Hi all,

Just wondering if anyone has upgraded to El Capitan and if you've had an issues with VDL, Sibelius or Kontakt on the new OSX.

Hi Chris,

If it were me, I wouldn't go near it. Personally, I try to give new operating systems at least a year before updating. There are too many other moving parts (plugins, applications, drivers, etc) that can get screwy. Things won't work right until all the third party developers update.

In the case of VDL, it's more an issue of whether or not [i]Kontakt[/i] is compatible (plugin or standalone support may differ, so look into that as well!). As of today, Avid still claims Sibelius isn't compatible, but here's the official FAQ on the Tapspace support pages:
https://www.tapspace.com/support/faq/index.php?action=artikel&cat=4&id=132&artlang=en

I purchased a brand new Macbook Pro this morning to replace my aging and malfunctioning Macbook Air. I was very excited to have upgraded to Finale 2014 and VDL2.5.5, and going to run everything smoothly on a faster, retina displaying computer.

Unfortunately, it all went downhill as soon as I started the installation processes, and then I saw this post, which lead me to Make Music's posts regarding Finale 2014 and El Capitan. I was, and still am, very disappointed.

What I did discover was that the most current version of Kontakt 5 and VDL2.5.5 work together, and got everything working with Finale 2014. There is an issue of Kontakt 5 insisting there is an error when loading the VDL Libraries, but I found after trying it over and over that the error warning being generated didn't actually affect the loading of the libraries into Kontakt, and I ended up being to set up things as normal with Finale. I celebrated when I tapped my miniKorg, and the correct sound occurred and the proper notation appeared.

Then I casually used my expression tool. Crashed Finale instantly. This is the problem. There is an incompatibility between El Capitan and Finale 2014.d. Anytime a dialogue box is generated from the expression tool, it crashes the program.

Apple has plans to release an update(10.11.2) that supposedly will fix the issue, but the current beta version of that update did not change anything. Make Music is stating that they will have Finale 2014.5 available by the end of the month, but remain vague on details. As it stands right now, after researching and experimenting for the last 5 hours, there is no fix and Finale 2014 will not work with El Capitan.

Using Finale is a major part of my job, and I am disheartened that I find myself in this situation after having spent so much money. I do greatly appreciate the Tapspace crew and the forum they provide for users to help each other out and receive technical support, even if it sometimes relates to programs outside of Tapspace's control.

I hope this situation is resolved quickly, and we can get back to the important things: arguing about the tilt of a snare drum or if a hybrid rudiment is really a rudiment.

Maxpower,

Thanks for the report, and really sorry to hear about the El Capitan nightmare. That's one drawback to purchasing a new machine soon after Apple releases a major new OS - they basically force you into using their new OS, whether it's compatible with your mission critical apps or not. Pretty frustrating.

Sounds like you have a good outlook on impending updates, which I hope you'll see sooner than later. Keep us posted if you learn anything new.

Oh, and I think that weird Kontakt error when loading the VDL library may be related to this:
https://www.tapspace.com/support/faq/index.php?action=artikel&cat=4&id=130&artlang=en

Technically, I think it has something to do with how Service Center is logging the library's addition into Kontakt. This was introduced in Yosemite. Fortunately, the workaround in the above FAQ seems to get things on track.

Thanks for the quick reply, Jim. I figured it was just minor issue with Kontakt player. That part of functionality works just fine aside from the error messages.

Apparently, Finale 2012 works just fine in El Capitan. I am trying to find a copy of that, but no luck yet. Love this new Macbook, but it is sad to look at Finale 2014 just sitting there in the dock.

Are those Kontakt errors continual? My previous statement assumed that once you activated, there would be no more errors. If they persist, please fill out a support ticket so we can further investigate.

UPDATE:

Make Music released Finale 2014.5 yesterday morning, and everything is working great now! Even looks much better on the Retina Display. And the Kontakt player errors discontinued after doing things in the correct order.

Thanks for the update, Maxpower. Good to hear!

Hey guys,

  I am getting the notifications regarding installation seen here, https://www.tapspace.com/support/faq/index.php?action=artikel&cat=4&id=130&artlang=en. When I am in Kontakt, I click on the ";Launch Service Center "; tab and nothing happens.  On the prompt on the Tapspace site, it says to quit Kontakt and launch service center, but I'm a little confused on how to do that.  Anyone got a thought?

Hi Adam,

You can launch Service Center by going into your applications folder where you should see a ";Native Instruments"; folder. It's a standalone application, so you can also just search for it on your machine, but once you've launched it and activated there, Kontakt should start behaving as normal. If you get stuck, please fill out a [url=https://www.tapspace.com/hesksupport/]support ticket[/url].