Installation problems trying to open Audacity

[avenir]

I'm trying to figure out what I'm doing wrong in attempting to install Audacity in my Imac running Snow Leopard, OS X, 10.6.8. I made the suggested text with a .cfg extension and put it in an "audacity folder" then sent it to user/application support and it failed to stop audacity from searching for plugins. Then I eliminated only the plugins that caused Audacity to crash until I was able to reach 100%. Then a message would come up saying "Please ensure this has been installed properly" although I did have to close a few more plugins after the 100% mark which I suppose eliminating them would be my next move if I don't get better advise. I put the Audacity icon in app/zapper every time it crashed then I imported a fresh version. I tried .dmg and zip files of versions 1.3.14 Beta and 2.0.3. Any suggestions?

[kozikowski]

First you can safely forget 1.3.x. That's obsolete, no longer supported and may be unstable if you do manage to get it to work.

Then forget the dmg download. I've had troubles with that. Did you have Audacity working before? Why do you have all those filters and plugins?

Koz




.

[billw58]

Note that the correct place for the audacity.cfg file is

Volumes/Users/<your user name>/Library/Application Support/audacity/
or
~/Library/Application Support/audacity/

Do not put it in <your HD name>/Library/Application Support

Audacity will never say "Please ensure this has been properly installed" - that's one of your plug-ins doing that.

You don't need to trash and re-install Audacity each time.

And alternative is to create a folder named "Portable Settings" in the same folder as Audacity (it is a good idea to simply drag the "Audacity" folder from the DMG into Applications). Then put the special audacity.cfg inside the Portable Settings folder. That way you don't have to dig into the user Library folder.

-- Bill

[avenir]

Response to Koz:
I have not gotten Audacity to work as of yet. I have lots of plugins from years of use with Logic 9. My primary interests in Audacity is to extract vocals from mixes to use as templates when I'm asked to redo old material fro new artists.

Response to Bill
I tried the alternative method of creating the Portable Settings folder and put audacity.cfg and plugins.cfg there. This is what I got when I double clicked the Audacity icon:

LiquidSonics; Reverberage
file loading error (file a). audio file could not be read. (unknown format)

then

VocALign Project 3.0.1
buy or quit

then

please ensure this product has been installed properly......

The good news is that its not trying to read all my plugins.

[kozikowski]

My primary interests in Audacity is to extract vocals from mixes

Audacity doesn't have Vocal Isolation.
Audition does.

"Vocal Removal" very rarely works right. It's a simple arithmetic tool that cancels anything common on left and right. For example, if the singer doesn't happen to be in the exact left-right center of the show, it doesn't work.

It also cancels instruments in the middle and results in a mono, not stereo show. This is a fairly typical After then Before.

http://kozco.com/tech/audacity/clips/MysteryTrain.mp3

Koz

[billw58]

Response to Bill
I tried the alternative method of creating the Portable Settings folder and put audacity.cfg and plugins.cfg there. This is what I got when I double clicked the Audacity icon:
LiquidSonics; Reverberage
file loading error (file a). audio file could not be read. (unknown format)
then
VocALign Project 3.0.1
buy or quit
then
please ensure this product has been installed properly......

If you have an audacity.cfg file with the correct content Audacity should not attempt to load any plug-ins. You don't need to put a plugins.cfg file in the Portable Settings folder.
The content of the special audacity.cfg file should be:

Code: Select all

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

-- Bill

[avenir]

Thanks Bill, I'm in! I had the wrong text from another source. As far as using Audacity to extract vocals from a track here is one of many tutorials that says it can be done which I will proceed to find out for myself....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oriz31s3_Fk

[kozikowski]

He's cheating. He started out life with a mixed song and a music-only version of the same song. Most people want to start with one highly-compressed mixed song and perform instrument and vocal separation from that.

Still, I want to see how he does it, because straight cancellation and wave management rarely works.

You can still get burned even with the same technique. You can get the same results he did by using the exact same song he did. Cherry picking the performance.

Koz