Stereo Tool

I bought the full version of Stereo Tool but can't get it to work. I want to use it with Adobe Audition on OS X (El Capitan). When I activate it via the VST section in the effects, it shows a blank screen and/or the whole program crashes. What could be the problem?

The Mac version is not very stable yet... which is why there's a warning on the download page. I'm planning to hire someone to fix this soon.

The empty window should show a 'Show GUI' checkbox. If you click on that, the normal GUI should open.

Edit: I just remember that several people have said that the update to El Capitan caused issues, not only for Stereo Tool but for several applications, and this is apparently related to some security updates. So, that might be the problem here. I don't have a solution for it yet though...

No, there`s nothing showing up. Just an empty window with an apply button. If I click on it Audition crashes. Maybe I don't understand the word "experimental" right.

So should I claim a refund (140EUR for a software that doesn't work at all is quite much) or wait for a stable Mac version? How long could this last? One week, one month, one year? I know that Mac is very special towards software. But it is also a very common OS in audio production.

And - OK - a new OS causes problems. But I have several audio tools in use that are from single developers or small software companies. And they are working.

Would be a pity when I could not use your software. It`s great, what I hear.

The problem is that I used WxWidgets to quickly convert my Windows-GUI to Mac. And it turns out that WxWidgets is very picky. And that it doesn't work properly at all with the latest OS update. It works in Audition on older Mac OS's, and it works perfectly fine in Linux. But I got more complaints about El Capitan.

The other thing is that if I want to program it natively, the Mac GUI system Cocoa forces me to use a programming language (Objective C) that I don't know, and I really don't want to have to learn a new programming language just to do a make a single GUI - after which I will never need it again.

The problem is further made difficult by this: VST 2.4 (the plugin version that I'm using, and which is perfectly fine to use on Windows and supported by nearly all hosts) only supports the old deprecated Carbon Mac GUI API in 32 bit. Beause Carbon isn't available in 64 bits, the 64 bit version of VST 2.4 doesn't support it but it uses Cocoa instead. Which means that you would have to make 2 separate GUI's. To fix this issue, some hosts such as Reaper are now also supporting Cocoa in 32 bits using some hacks. I've seen that some VST plugins are even using tricks such as creating a Carbon window and then 'floating' a Cocoa window on top of it (while continuously checking the position of the parent window and moving the Cocoa window with it). Since 99% of my users is currently on Windows, I really haven't spent much time on this yet.


I'll quickly try if compiling with a new WxWidgets version fixes the problem. If not, I'll give you a refund, since I cannot promise any date yet.

By the way, it's not just Stereo Tool:
AVID and Adobe warn against El Capitan update: http://www.broadcastnow.co.uk/techfacil ... 85.article
MS Office crashes in El Capitan, update doesn't fix it, Microsoft blames Apple: http://www.macworld.com/article/2993132 ... pitan.html

The version with the new wxWidgets version is working, it's almost 5 AM here so I'm going to bed... will run a beta build tomorrow.

Can you try if this helps? I'm not getting any warnings at all when I load, use and close the 32 bit VST in Reaper.

VST 32: http://www.stereotool.com/download/ster ... 03.vst.zip
VST 64: http://www.stereotool.com/download/ster ... 03.vst.zip
Stand alone: http://www.stereotool.com/download/ster ... ETA003.zip
Command line: http://www.stereotool.com/download/ster ... 83_BETA003

If things are still failing, it could also be Curl.

Thanks for the work, but this doen't fix it (in my case). But the blank screen now has a different color...

Hm... can you make a screenshot? Just wondering what you see exactly. Don't think that it will help but it's worth a try...

OK, I got it. It shows up now (I had the old version). But there`s another screen in front of the plugin that cannot be closed (when I close it your plugin closes too).

The problem is now: when I activate the plugin (vst, 64bit), the sound is terrible. It`s faulting (I don't know if this is the right word - German: zerren). There`s more dynamic, but (in all presets I tested) it sounds broken.