Blue Cat's Gain Suite plugins don't show up

[DWJ]

A very useful plug-in for altering the stereo spread of a recording, by changing the middle or side gain, doesn't appear in the effects list after it is installed. I have installed both the AU and VST versions, and tried in both my user library and the system library. Other plug-ins that I have added show up fine. Plugins at http://www.bluecataudio.com/Products/Product_GainSuite/

Thanks!

[steve]

I think that some effects are automatically disabled if they are known to be incompatible with Audacity.
One of the "Stereo Butterfly" effects on this page may do what you want http://audacityteam.org/download/nyquistplugins

[DWJ]

Shouldn't all widely used AU and VST plugins be compatible with audacity? (I know these work fine in Soundstudio.)

[steve]

In an ideal world, all audio plug-ins will all be fully compatible with all audio software.
Back in May of this year, all Blue Cat plug-ins were updated to make them compatible with Cubase 5. Wouldn't you have expected them to have already been compatible with such a main-stream product?

I don't know for certain that there are any compatibility problems with Audacity, I was just putting that forward as a possibility, and suggesting an alternative solution.

[DWJ]

Thanks! Here is another great plugin that doesn't show up, called Ambience: http://www.smartelectronix.com/~magnus/ Should I be pestering these plugin developers to look at this compatibility problem? UPDATE: I restarted and now Ambience shows up.

[Gale Andrews]

We actually did a lot of work on Blue Cat (VST) plug-ins because they were crashing Audacity 1.3.8 when we first implemented GUI support for VST effects. That work was done on Mac. Blue Cat's Widening Gain (if that's what you mean) shows up for me on Windows XP as a VST plug-in. Note for newly added VSTs to show up, you have to go to the Effects tab of Audacity Preferences and check "Rescan VST effects next time Audacity is started". This (at the moment) is a one-off rescan, so next time you look at Preferences again, that box will be unchecked.

Audio Unit effects must also be enabled in the Effects preferences for them to show up (and you must restart if making a change to that preference). If any specific Blue Cat VST or AU plug-ins still don't show up with rescan/restart, please let us know exact details.


Gale