Audacity Forum

I'm having a bit of trouble installing the plug-ins for the new Audacity 1.3.14 (Beta).
I downloaded and installed Audacity 1.3.14 (Beta), and it seems to work ok. Then I downloaded the LADSPA_plugins-win-0.4.15.exe and ran it, not paying a lot of attention to what it was doing.

While it ran, I had C:Program FilesAudacity 1.3 Beta (Unicode)Plug-Ins open (in Windows Expolrer) so I could see it 'fill up', and nothing showed up. The plug-ins didn't install. I tried it again, this time paying more attention. The installer wants to install them to C:Program FilesAudacityPlug-Ins, the folder for the plug-ins for Audacity 1.2.6., which is the old version.

I deleted it all and put back the originals 1.2.6 plug-ins from a recent backup, and then ran the installer again, this time pointing it to C:Program FilesAudacity 1.3 Beta (Unicode)Plug-Ins. As I watched it, all that showed up there was a Plug-Ins folder. "...Plug-Ins/Plug-Ins" has 97 Objects in it (one of which is the FFTW_docs folder).

Now all the plug-ins are in C:Program FilesAudacity 1.3 Beta (Unicode)Plug-InsPlug-Ins. Will Audacity look for them in "...Plug-InsPlug-Ins"? Should I maybe copy them into the higher level Plug-Ins? Is this something Audacity should fix, or did my having 1.2.6 installed confuse my system?

OK, now maybe I'm about to answer that question with another...

When I run Audacity, a box pops up, "Scanning VST Plugins", which shows the plug ins directory (......Plug-Ins/Plug-Ins), and takes about 65 seconds to scan plugins before the program loads. Is there any way to speed this up? ...er, maybe I should ask: In "Preferences > Effects > Rescan VST effects next time Audacity is started", is NOT ticked, but it rescans anyways. How do I stop this/make it load faster?

Thank you!

stanstr wrote:Now all the plug-ins are in C:Program FilesAudacity 1.3 Beta (Unicode)Plug-InsPlug-Ins. Will Audacity look for them in "...Plug-InsPlug-Ins"?

No, Audacity doesn't look recursively into directories inside its "Plug-ins" folder. Select all the plug-ins, cut them, then paste them into the "Plug-ins" folder itself. Then restart Audacity.

stanstr wrote: When I run Audacity, a box pops up, "Scanning VST Plugins", which shows the plug ins directory (......Plug-Ins/Plug-Ins), and takes about 65 seconds to scan plugins before the program loads. Is there any way to speed this up? ...er, maybe I should ask: In "Preferences > Effects > Rescan VST effects next time Audacity is started", is NOT ticked, but it rescans anyways. How do I stop this/make it load faster?

It shouldn't rescan anyway.

Exit Audacity, go to the Audacity data folder appropriate to your version of Windows:
http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/Preferences#stored

then delete plugins.cfg. Start Audacity and it should scan. Quit Audacity and restart. It should not scan.

If it still scans, you may have some .dll in some location where Audacity looks for VST plug-ins that is causing a scan every time. We'll cross that one if it arises.



Gale

Gale Andrews wrote:No, Audacity doesn't look recursively into directories inside its "Plug-ins" folder.

That's what I thought, but that does not appear to be strictly true.

Tested with Audacity 1.3.14 beta on Windows XP (virtual machine guest)
if I move the following files:
gverb_1216.dll
hard_limiter_1413.dll
sc4_1882.dll
into a sub directory of the plug-ins folder, I can see Audacity scan them on launch, but they are not loaded.
This looks strange - why are they scanned but not loaded?

steve wrote:

Gale Andrews wrote:No, Audacity doesn't look recursively into directories inside its "Plug-ins" folder.

That's what I thought, but that does not appear to be strictly true.

Tested with Audacity 1.3.14 beta on Windows XP (virtual machine guest)
if I move the following files:
gverb_1216.dll
hard_limiter_1413.dll
sc4_1882.dll
into a sub directory of the plug-ins folder, I can see Audacity scan them on launch, but they are not loaded.
This looks strange - why are they scanned but not loaded?

Thanks for testing, which I had only ever done with Nyquist plug-ins. The (VST) scan is as you suggest completely recursive and picks up any dll's anywhere in the Audacity installation directory including the Microsoft and Widgets ones which are in the root.

However on Windows, it seems Audacity will load VST plug-ins (.dll) from a subfolder inside the "Plug-ins" directory in the Audacity installation folder, but not LADSPA (like the three above) nor Nyquist.

Do you have time to check that for LADSPA and Nyquist on Linux, and anyone for VST, LADSPA and Nyquist on Mac? I don't think Audacity should go loading any plug-ins in root of the installation directory, but as it loads VST's recursively from the plug-ins folder (and system VST folders) there seems no obvious reason why it should not do so for the other plug-in formats.

If we ever have a feature as has been asked for where you can create plug-in categories by creating a folder hierarchy inside locations searched, then loading recursively will be required.



Gale

Gale Andrews wrote:Do you have time to check that for LADSPA and Nyquist on Linux

On Linux there is no option in Preferences to "Rescan" (VST effects are not supported on Linux).
There is no indication that recursive folders are scanned, and effects are not loaded from sub-folders of the normal plug-in directories.