Why AU plugin not usable in some hosts?

Hi everyone!

Our AudioUnit plugin is not usable in some hosts. To demonstrate it, we built a minimal AU plugin project using Projucer with our project’s name, manufacturer, etc., and it is still not usable in same hosts.

Usable hosts are:

  • auval
  • Ableton Live
  • Ardour

Unusable hosts are:

  • Logic Pro X
  • AU Lab

Why those hosts behave differently?

We also tried JUCE’s demo plugin, and it is usable in all hosts. Why?!!

Thanks for a lot!

There are a lot of possible reasons.
Is it listed in the plugin manager of Logic?
Maybe its crashed during initialization, and now disabled.
Or its not build with the same architecture logic uses.

Why those hosts behave differently?

Welcome to the world of audio plugin - development :wink:

Is it listed in the plugin manager of Logic?

Yes, both our actual product and the test project from Projucer can be listed in Logic’s plugin manager, but not listed in the place that use it.

Maybe its crashed during initialization, and now disabled.

Possibly not, as our product can be used in many other plugins…

Or its not build with the same architecture logic uses.

What does “architecture” mean here? Both our product and Logic are in 64-bit. Our product is built using OSX toolkit 10.9, and the minimum test project is using default toolkit.

Different hosts are free to scan and initialise plug-ins however they wish, and they do it in different ways - I wouldn’t rule out something going wrong in a subset of them.

Try adding things to JuceDemoPlugin to make it more like yours, and see when it first fails to load - this should narrow down the problem.

Thanks for your advise.

I modified the JuceDemoPlugin to have same type, channel config and entry function prefix as our actual plugin. After compilation, I replaced our plugin to JuceDemoPlugin’s component folder, and it can be used in Logic Pro X. So the problem is on the supporting config files and resources.