Sound Radix 32 Lives Review

In today’s review we examine 32 Lives, an incredibly useful bit of software that ressurects your outdated 32-bit plugins for use in a modern 64-bit environment… Manufacturer Sound Radix Price $99 Contact support@soundradix.com Web www.soundradix.com Amazon.co.uk Widgets In its constant quest for forward momentum and to relegate any old technology to the scrap heap, it was perhaps fairly inevitable […]

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In today’s review we examine 32 Lives, an incredibly useful bit of software that ressurects your outdated 32-bit plugins for use in a modern 64-bit environment...

Manufacturer Sound Radix
Price $99
Contact support@soundradix.com
Webwww.soundradix.com

In its constant quest for forward momentum and to relegate any old technology to the scrap heap, it was perhaps fairly inevitable that Apple would make Logic X a 64-bit-only application. Unfortunately, that leaves many of us with large plug-in collections a little high and dry, especially as some of the smaller developers simply haven’t got the resources to instantly update their software to 64-bit versions.

Luckily, the good people at Sound Radix have been hard at work on a solution in the form of a 32-bit-to-64-bit Audio Unit adaptor. 32 Lives was in beta for several months last year, as the team fine-tuned its compatibility with a range of older plug-ins and instruments. Now out of testing and in full use by many happy Logic X users, the latest version enables a large list of plug-ins to run seamlessly from within the new Logic.

A full list and a trial version are available from the Sound Radix website, so you can test whether your plug-ins will work. It’s worth noting that the program will convert only Audio Units and runs in OSX 10.6.8 or later.

Once loaded, 32 Lives will scan your system for 32-bit plug-ins and present them in a list. You simply select which ones you want converted, then hit the Resurrect button. A quick look in the Components folder reveals that duplicates have been created, but with ‘x64’ added to the file name along with a 32 Lives icon. You can now load old Logic 9 arrangements in Logic X and your 32-bit plug-ins will appear like normal. Apart from a very minor GUI wiggle when a window is moved, the results are practically seamless – much better, in fact, than Apple’s own 32-bit bridge solution for running Logic 9 in 64-bit mode.

Whether or not you think that the $99 price tag is a little steep for a software adaptor will largely depend on how big your plug-in collection is and how many items you need to convert. For those who want to enjoy Logic X’s new features and have a lot of expensive plug-ins that they don’t won’t to lose, though, this is an essential and elegant solution.

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