RMS Normalize plug-in error

Audacity 3 Help Forum macOS
1

Hello!
I am using Audacity 2.3.3 with MacOs High Sierra.
My RMS Normalize plug-in, which was working fine for months, and which I need to be able to bring my files up to ACX standards, is now returning the error message:

Nyquist returned the value: 1

I tried uninstalling the plug-in and installing it again with a “fresh” plug-in newly downloaded today from the forum. Same result.

Anyone have any other suggestions?
I appreciate any and all help.

Thank you!
Jennie

2

If you update to the current Audacity 2.4.2, it has a built-in RMS Normalize effect: https://manual.audacityteam.org/man/loudness_normalization.html

3

Thank you, Steve.
I installed the new Audacity and ran Normalize. It worked…getting somewhere!

Next, I tried to use the limiter (this is always my next step after normalizing)… and got the same error message: nyquist returned value: 1.

Any help would be much appreciated. I ran the ACX check and the file is too hot if I can’t use the limiter.

Thanks so much for your prompt help. It is so appreciated.
Jennie

4
  1. “Help menu > Diagnostics > Show Log”
  2. Click the “Clear” button.
  3. Apply the Limiter effect.
  4. If it gives an error, then there should also be some debug information printed to the Audacity log window. Copy the contents of the log to your reply.
5

thank you!
Here is the log after clearing and running Limiter:

09:07:32: Audacity 2.4.2
Log Cleared.
09:07:41: 'Limiter' returned:
error: unbound variable - GERMAN
if continued: try evaluating symbol again
1> 44100
1> 1
1> 1
1> 0
1> 0
1> 0
1> 6
1> NIL
1> 0
1> 1259.96
1> (1)
1> 1
1> NIL
1> NIL
1> NIL
1> NIL
1> 1
1> error: unbound variable - GERMAN
if continued: try evaluating symbol again
2> "wave"
2> "Waveform"
2> 1
2> T
2> 0
2> 1259.96
2> 1
2> 0
2> 44100
2> 32
2> ((0 1259.96))
2> 0.794328
2> 0.794328
2> 0.032067
2> NIL
2> 0
2> 0
2> 0
2> -3.5
2> 10
2> 0
2> NIL
2> 1
2> 1
2> 0.668344
2> NIL
2> NIL
2> HARDLIMIT
2> GET-ENV
2> SOFTLIMIT
2> SOFT-CLIP-TABLE
2> SOFT-CLIP
2> MAKUPGAIN
2> #<Sound: #14d88f7b8>
2> #<Sound: #10f5d0318>
2> 1>
6

It looks like your Nyquist plug-ins (the “.NY” files) have been modified.
Any idea how that happened?

7

IT’S A MIRACLE! I noticed in the error message that “GERMAN” was the issue. My file name had “german” in quotations and it was throwing everything into a tailspin. That is all it was.

Thank you for your time. Sorry, this feels like a super novice error. But hopefully people can learn from this not to have weird file names with quotes in them.
Jennie

8

Use upper case letters, lower case letters, numbers, -dash- and underscore in filesnames. No other characters. Use ISO dates. Today is 2020-07-23. No slashmarks.

Koz

9

Which file? The “limiter.ny” file?
Do you mean the name of the audio track?
Do you mean the name of the Audacity Project?

10

Answering my own question - either will cause the problem. It’s a bug.
I’ve committed a fix for the next Audacity release.

11

Hi Steve, again,

I literally just wrote you about an error that had been occurring (“Nyquist returned the value: 18”), but then I randomly clicked on a similar looking problem someone else had, and apparently the issue was that the name of the audacity project had something in quotes in it. Such a weird error! Anyway, I did what you suggested to the other person with the diagnostics and log clearing and all that, and then fixed the title so that the quotes went away, and it works like a charm now. (Running Audacity 2.4.2 on Mac Catalina 10.15.5)

Thanks pre-emtively,

Michael