I’ve been trying to Google this issue and searching the board but have not come up with any solutions or hints so far.
At some point in the past, the SC4 plugin stopped working in real-time. The Effect Output bars show no activity and I can hear no difference. I tried re-installing Audacity, using the portable version, etc, but it simply won’t work anymore on any of my machines (three W10 machines, one W7 machine).
Any idea what’s going on?
For completeness’ sake, here is the information of one machine:
Version of Audacity: 2.2.2
Name of the plug-in: SC4 (SC4_1882.dll; as bundled with Audacity 2.2.2)
Plug-in type: LADSPA(?)
Why do you think that this plug-in is compatible with Audacity?: It came with Audacity.
Would love a solution, SC4 is my go-to compressor on Audacity!
If you mean the meters at the bottom of the SC4 effect window, I don’t think they ever worked in Audacity.
Is your waveform close to full track height? If not, try using the Amplify effect first.
What settings are you using in SC4?
Try making a duplicate copy of the track, then apply the effect to the duplicate - is there any visible difference between the processed duplicate and the original?
I tried again and I do hear a difference - but I probably fooled myself to think there was no difference as I was used having to seeing that the bars showed gain reduction.
So it IS working, but I really miss the visual cues in gain reduction.
Unfortunately it is unlikely that any bugs in SC4 will ever be fixed, as it is a third party plug-in, and it appears that its creator(s) abandoned it many years ago. This plug-in will not be included in the next release of Audacity (because it is so old and not maintained), so you may want to make a backup copy of it before you upgrade to the next version of Audacity.
I hope that at some time in the not too distant, Audacity will get a new built-in compressor effect. Like you, I rather liked the SC4 effect, though I would have liked it even more if it included a lookahead limiter.
