Trying to install a free plugin download on my mac studio for logic prox and keep getting

If your application is built as "Universal" – meaning that it contains native machine code both for Intel-based Macs and for Apple-Silicon-based Macs – there is a way that you can run Intel-based plug-ins. It has drawbacks, so you might end up deciding that you don't want to use it.

In the Get Info dialog for a "Universal" application, you'll find an "Open using Rosetta" checkbox.

If you check that box,

• Your Apple Silicon Mac will ignore the native code, and run the application using a Rosetta 2 translation of the Intel code (which will be a bit less efficient)
• The change may allow you to use Intel-based plug-ins
• The change may prevent you from using Apple-Silicon-based plug-ins

Uncheck the box, and you go back to using the native Apple Silicon version (and not being able to use Intel-only plug-ins with it).

rockrockmeamadeus wrote:

Thanks SoC - no idea what Rosetta 2 is (I'm not very techy...).

Intel-based Macs and Apple-Silicon-based Macs don't speak the same machine code "language". It's like one speaks only French and the other speaks only Japanese.

Rosetta 2 is a translator that lets Apple Silicon Macs run some Mac applications that were built to run on Intel-based machines. It's a part of macOS. Apple called it that after the famous Rosetta Stone (British Museum) – which is a broken part of a bigger stone slab that had a message carved into it in three human languages. The scholars of the day had no idea how to read Egyptian hieroglyphs until they could use the Ancient Greek text on the Rosetta Stone to help them figure out what the Egyptian hieroglyphs must have meant.

What Rosetta 2 does is to go through an Intel application's machine code, reading it, and writing down an Apple Silicon version of it. Your Apple Silicon Mac then runs the Apple Silicon translation. This translation usually isn't quite as fast as a native application would be, but it's pretty good. Translating an application takes time – so the first time you run an Intel-based application on an Apple-Silicon-based Mac, there is a delay. The Mac saves the result of the translation so that the second, third, etc. launches can proceed without delay.

Apple did something like this before, when they went from PowerPC-based Macs to Intel-based ones. That's why they call this version Rosetta 2.

Is this plug-in compiled for Intel CPUs or for Apple Silicon ones? If you're running Logic Pro natively (not under Rosetta 2), you might need to use all-Apple-Silicon-based plugins.