I upgraded to Mac OSX 10.6 Snow Leopard on my mid-2006 17″ MacBook Pro (Core Duo, 2GB RAM, 320GB 7400RPM HD) and was very impressed with the speed and seamlessness of the installation. Of course, your experience will vary depending on the software and hardware you use. Here are a few notes about my system:

Apple Logic Pro 9

This is a no-brainer, because Logic 9 was designed for Snow Leopard. I tested it with a recent project that used Native Instruments Akoustik Piano, several instances of the Vienna Instruments plugin and Toontrack Superior 2.0. Under Leopard (Mac OSX 10.5), I had to freeze tracks to play the project smoothly. Under Snow Leopard, I was able to play the track (with a few hiccups), albeit with the audio driver’s buffer set to 512 samples. Logic 9 seems perform better under Snow Leopard than it did under Leopard, I haven’t measured the difference with any accuracy.

Native Instruments Komplete

I was pleasantly surprised that Native Instruments announced compatibility of all their hardware and software in advance of Snow Leopard, with no need for upgrades. I don’t use NI hardware, but can confirm that all the Audio Unit plugins pass validation and appear to work normally.

Vienna Instruments

VSL didn’t make a formal announcement about Snow Leopard in advance, but a few users who had access to the Snow Leopard developer beta confirmed in the VSL forums that the Vienna Instruments plugin and Vienna Ensemble host were compatible. My first impressions have been positive. Both plugins appear faster and smoother under Snow Leopard.

Toontrack Superior 2.0

A representative from Toontrack made an informal announcement in their forum that Toontrack’s products should be compatible with Snow Leopard. I haven’t tested the mixer or bounce features yet, but basic operation seems a bit faster.

MOTU 828mkI

MOTU made a last-minute announcement that version 1.4.23 of their Firewire driver was compatible with Snow Leopard. All MOTU Firewire audio interfaces use the same driver, so they should all work. The only glitch I noticed was the aforementioned Logic 9 project, which played adequately with the buffer set to 512 samples, but wouldn’t play at all with the buffer set to 1024 samples.

M-Audio MIDISPORT 4×4

I have the original model of the M-Audio MIDISPORT 4×4, which M-Audio states is not compatible with Snow Leopard (the Anniversary Model is listed as compatible, but only in class-compliant mode), so I was surprised to find that it worked perfectly. I have heard the same from other M-Audio users about both MIDI and audio hardware. It appears that the installers for M-Audio’s drivers do not work with Snow Leopard, but the drivers themselves are fine. Therefore, you may be okay if the drivers are installed under Leopard before you upgrade. I can’t guarantee that this will work. Even if it does, it’s far from an ideal situation because you’re screwed if you have to reinstall the drivers before M-Audio releases an update. If you use M-Audio hardware, think twice about upgrading to Snow Leopard until M-Audio provides updated drivers. If you decide to try it, make sure you have a backup plan.

Related News

PT Dudes reports that Pro Tools 8 works with Snow Leopard.