Tried to use Audio Unit, now my entire project sounds muffled

[robni7]

Hiya, I need some help. Running 3.4 on macOS.

I have a project with a few tracks and bits & bobs. I was looking for a plugin to get something of a stereo spread for one clip.

I clicked Effects → Apple → AUSphericalHeadPanner. Nothing happened. Except, when I went to play anything in the project, the sound is now very quiet and muffled. The waveforms have not changed at all (show good levels), but the output level meter also reflects the muffled output. If I export the project, sound is muffled as well.

Unfortunately, whatever has happened wasn’t undo-able (it just undoes the action I did before clicking the Audio unit). I have quit and restarted Audacity, reset prefs and audio devices, tried disabling the Audio Units, all to no avail.

How do I rescue my project? Seeing that the waveforms still show the original audio, I hope to disable whatever is going on in between the audio tracks and the output stage.

Thanks in advance for sharing your ideas. Rob.

[LWinterberg]

Sounds like you have applied a realtime effect. You should be able to disable that by opening the effects panel again (e) and pressing the power toggle next to the effect (or the dropdown to remove the effect altogether)

[robni7]

Thanks for your suggestion. Unfortunately, that is not the case. The AU is not loaded as a real-time effect. I expect a window to pop up when I load an effect from the menu bar, but (apart from messing up the audio), nothing happens.

I tried loading the AU again from the real-time effects panel to see if anything happens, but alas, nothing. These methods of applying effects seem to be fully separate from each other.

In a new test project not yet affected by the ‘bug’, I generated some sound and applied the Audio Unit, this time through the real-time effects panel. Doing this mutes the track entirely, but it doesn’t affect the other tracks. Also, when I remove the effect or disable it, audio is back to normal. Still, no effect window pops up when I click the effect in the real-time effects panel.
For giggles I selected one second of one track and chose Effects → Apple → AUSphericalHeadPanner again – guess what, the entire project now is completely silent with no way to undo.

Any other thoughts? Rob.

[robni7]

So I did a little further digging.

The aup3 project files are not human readable unfortunately. But I found out that the project data can be exported as an XML from Help > Diagnostics.

In the project.txt XML, I read the following:

<effects active="1">
		<effect active="1" id="Effect_AudioUnit_Apple_AUSoundFieldPanner_appl/aupn/ambi/Apple: AUSoundFieldPanner" version="1.6.0">
			<parameters>
				<parameter name="&lt;Afstand,3&gt;" value="1"/>
				<parameter name="&lt;Azimut,1&gt;" value="0"/>
				<parameter name="&lt;Coördinaatschaal,4&gt;" value="10"/>
				<parameter name="&lt;Referentieafstand,5&gt;" value="1"/>
				<parameter name="&lt;Verhoging,2&gt;" value="0"/>
				<parameter name="&lt;Versterking,0&gt;" value="1"/>
			</parameters>
		</effect>
		<effect active="1" id="Effect_AudioUnit_Apple_AUSphericalHeadPanner_appl/aupn/sphr/Apple: AUSphericalHeadPanner" version="1.6.0">
			<parameters>
				<parameter name="&lt;Afstand,3&gt;" value="1"/>
				<parameter name="&lt;Azimut,1&gt;" value="0"/>
				<parameter name="&lt;Coördinaatschaal,4&gt;" value="10"/>
				<parameter name="&lt;Referentieafstand,5&gt;" value="1"/>
				<parameter name="&lt;Verhoging,2&gt;" value="0"/>
				<parameter name="&lt;Versterking,0&gt;" value="1"/>
			</parameters>
		</effect>
	</effects>

These two enabled, yet totally invisible to the UI, effects, are most likely the cause of my problem. Unfortunately, no menu or button in Audacity allows me to disable them. And I cannot edit the aup3 project directly.

The rest of the XML looks good – I did not see any other unexpected items.