Audacity can't find Plug-ins on MacOS X 10.5

[rpgoldman]

I apologize hugely for asking this question, since it is a real Mac newbie question. Please be patient!

I got the Audacity 1.2.5 prebuilt for my Intel Mac. It came with what looks to me like a standard Mac application, and two folders, nyquist and plugins. I wasn't sure where to install those (I'm a long-time linux user, so the Mac's UI layer on top of the bare unix-like system tends to confuse me!), so I asked a friend of mine who's more familiar. He told me to use the "Show Package Contents" interaction and put the folders into the Contents. I have done this, and audacity does not find the plug-ins.

I read some on the forums about making my own audacity folder and unpacking the application in there, and putting the files in. So I tried copying the contents of the audacity thing (application, whatever), into a new directory in applications called "Audacity," but then I couldn't get the application to start successfully.

Again, I'm sorry to have to ask this, since I'm sure it has a simple answer, and I realize it's an oddball question --- I'm probably one of a rare class of users who is confused by the Mac GUI and would be happier with the old user-hostile unix system! Any help much appreciated!

[kozikowski]

We should probably spend the first few minutes getting OS-X to be a little more helpful instead of straight Fuzzy-Warm®.

Did you get a two-button mouse with scroll wheel? Drop what you're doing and go get one. Mine's Microsoft (gasp) wireless. Highly recommended. Standard Mac users are used to single clicking on the whole world, but we both know what a timesaver right-clicking can be. If you can right-click and scroll, you can be finished and home drinking beer when a regular Mac user is still trying to find all the menu items.

Turn on File Extensions. Click on the desktop. Finder > Preferences > Advanced, Show File Extensions.

When you downloaded Audacity, you got a Disk Image file like this, right?

audacity-macosx-intel-1.2.5.dmg

You double clicked on it and it exploded into three files and three folders, right? I personally create a fresh, new folder called Audacity (right-click on the desktop > New Folder.)

Right click your hard drive icon > Open. Drag your new, empty Audacity folder to the /Applications folder. Select the three files and three folders and drag them over to /Applications/Audacity. (I'm rendering the pictures as Linux directories, but you get the idea.)

Since you can see the extensions now, one of the files is called Audacity.app. You'll never guess what that is.

Do you have your applications in a "Dock" at the bottom of the desktop frame? Drag Audacity.app down to the dock and it will form a shortcut along with all the other application shortcuts.

I don't remember where I got it from, but I downloaded the VST Plugin Bridge software.

vst-bridge-1.1.dmg

Double click on that and when it opens, drag the contents over to /Applications/Audacity/plug-ins. I think I ended up with a bunch of *.ny files such as crossfadein and crossfadeout as well as vst-bridge.so.

Everybody needs MP3 exporting, so download the file

libmp3lame-osx-universal-3.97.zip

Double click and it should unzip into a bunch of files and directories and if you dig hard enough, you'll find the libmp3lame.dylib file. Don't compile or rebuild anything. Ignore the instructions. Push that file over to /Applications/Audacity/plug-ins.

Restart Audacity. When it wakes up, there should be a split in the Effects list about two-thirds of the way down and extra tools should be there. When you go to export your first MP3, Audacity will ask you for the lame library file. Point it to /Applicatons/Audacity/plugins/libmp3lame.dylib.

That's the bare-bones. Let me know where you get stuck.

Koz

[rpgoldman]

Thank you so much! That was just what I needed to know. I was able to take my existing audacity, stuff it into a "folder" (as a crotchety old guy, this euphemism for "directory" makes my skin crawl!), then pull my nyquist and plug-ins folders out of "Contents" and into the top-level directory, and all was well!

As I said, I'm sure that this is simple, but as an old Unixer, the whole notion of these application things with their "Contents", the weird UI metaphors, etc. are really boggling me.

Best,
r

[kozikowski]

You found the shell, right? /Applicatons/Utilities/Terminal.app Either open it up right there by double clicking, or drag it to the tool dock at the bottom of the screen and run it from there. It's handy to have that around if your mis-behaved application takes a dive and you have to kill the process. OS-X rarely goes down so hard that you have to hold the off button to get your machine back, but you can get a bad third-party application that can take out the desktop.

Koz