AUv3 Support

[olafgeibig]

Background

Since the advent of M1 iPads, more and more iOS audio plugins appear on the Mac App Store on a M1 Mac since the iOS plugin developers usually just have to check the Mac option and their plugin is also generated for Mac and published to the Mac App Store. It‘s also relatively easy to generate the plugin as an Intel AUv3 and some developers are doing that, too. There is a growing number of great music plugins on iOS.

Problem

The problem is that on iOS AUv3 is the standard but on the Mac most plugin hosts do not support AUv3 and if they support AUs it’s usually AUv2. I think the only DAWs that support AUv3 is Reaper, Logic Pro and Garage Band. For the users of all other DAWs it would be neat to have a wrapper plugin for AUv3. For M1 Mac users that want to run AUv3 plugins in a live setup they have no alternative to Apple‘s Main Stage but Element could be one. Moog, for instance, released their excellent synths also bundled with a VST wrapper but that‘s an exception.

Feature

I’ve seen there is AUv3 configuration in the source code but it seems to be inactive. I think it’s there because JUCE supports AUv3. Unfortunately I have no skills for plugin development or knowledge of JUCE… Would it be enough to enable AUv3 in the sources and because of JUCE‘s AUv3 support, Elements would then host AUv3? I could try that myself but I think it would be an interesting feature for the official Element distribution, too. So, please if it is just a matter of configuration, please enable AUv3.

[enkaytee]

I support this request - if it's at all possible to include AUv3 support it would be an incredibly useful feature and make Element a real player in the plugin host / DAW market.

[eakwarren]

I second the request. https://developer.apple.com/documentation/audiounit

[smrde]

Any news on AUv3 support?
I support this request as well. AUv3 support would be a great addition.

[mfisher31]

I agree!

[mfisher31]

Will check it out soon. JUCE has AU3 so it shouldn't be a big deal to get working.

[enkaytee]

Brilliant...!

[mfisher31]

I was just looking through the JUCE AudioUnit code. AUv3 should already be working in the .47 branch. https://builds.kushview.net

I don't think I'd want to go updating or messing with JUCE in the 46 release tree. .47 is pretty solid though. There's definitely some players out there using it in the real world.

[mfisher31]

Re-open if auv3 not working in dev branch

[smrde]

Just tested element-osx-0.47.0_r475 on a m1 Macbook Pro. Scanned all the plugins with the standalone version but none of the AUv3 were detected. Also the AU version of the Element can not pass the test in Logic Pro 10.7.4. It gave out the error "FATAL ERROR: OpenAComponent: result: -1,0xFFFFFFFF".

[smrde]

I was wondering whether recompiling the Element version 0.47 with the juce-7.0.2-osx and Xcode 14.0 will fix it.
I just compiled the AudioPluginHost demo that came in juce-7.0.2-osx with Xcode 14.0. The AudioPluginHost demo detected all the AUv3 plugins.
I had attempted the same few weeks ago with the earlier versions of Juce 7 and Xcode 13 but at that time it didn’t work. The AudioPluginHost demo at that time did not recognize any of the AUv3 plugins.

[mfisher31]

@smrde - Element is using juce 7.0.2. My builder is xcode 12.... maybe that's the problem?

[mfisher31]

@smrde - is it possilbe you're running Element in Intel mode? The nightly builder is cranking out universal binaries.

[smrde]

@mfisher31 - I just tried element-osx-0.47.0_r477, still no AUv3 detection. Also verified with activity monitor, Element is running as Apple kind.

[olafgeibig]

@mfisher31 where to find the nightly builds? Would love to test them. I‘m so excited that my request had been answered - cool stuff.

[smrde]

@mfisher31 where to find the nightly builds? Would love to test them. I‘m so excited that my request had been answered - cool stuff.

link to nightly builds is in this post
#510 (comment)

[olafgeibig]

Oh, I missed that, thanks. Anyway, I have the same problem with r477. No AUv3s that are installed through the Mac App Store are found while other hosts do. Probably these AUv3s are not scanned? @mfisher31 if you don’t own any App Store AUv3s you could test it with the free „MIDI Tape Recorder“ from the App Store. Honestly, I don’t know where such AUv3s are being installed. They are not in the canonical /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/Components directory.

[mfisher31]

Thanks @olafgeibig . Yeah I'm gonna be doing some real testing today or tomorrow. I'm thinking the SDK on my machine is too old. Hope that's the case, because AUv3 is defintely in the JUCE code base and it should "just work" somehow.

[mfisher31]

Might work in this build:
https://ci.lvtk.org/job/element/job/element-osx/13/s3/download/element-osx-0.47.0_r485.dmg

Sorry for all the jumping around. CI is all being moved here: https://ci.lvtk.org

[mfisher31]

And the working issue for this:
issue: https://gitlab.com/kushview/element/-/issues/510
pull: https://gitlab.com/kushview/element/-/merge_requests/554

[olafgeibig]

Hmm... don't know if it's all migrated to gitlab or not. So, I comment here too

Well, I tested r485 and r503, I did a full rescan of plugins but my installed AUv3 were not found. I also did not see anything in the UI mentioning AUv3.

[olafgeibig]

@mfisher31, any updates?

[steveschow]

I hope that Element will also be built as an AUv3 plugin version...including multiple midi input ports, which are a major feature of AUv3 and this would be xtremely useful for using Element within LogicPro

[mfisher31]

Converted back to an issue:
#721

I do want to get this done as well.... eventually. JUCE, didn't seem to support it except on iOS. Probably will take another look after 1.0 and I get started on CLAP support.