vst-bridge crash

[chris brown]

I'm a new and naive user on an older iMac running panther OS. Audacity works fine
but I wanted Freeverb2, so put the VST enabler in my aucacity plugins folder. Relaunching
audacity gave me a cute pinwheel and a trip to Force Quit. Actually I first put in what
I thought was the Freeverb plugin and the enabler, same crash. took out the plugin, crash.
It doesn't seem completely unusual for there to be some problems, but any insight would
be nice (OK, "upgrade your OS" I figured out). Also for my peace of mind, should the
VST enabler be a *.so file? and shouldn't VST plugins have .vst extensions? What should
a (working) freeverb plugin file look like, extension-wise?
thanks,
Chris

[kozikowski]

[vst-bridge.so]

That is the filename. That's a copy/paste from my desktop display.

It's possible that people who have plugin problems really have Audacity Version Problems. Were you able to get lame to work?
Are you running 1.2.6 or 1.2.4? 1.2.5 is strictly for the Intel people.

I don't do the Audacity install like it says and I seem to have far fewer problems than others. I make a fresh Audacity folder on the desktop and drag all the decompressed Audacity download files (Languages, nyquist, etc) over to it. Then I drag that newly filled folder over to the /Applications folder and run Audacity from there.

I don't have Panther any more, but all these tools worked for years before Tiger. Are you filling up your hard drive? Info your System Drive. You need at least 10% free space after you finish production.

Koz

[chris brown]

koz,
this is very helpful. I'll check the version numbers and retry
as per your method for getting the files.
BUT...
what about Gverb? I've downloaded that but I'm looking
at a .pkg installer that for all I know will spray updates
and changes who knows where all over my filesystem.
a) is Gverb benign, given that it probably works OK?
b) should I worry about this installer? I'd rather have more control.

Thanks a ton,
Chris

[kozikowski]

<<<I've downloaded that but I'm looking
at a .pkg installer that for all I know will spray updates
and changes who knows where all over my filesystem.>>>

It can do that, but Mac-OS tends to not change any system level files when it does. If it tries, it will ask you for administrator permissions. Say no and do something else. If you don't change the system, then you should be able to just take the offending software package out if you don't want it any more. It doesn't, or shouldn't, affect anything else. This is the kind of thing that lets Audacity 1.2.x and 1.3.x exist on the same machine.

Of course, if you're trying to record from Something Magic and then throw a bunch of other curves into the audio pathway, then you get dueling third-party software and that's never very pleasant. There are known instabilities between USB devices, Audacity, and WireTap; all three of which are struggling to change the audio pathway at the same time. Take them all out and the system returns to normal.

Koz

[chris brown]

Thanks for the encouragement, Koz...

I installed the whole LADSPA plugins as the wiki suggested into
Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/LADSPA/
but they don't seem to show up in audacity unless there's a way to invoke
them I don't know about.
The other option would be to put them, or some of them (they're .so files)
into the audicity plugins folder...
Cripes, it worked!
well, there seem to be a million of these ladspa effects, guess
I can read about 'em on the web and just drag them into audacity
plugin directory as needed.
If I'm missing anything, please set me straight,
meantime I guess I'm set. Thanks for all your selfless support!
Chris