Bought an Alesis Vortex Wireless 2 USB Keytar…

Their patch editing software is incompatible with any of the currently sold Macs and the situation is no better on Windows.

The software will only work with a macOS version that is 3 major revisions old and in 32-bit mode.

All new Macs are M1-based and require 64 bit, so your only option is emulation.

Getting an M1 Mac to emulate an Intel Mac running macOS 10.9 is theoretically possible, but a major exercise in frustration.

Emulating a Windows machine (2 major versions old) is easier, but that then leads to USB control problems because only one machine at a time can access the USB device, requiring a restart of the Virtual Machine to ensure it actually connects.

It's extremely frustrating, slow, complex and impractical.

Alesis' advice: don't upgrade. Tough luck if you have a Mac newer than 3 years ago. "we're working on it" they say, but it's been over 18 months since they posted that message with not a single update to the software.

Would not buy another Alesis device after this experience.

Date of experience: April 19, 2022