (but don’t forget to download and install the latest drivers): Duet for iPad & Mac, Duet 2, Ensemble Thunderbolt, GiO, Groove, JAM, JAM 96k, ONE for iPad & Mac, ONE for Mac, MiC, MiC 96k, Quartet, Symphony I/O, Symphony 64 | ThunderBridge and Symphony 64 PCIe.
Arturia. The French company has sent out an email explaining that its software instruments may have problems in standalone mode or when used as Audio Unit plug-ins. They don’t say whether they will release a patch themselves or whether the fix will come through a minor Apple update. In the meantime, they recommend holding off on upgrading to El Capitan.
Focusrite. The company has set up a special page, frequently updated with the latest compatibility information for its products. The incompatibility of VRM Box seems to be confirmed, and there is still no information on RedNet or the Midnight and Scarlett plug-in suites. The rest of the current product range is compatible with El Capitan.
MOTU. Most MOTU software and hardware is compatible with El Capitan, although they are still running tests. Specifically, compatibility is confirmed for all AVB interfaces, whether Thunderbolt, USB or AVB Ethernet: 1248, 8M, 16A, 24Ai, 24Ao, Monitor 8, 112D, Stage-B16 and UltraLite AVB. However, there is a notable exception regarding USB interfaces. All of these are incompatible for now: 828x, Track 16, MicroBook II, 8pre USB, 4pre, Audio Express, UltraLite-mk3 Hybrid, 896mk3 Hybrid and 828mk3 Hybrid. Nor do the MIDI Express XT, MIDI Express 128, micro express, micro lite and FastLane MIDI interfaces work, or any USB interface older than all of these. MOTU is working on a driver update to fix this.
Native Instruments. NI has detected two main incompatibilities. The first is that its plug-ins do not pass Audio Units validation on OS X 10.11 and will therefore not be available in Logic Pro. The cause of this problem is already known, and they are working with Apple to solve it. Second, some older NI hardware causes spectacular "kernel panic" crashes that will freeze your machine completely. Specifically, we are talking about: Traktor Kontrol S4 MkI Traktor Kontrol X1 MkI Traktor Audio 2 (MkI) Audio 8 DJ Audio 4 DJ Audio 2 DJ Maschine MkI Guitar Rig 3 (Rig Kontrol 3 control hardware) Fortunately, in this case there are beta drivers that fix the crashes. The final versions of the drivers will arrive shortly after the launch of El Capitan. Native Instruments will publish more information on OS X 10.11 compatibility on its official website.
Slate Digital Steven Slate’s digital arm does not guarantee full compatibility for its plug-ins, but they are also working on solutions and have set up an information page here. Users can submit support tickets if they take the risk of installing the new OS X and run into problems.
Steinberg The German company has detected some incompatibilities with its software and does not recommend upgrading to El Capitan. They make it clear that Cubase 8.0.30, Nuendo 7.0.30, the MR Tools and the drivers for the UR range are not compatible with OS X 10.11. They will publish more information starting October 23, once all the tests are finished.
