System Requirements

Minimum requirements

There is a Read-only offline mode available for the SoundFlow Cloud subscriptions. Also see below for connecting through VPNs, firewalls and proxies.

SoundFlow works on both Intel and Apple Silicon / M1 chips.

Online connectivity, VPN, firewalls

The SoundFlow Cloud Indie/Pro/Business/Enterprise versions all require an active internet connection to operate. If you're using SoundFlow behind a VPN or corporate firewall then you can use our SoundFlow Cloud Proxy product to route all SF's traffic through a pinhole in the firewall to provide a secure way of using SoundFlow in a restricted environment. Our Proxy product enables facilities to allow both employees and freelancers access to SoundFlow in a secure environment with minimal setup.

It is not supported to use SoundFlow behind a firewall/VPN without the SoundFlow Cloud Proxy product.

Please be in touch via the website chat or at support@soundflow.org if you're interested.

See our article on Offline Options for more details.

Accessing SoundFlow from China and other geo-blocked locations

While, as mentioned above, we don't officially support the use of SoundFlow through VPNs without our SoundFlow Cloud Proxy product, we have heard users having success accessing SoundFlow through Astrill VPN set up in "StealthVPN mode".

Some VPNs don't route all traffic correctly, which is why it's not currently possible for us to generally support VPNs. Examples of traffic that software/hardware-based VPN doesn't route correctly includes IPv6 traffic, properly handling DNS resolution when the VPN is turned on/off mid-session, routing traffic to/from GCP (Google Cloud Platform) services, websocket traffic and macOS app-traffic. Since SoundFlow makes use of these features, a VPN that only partially routes traffic correctly might be good enough for browsing the web, but could render parts of or the whole of SoundFlow inoperable.

As mentioned above, we do have a fully supported solution for using VPNs which gets rid of the above-mentioned problems certain VPN software has: SoundFlow Cloud Proxy.

Mobile app requirements

  • iOS: iOS 12.4 or newer. Works with both iPads and iPhones. Some low spec old devices may encounter limitations.
  • Android: Android 5.0 or newer. Important: Not all Android devices are supported - especially low spec devices may not work reliably with SoundFlow. We are working on providing a list of devices that are confirmed to be working.
  • Amazon Appstore: Not all devices are supported. Generally, Amazon tablets appear to work less reliably than regular Android devices.

If in doubt about whether a specific Android or Amazon device is a good fit with SoundFlow, we recommend asking in our forum or in our User Group on Facebook to have the community give feedback as to what they've been using reliably.

macOS versions

Versions no longer actively supported or tested:

  • 10.12 Sierra: May work with older versions of SF. No official SF support, not supported by Apple.
  • 10.13.x High Sierra: May work with older versions of SF. No official SF support, not supported by Apple.
  • 10.14.x Mojave: Should work. No official SF support, not supported by Apple.

Versions with official SoundFlow support, that no longer receive security updates from Apple:

  • 10.15.x Catalina: Official support by SoundFlow. Not supported by Apple.
  • 11.x Big Sur: Official support by SoundFlow. Not supported by Apple.

Versions with official support:

  • 12.x Monterey: Official support. Recommended.
  • 13.x Ventura: Official support. Recommended.
  • 14.3, 14.4 Sonoma: Official support.

On Sonoma support: With the release of SoundFlow 5.7.0 and Pro Tools 2024.3, SoundFlow now fully supports being used with Pro Tools on Sonoma. This requires running macOS 14.4+.

We recommend using macOS 12 or 13.

While SoundFlow may in some use cases work with versions of macOS as early as Sierra 10.12.6, we no longer recommend Sierra 10.12, High Sierra 10.13, Mojave 10.14 or Catalina 10.15 as they are all end-of-life from Apple, which means they no longer receive security updates. The last security update for Sierra as of this writing is over 24 months old. We advise all users to upgrade to an Apple-supported OS as soon as possible.

SoundFlow may further stop working on 10.12-10.14 in the near future as we upgrade our third party components.

To be clear: Our official support starts with macOS 10.15+, we recommend using 12+, but you should be able to use it with 10.13+ for the time being.

Pro Tools Languages

We currently only support Pro Tools when its language is set to English in Preferences. If you are on German, French, Spanish or any other language and you would like us to support your localized version, please send us an email at support@soundflow.org.

Logic Languages

We currently only support Logic when its language is set to English in Preferences. If you are on any other language and you would like us to support your localized version, please send us an email at support@soundflow.org.

Windows version

We get many requests for a Windows version, so we have started working on porting SoundFlow to Windows. We cannot make any promises on availability or a timeline yet, but we'll update this page with more information when we know more.

DAW Compatibility

If you want to use SoundFlow with Pro Tools, we recommend you to be on the latest version of Pro Tools Ultimate (previously HD), but we have at least partial backwards compatibility starting from Pro Tools 10.

Our beta testers test all of our releases on a number of different systems. As of January 2022, we have testers that use macOS 10.15, 11.x, and 12.x, all generally using the newest Pro Tools version available at the time of each SoundFlow beta cycle.

We advise upgrading to at least macOS Catalina 10.15 and preferably Big Sur 11.x or Monterey 12.x at this point.

Cubase features are currently tested on Cubase Pro 11. Ableton Live features are tested on Ableton Live 10 Suite. Nuendo features are tested on Nuendo 11. iZotope RX features are tested on RX 10. Logic Pro X features are tested on 10.8 and later.

If you have a specific software combination that is not mentioned here, please ask in the forum to see if anyone else has already tested it, or start a free 30-day trial and test for yourself.

Cloud licensing & iLoks

The SoundFlow Cloud product is licensed via your active internet connection. That means this product has nothing to do with iLoks, even if it's still secured by PACE.

Instead of using iLoks, when you open SoundFlow, you log in to your SoundFlow account and it then ensures that you have a valid subscription. Having logged in, SoundFlow remembers your credentials so you won't have to log in again on the same computer if you don't sign out.

This also means that all your user settings, shortcuts, triggers & custom scripts will be instantly available if you sign in to a different computer. No need to walk around with 5 different versions of your settings on different USB sticks anymore.

Number of concurrent connections per account

By default, there's a limit of 1 concurrent connection per account. If you need to connect to SoundFlow with more than one machine at a time - for instance if you have 2 rigs or if your home rig is sometimes running even while you're at work - you can purchase an add-on to your subscription to enable more concurrent connections. Please contact us at support@soundflow.org if you're interested.

You can read more about this at soundflow.org/pricing

Offline

SoundFlow currently needs you to be online when you open it. If you need to go offline while working due to MPAA requirements, we offer the SoundFlow Facility edition which works completely offline. There are also options that work in partially-online scenarios.

See our article on Offline Options for more details.

Please be in touch with us at support@soundflow.org if you have any offline requirements, and we'll get you set up with the product that best matches your workflow.

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