1.3.11 won't open

[Bernard Stay]

1.3.8 works fine on my Apple G4 933MHz under OS 10.5.8. I downloaded 1.3 11 but it only half opens: One heading "Audacity" only + a little clock, and it won't quit (have to force quit).

Help!

[billw58]

Do you have any VST effects anywhere on your system? Look in the Audacity plug-ins folder, in ~/Library/Audio/Plug-ins/VST and in /Library/Audio/Plug-ins/VST. If you find any, create a temporary place to put them (such as a folder on the Desktop) and move them there. You want to end up with no VST effects in any of those three locations. Then try launching Audacity. If it does launch, you have been bitten by the very rare Mac 10.5.8 PPC VST bug - http://bugzilla.audacityteam.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2

-- Bill

[Bernard Stay]

billw

Many thanks - that did it. But now what do I do? Leave the VSTs on the desktop? Trash them? They may be needed for whatever apps. put them there mayn't they?

[billw58]

There is a way around this that will allow you to put the VST effects back.

• *Put one (and one only) VST effect back where it came from (if there was one in the Audacity plugins folder, that would be a good place - also, choose one that you would like to have available in Audacity).
  *Launch Audacity - it will hang, so force quit.
  *Go to ~/Library/Application Support/audacity and look for the plugins.cfg file - open it in TextEdit and confirm that the VST effect is listed there. Close the file.
  *Launch Audacity - it should start OK.
  *Go to Audacity > Preferences, Effects section, and confirm that "Rescan VST effects next time Audacity is started" is not checked. Quit Audacity.

You can now put all your VST effects back where they came from - Audacity will not look for them any more and will not hang.

-- Bill

[Bernard Stay]

Bill

Thanks. I think I understand that. The VSTs were all in ~/Library none in Library. However none of them is listed in Audacity/Plugins. Could you bear it if I list the VSTs?:-

Carbon MDA VST Effects (file containing 30 mda VSTs)
freeverb-c
Freq-2
Inspector
vbox SE 1.3 Trial.vst

I wouldn't dream of having a VBox and don't recognize any of the others. Is it worth moving just one of these back and following your instructions? Perhaps I should just forget the whole thing and lose the VST file somewhere until and if something else fails to work properly.

Bernard

[billw58]

If you're not using any of those VST effects, and no other program breaks with them removed, then I'd just leave them in a folder somewhere. At some point this bug will be fixed and you can put them back into ~/Library.

I notice you've got freeverb listed there. If you need a reverb, you could try GVerb. See this page for instructions on how to get it: http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/GVerb.

-- Bill

[Gale Andrews]

Bill, I'm a little unclear here - if the user does not want VST's in Audacity but wants them for other apps, can they simply force quit Audacity, edit audacity.cfg down to:

Code: Select all

NewPrefsInitialized=1
[AudioUnits]
Enable=0
GUI=0
[Ladspa]
Enable=1
[Nyquist]
Enable=1
[VAMP]
Enable=1
[VST]
Enable=0
GUI=0
Rescan=0

then restart Audacity?

Certainly this works on other versions of OS X than 10.5.8 PPC if the user has some AU or VST plug-in that makes Audacity hang (or simply has too many older AUs) and doesn't want to use them in Audacity.



Gale

[billw58]

Bill, I'm a little unclear here - if the user does not want VST's in Audacity but wants them for other apps, can they simply force quit Audacity, edit audacity.cfg down to:

<snip>

then restart Audacity?

Certainly this works on other versions of OS X than 10.5.8 PPC if the user has some AU or VST plug-in that makes Audacity hang (or simply has too many older AUs) and doesn't want to use them in Audacity.

Gale, I'm a bit confused - I think I gave that advice in another thread, perhaps where the user was experiencing a freeze or slow startup due to AU effects.

On first launch of Audacity on a virgin system (no cfg anywhere), if Audacity hangs it will not write the cfg (as I recall), so the user would have to create it.

In any case, yes this method will work with any version of OS X where the user is encountering slow startup or hangs due to AU and/or VST effects. A simpler solution is to set "Rescan=0" if the problem is solely with VST effects. The point is for users who are AU and/or VST effects in the system locations that they want to use in other programs.

-- Bill

[Gale Andrews]

Bill, I'm a little unclear here - if the user does not want VST's in Audacity but wants them for other apps, can they simply force quit Audacity, edit audacity.cfg down to:
<snip>
then restart Audacity?

Certainly this works on other versions of OS X than 10.5.8 PPC if the user has some AU or VST plug-in that makes Audacity hang (or simply has too many older AUs) and doesn't want to use them in Audacity.

Gale, I'm a bit confused - I think I gave that advice in another thread, perhaps where the user was experiencing a freeze or slow startup due to AU effects.

On first launch of Audacity on a virgin system (no cfg anywhere), if Audacity hangs it will not write the cfg (as I recall), so the user would have to create it.

That's correct sorry, I missed the step that the user would have to create the file if Audacity had never quit cleanly. Usually when I respond to this on [email protected] I attach a .cfg file they can drop into ~/Library/Application Support/audacity.

