Hi
i'm a proud new user of ableton live. i got to say that i switched to mac so i really don't know help.
i am running ableton on a macbook pro, osx 10.4, fireface-400. it is an educational licence but i think that it should work like the full version.
my problem is that i can't see any plug-ins but the APPLE-AU-Plugins. I have installed some free plugins for testing but noone worked.
it works fine on pc.
thanks for your help.
No Plugins.
hey Looom, I'm reposting this post of mine from another plugin related post, I hope it is useful to you... the original question was about using VST's that were used on a PC on OSX. The second half of my reply might apply more to your situation.
Actually, your issues could be two fold here... firstly you cannot use a VST from windows unless it was a universal binary vst. Secondly, as I understand it, Ableton only supports VST 2.3 in OS X, so therefore any VST's that are earlier than this (most all found on KVR, etc. etc.) are not going to work in OSX. I have found an audio unit wrapping program made by Fxpansion which will wrap a vst into an audio unit, but it is pretty lame because it will only handle VST 2.3, and most 2.3 vst's are being converted into unibins (universal binaries) anyway.
Your other issue is that yes, you need to turn vst/audio unit support in ableton by going to preferences and under the preferences and turning audio unit support on (even if you dont' have any AU's, this is good because there are garageband AU's you can use with ableton), and then turning on the use VST plug in system folder button. Then rescan your plugins and see what comes up. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but on mac, if you are coming from PC, you're not going to be able to use %99 of the VST's that you've come to love on the PC, as most people writing VST's right now don't see to be converting them to UNIBIN, which is VERY lame.
I hope this helps... I wrote this because I've had the same issue. If you want do dig up some good free AU's and mac compatible VST's, you can search kvraudio.com and restrict your search to free and universal binary plugins.
Good luck...
Actually, your issues could be two fold here... firstly you cannot use a VST from windows unless it was a universal binary vst. Secondly, as I understand it, Ableton only supports VST 2.3 in OS X, so therefore any VST's that are earlier than this (most all found on KVR, etc. etc.) are not going to work in OSX. I have found an audio unit wrapping program made by Fxpansion which will wrap a vst into an audio unit, but it is pretty lame because it will only handle VST 2.3, and most 2.3 vst's are being converted into unibins (universal binaries) anyway.
Your other issue is that yes, you need to turn vst/audio unit support in ableton by going to preferences and under the preferences and turning audio unit support on (even if you dont' have any AU's, this is good because there are garageband AU's you can use with ableton), and then turning on the use VST plug in system folder button. Then rescan your plugins and see what comes up. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but on mac, if you are coming from PC, you're not going to be able to use %99 of the VST's that you've come to love on the PC, as most people writing VST's right now don't see to be converting them to UNIBIN, which is VERY lame.
I hope this helps... I wrote this because I've had the same issue. If you want do dig up some good free AU's and mac compatible VST's, you can search kvraudio.com and restrict your search to free and universal binary plugins.
Good luck...