Universal 64/32bit AU fails to load on Catalina, any way around?

[Vasily]

Hi,

A long time ago I started using Ambience reverb (http://magnus.smartelectronix.com), it comes as a 10-year old universal AU for 32 and 64 bits. On Mojave and before it it worked perfectly.

Unfortunately, I got a Mac which came with Catalina from factory and cannot be downgraded. To my surprise, old projects using Ambience reverb won't load. Reaper is able to find Ambience AU, but it thinks it's a 32-bit one and fails to load it.

Is there something I can do to get it working? The AU actually contains 64-bit build, but for some reason it's not able to execute it.

Of course, I've mailed the authors of the plugin, but they didn't update it for 10 years, so really not a lot chance they'll do something.

[creator31]

Hi Vasily,

I've got a new Catalina mac, and managed to get Ambience reverb installed and running fine. It doesn't have the fancy GUI though. I did it using some quarantine Terminal commands I found (maybe on this forum).

First put the plugin file (Ambience.component) into a new folder on the Desktop. Then open Terminal.

Type:

cd

and drag your folder onto the Terminal window (there must be a space after "cd").

Then:

sudo xattr com.apple.quarantine *

It will ask you to type your password (which you won't see on the screen).

When done, drag the plugin file to the Plug-Ins/Components folder. After that, for some reason, you have to log out of your mac before the plugin gets picked up by the system.

Hope you get it to work. :-)

[Vasily]

Originally Posted by creator31

It doesn't have the fancy GUI though.

it never had it on Mac, so that's perfectly okay.

I removed the quarantine stuff by `xattr -r -d com.apple.quarantine Ambience.component`, but then it still loaded the x86 version. I even removed the x86 arch from the binary, but still no luck.

And then I remembered that High Sierra+ has a bug when you need to reboot to see changes in AU system. so, that was my missing step, now Ambience works.

many thanks for your time and help, it saved me from a disaster.
best regards, Vasily