I’m fully aware that this particular problem probably has more to do with mac OSX than renoise, but since I’m sure there are people here who have encountered the same problem, I’m posting this here instead of some mac user’s forum. I am also a total newbie when it comes to making electronic music, so please have patience
I’ve been trying to teach myself to use Renoise for a couple of days now. Today I started searching for some nice free vst instruments, but most of them just wouldn’t work. Some came with their own installer (.dmg) or had the proper file extension (.vst) and worked just well after being dropped to the right folder (library/audio/plug-ins/vst/). Most however had no file extension what so ever and OSX wouldn’t recognize them. I tried to drop them to the vst -folder, but renoise wouldn’t recognize them either. I also tried to add an assumed file extension (I tried both .dmg and .vst), but the plug-ins still refused to show up in Renoise. All the plug-ins I downloaded were mac versions, so I’m not trying to install .exe files here
I managed to install Crystal, Elek7ro and TAL-BassLine and they work flawlessly, but for example claw and Delay Lama just won’t co-operate. Installing windows is not an option for me. I’m running out of ideas here
I’m running Mac OS X 10.5.6 on a 2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo Macbook
There is much confusion when it comes to Macintosh VST/VSTi due to the history of the platform.
Up until 2006 all Macintosh were built using PowerPC processors. If you have a G4 or G5 then you have a PowerPC. Nowadays, all Macintosh computers are built using Intel x86 processors.
A lot of old Plug-ins were made before 2006 and never updated. These plug-ins are known as PowerPC specific. These old plug-ins will only work on a G4 or a G5. They will not work on newer Intel Macs.
Universal binary Plug-ins are compiled in a special way which allow them to operate on both PowerPC and Intel Macs. The symbol used to indicate this feature is the Yin-Yang. These types of plug-ins work on all Macs.
As PowerPC dies out, Macintosh Plug-ins are expected to become Intel Only. These newer Plug-ins will not work on PowerPC machines.
Oh boy… I kinda did suspect that this might have something to do with the old pre-intel macs, but kept convincing myself that it couldn’t be that bad. Some of those plug-ins are seriously out of date. I guess I’ll just have to keep looking for newer ones.
Funny, I’d thought it would be tough for the users of older macs to find compatible plug-ins - not the other way around.