In any case, yes this method will work with any version of OS X where the user is encountering slow startup or hangs due to AU and/or VST effects. A simpler solution is to set "Rescan=0" if the problem is solely with VST effects. The point is for users who are AU and/or VST effects in the system locations that they want to use in other programs.

OK. And since LADSPA, Nyquist and VAMP are enabled by default anyway, there isn't any need to specify those in .cfg.

Mac "slow launch" or "never launches at all" due to VST/AU comes up every few days on [email protected] so I'd like to create a FAQ for this. I'm not sure the source of the problem because users rarely give the version of OS X and architecture. Rather than being mainly due to 10.5.8 PPC/VST I figure it is mostly AUs (and probably some VSTi's we don't know about). Usually the only feedback is "that fixed it" or similar so it's hard to tell.

Could you comment on my proposed text below? It's long, but I'm unsure if we need the "renaming folders" trick at all. It doesn't seem a useful idea if other apps want these plug-ins and the user could cause other system damage in there. The only advantage is that it's possibly a bit easier than creating a new audacity.cfg file if that is required.

Also I suppose this FAQ should be generalised to include Windows VST but I hardly ever see this problem in 1.3.X Windows, only in 1.2.X for things like the Fruity Loops VSTi's.

Why does Audacity fail to launch on Mac OS X?

If Audacity crashes or hangs when you try to launch it, this is usually caused by an incompatible Audio Unit (AU) or VST plug-in, either in the Audacity "Plug-ins" folder or in a system location. Also, some older third-party AU plug-ins can be very slow to load, so if you have many of these it could take some time to launch Audacity.

A good initial troubleshooting step is to rename the Audacity "Plug-ins" folder and the following system folders:

Audio Units:
* ~/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/Components
* /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/Components

VST:
* The folder path specified by the VST_PATH environment variable
* ~/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/VST
* /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/VST

If Audacity launches after renaming a folder, and you don't want to use VST or AU plug-ins in Audacity, no further action is needed providing the rename is not a problem for other programs that use these plug-ins. If you need these plug-ins for other programs, you should leave the system plug-in folders named as they are, and edit or create the audacity.cfg settings file so as to disable AU or VST support. To do this, force quit Audacity if it is running, then navigate in Finder to:

~/Library/Application Support/audacity

Using TextEdit, either edit (or if it does not exist, create) "audacity.cfg" inside the above folder. Save audacity.cfg with this content only:

NewPrefsInitialized=1
[AudioUnits]
Enable=0
GUI=0
[VST]
Enable=0
GUI=0
Rescan=0

If you require one of AU or VST plug-ins to load, set the line underneath the [AudioUnits] or [VST] line to "Enable=1". Once Audacity launches and can be exited cleanly, you can also turn AU or VST support on or off at Audacity > Preferences: Effects (underneath "Enable Effects").

If you do want to use VST or AU plug-ins in Audacity, then to find the culprit plug-in you could remove plug-ins one-by-one from the plug-in folders (correctly named as above) until Audacity launches. If you identify a plug-in that is causing the problem, please write to our feedback address:
http://audacityteam.org/contact/#feedback

and let us know the name and web address of the plug-in.

Note for users on OS X 10.5.8 PPC: There is a known bug that Audacity will always hang scanning for VST plug-ins, even if all plug-ins are compatible. As above, you can either remove VST plug-ins from the Audacity "Plug-ins" folder and rename the system VST folders, or create audacity.cfg so as to disable VST support. If you want to use VST plug-ins with Audacity, then unfortunately this bug will limit you to using just one plug-in. Follow these steps:

1 Ensure the system VST folders are renamed to something other than
* The folder path specified by the VST_PATH environment variable
* ~/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/VST
* /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/VST
2 Include only one VST effect in the Audacity Plug-ins folder
3 Launch Audacity - it will hang, so force quit
4 Open ~/Library/Application Support/audacity plugins.cfg file in TextEdit
and confirm the VST effect is listed there; close the file
5 Launch Audacity - it should start OK
6 If you require VST effects for other programs you can now revert the
system VST folder names to those in step 1.

Gale

[billw58]

Gale:
I'd attack the problem in a different order:

1) If you don't want to use AU and VST effects in Audacity, edit/create audacity.cfg as outlined below, and remove any VST effects (<filename>.vst) from the Audacity "plug-ins" folder (it's actually lower-case on Mac).
This avoids the bear-trap of renaming system folders. On my system, I cannot rename the user VST and Components folders, but I can rename the user Plug-Ins folder, and I can rename the system VST and Components folders and the system Plug-Ins folder. This may be different on other systems. And I just discovered that I can rename the user Library folder! Yikes! I shudder to thing what would happen if I did that!

2) If you do want to use AU and/or VST effects in Audacity, you need to identify the offending effect(s). Unfortunately any offending effects must be removed from the system effects folders and will not be available to other programs. Then provide step by step instructions, including the creation of appropriately-named folders on the desktop to hold the effects that are being removed.

Other notes:

1) No naive OS X user will have a clue what "The folder path specified by the VST_PATH environment variable" means.

2) The steps for the 10.5.8 PPC bug are good. Given the inconsistencies regarding which folders can be renamed, I'd suggest the user move the contents of the VST folders to appropriately-named folders on the desktop temporarily, then move them back.

I'll work up an alternative version if you'd like.

-- Bill