Audacity Forum

Hello everybody,

I just installed Audacity 2.4.2 on my Macbook pro running with Catalina 10.15.6 and I cannot get it to start.

When I start from dock I just get an popup saying something like "Audacity-Startup Error - An unresolvable error occurred during startup" (translated from German).

When I try to start the application from console I get the same popup again and following notifications inside the console
Tried to reinstall the app already and also deleting the settings-file, both didnt do any change.

Did you get Audacity from here: https://www.audacityteam.org/download/mac/ ?

Can you check that your SHA 256 checksum matches the one on that page?

-- Bill

yes, downloaded from there and SHA256 checksum matches.

NEA1971 wrote: ↑

Fri Aug 14, 2020 11:22 am

also deleting the settings-file

Try deleting all three of the settings files:

• audacity.cfg
• pluginsregistry.cfg
• pluginsettings.cfg

steve wrote: ↑

Wed Aug 19, 2020 9:21 am

Try deleting all three of the settings files:

• audacity.cfg
• pluginsregistry.cfg
• pluginsettings.cfg

there is only "audacity.cfg" together with a folder "SessionData", which is empty - the other two files are not there

What is the exact (and full) location of the audacity.cfg file?

~/Library/Application Support/audacity/audacity.cfg

I presume that you get the same error if you try to launch Audacity with: Unfortunately I don't know much about troubleshooting on macOS. For me, Audacity 2.4.2 just works on Catalina.

Is there anything unusual or non-standard about your Mac?
What audio devices do you have?

Were you previously running an earlier version of Audacity on this machine?

Anything you can think of that might be relevant to the problem?

steve wrote: ↑

Wed Aug 19, 2020 6:53 pm

I presume that you get the same error if you try to launch Audacity with:

Code: Select all

open -a audacity

yes, I tried that one before, but same result.

steve wrote: Is there anything unusual or non-standard about your Mac?

I was installing Blackhole prior to Audacity, because I wanted to record the sound from a Language-learning program and I suspect it has something to do with my problem. I uninstalled it again, but still the same result.

steve wrote: What audio devices do you have?

standard Macbook pro 13" 2020

steve wrote: Were you previously running an earlier version of Audacity on this machine?

First time I was trying to use the software. I used it before under linux and had no issue with it.
I guess I will try resetting the macbook to default again and see if the problem is gone...

NEA1971 wrote: ↑

Wed Aug 19, 2020 8:57 pm

I was installing Blackhole prior to Audacity,

I don't suppose that you tried Audacity on the Mac before installing Blackhole?