Talk:Effects Preferences

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As Gale points out in his ednote: "We probably won't need the plug-in search list here and in Effect Menu when Register Effects supports all plug-in types."

Register Effects dialog for LADSPA, VST and Audio Unit effect plug-ins

Currently, Nyquist, LV2 and VAMP plug-ins are always scanned for on each Audacity launch, so the above two options do not affect those plug-in types.

Peter 08Jun15: P1: this is now the Manage Effects dialog

• Bill 15Dec2014: Trying the Register Plug-ins dialog here.
  • P2 Does this work here?
    • Gale 31Dec14: Not for me, at least as gut reaction, it's not part of Preferences. It was better where it was - length of that page apart.
    • Gale 05Feb14: I'll demote my "objection" to P2. I can see the sense of having this here now it will (eventually) register all plug-ins. But more ought to be said at Effect Menu#vst than just a link to here. VST/DLL installation (or its unexpectedness) is a big deal for some users.

Gale 06Dec14: Px We probably won't need the plug-in search list here and in Effect Menu when Register Effects supports all plug-in types.

When you use Audacity for the first time, Audacity will scan for supported plug-ins of all types. The Register Effects dialog lists all LADSPA, VST and Audio Unit (Mac OS X) plug-ins that are detected, with checkboxes to enable each plug-in or not. On Windows and Mac, this first time dialog will list a minimum of hard_limiter_1413 and sc4_1882. Those two plug-ins are shipped with Audacity and you will usually want to enable them.

After OK'ing this dialog, all detected Nyquist, LV2 and VAMP plug-ins (including the Nyquist plug-ins shipped with Audacity) will also load, along with the plug-ins chosen in the dialog. If Audacity finds a "shell" VST plug-in that hosts multiple effects, a dialog will appear showing the progress of registering the individual effects in the shell.

After first Audacity launch, the Register Effects dialog only appears again at launch time:

• When Audacity detects new LADSPA, VST or Audio Unit plug-ins (if the check for them is enabled in Plug-in Options)
• When a rescan of plug-ins is enabled in Plug-in Options, which behaves like the "first time" scan above
• When you reset Audacity Preferences, which also behaves like first time scan.

Some unsupported effects may be listed in Register Effects as noted below. On all platforms: The Register Effects dialog may list VST instruments, real-time VST effects that process audio while playing or recording or VST 3 plug-ins. Audacity does not support any of these and therefore these will not load. Also on Windows and Mac OS X: 64-bit plug-ins of any type are not supported, so for example 64-bit VST effects or 64-bit LADSPA effects may be listed but will not load. Also on GNU/Linux: 32-bit systems will have 32-bit versions of Audacity. These versions do not support 64-bit plug-ins of any type, so for example 64-bit VST effects or 64-bit LADSPA effects may be listed but will not load. 64-bit systems will have 64-bit versions of Audacity. These versions do not support 32-bit VST, 32-bit LADSPA or 32-bit VAMP plug-ins - these may be listed but will not load.

If you don't see the dialog as expected, you can use ALT + TAB to task switch to the dialog or press the "Audacity is starting up..." Windows Taskbar button. On Mac, use OPTION + TAB to task switch.

The names of the detected plug-ins will be listed alphabetically for each folder in the Path column. All list items have their checkboxes checked by default, the green checkmark indicating that the plug-in will be loaded. To load all the detected plug-ins, just click OK then Audacity itself will launch. If you deselect some items by mistake, you can quickly re-enable the entire list by choosing the Select All button. The Clear All button lets you disable the entire list. This provides a quick method of then enabling only a few plug-ins in a long list.

To disable loading of a specific plug-in, left-click the item's row or checkbox which removes the checkmark. Similarly, click to re-enable a disabled item. Using the keyboard, press Up arrow, Down arrow, Page Up or Page Down to navigate the list then press Space to check or uncheck the current item's checkbox. Finally, click OK to load the enabled plug-ins and launch Audacity.

The black arrow in the list (as in the image above) indicates which plug-in is currently being loaded.

Providing you click OK and the enabled plug-ins load successfully, then next time you launch Audacity there will be no Register Effects dialog. The plug-ins that you previously enabled in the dialog will appear in the Effect menu, ready to be used when you select them.

If you click Cancel in the dialog or if loading a faulty plug-in causes Audacity to crash, the "Register Effects" dialog will appear again next time you launch Audacity. If Audacity crashed you can therefore use the dialog to experiment by disabling plug-ins that may have crashed. Alternatively, before restarting Audacity you can look in the pluginregistry.cfg file in the Audacity folder for application data. This file will list which plug-ins Audacity had managed to load before it crashed.

Audacity looks in the following locations for plug-ins controlled by the Register Effects dialog

• VST:
  • Windows, Mac and GNU/Linux:
    • The Audacity plug-ins folder in the location Audacity is run from:
      • On Windows and OS X the "Plug-Ins" folder is in the directory where Audacity resides - usually C:\Program Files or C:\Program Files (x86) on Windows or the "/Applications" folder on OS X
      • On Linux you must add a "plug-ins" folder to /usr/bin/ (if you installed a packaged version of Audacity) or to /usr/local/bin (if you installed a self-compiled version of Audacity)
    • The "Plug-Ins" folder in Audacity's folder for application data.
  • Also on Windows:
    • C:\Program Files\Steinberg\VSTPlugins (or C:\Program Files (x86)\Steinberg\VSTPlugins on 64-bit systems).
    • Windows Registry key HKCU\Software\VST\VSTPluginsPath
    • Windows Registry key HKLM\Software\VST\VSTPluginsPath
    • All paths specified by the "VST_PATH" environment variable
  • Also on Mac OS X:
    • ~/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/VST
    • /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/VST
    • All paths specified by the "VST_PATH" environment variable
  • Also on GNU/Linux:
  • All paths listed in the "VST_PATH" environment variable
    • If no VST_PATH environment variable is found, the following are searched:
      • LIBDIR/vst (where LIBDIR is defined at build time)
      • /usr/lib/vst
      • /usr/local/lib/vst
      • ~/.vst

• LADSPA:
  • All operating systems:
    • The path specified by the LADSPA_PATH environment variable
    • The Audacity plug-ins folder
      • On Windows and OS X the "plug-ins" folder is in the directory where Audacity resides - usually C:\Program Files on Windows or the "Applications" folder on OS X.
      • On Linux, the "plug-ins" folder is in usr/share/audacity if you installed an Audacity package supplied by your distribution, or usr/local/share/audacity if you compiled Audacity from source code. Optionally a plug-in folder can be created in the home directory ~/.audacity-files/plug-ins.
  • Also on OS X:
    • ~/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/LADSPA
    • /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/LADSPA
  • Also on GNU/Linux:
    • ~/.ladspa
    • /usr/local/lib/ladspa
    • /usr/lib/ladspa
    • $LIBDIR/ladspa

• Audio Units:
  • Mac OS X:
    • ~/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/Components (user plug-ins)
    • /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/Components (system-wide plug-ins)