I’ve been using Angelo Farina‘s excellent Aurora tools with my students for a number of years now to help with Log Sine Sweep measurements, but they often struggle to get the modules working with Audacity. So, here are the instructions I gave them, this year, to help with that. I’ve shared as it’ll likely be useful for anyone that needs to install them!
Update Jan 2024: Audacity 2.4.1 doesn’t work past Catalina OS on the Mac. Angelo Farina recommends using PlayOnMac to run the Windows version, but that crashed for me. PortingKit seems to work out of the box (except I had to use the latest WINE when asked, which was WS11WineCX21.2.0….the default didn’t seem to work for Aurora), using the default options for everything else. If you have a Mac, install https://www.portingkit.com/ and then follow the Windows instructions below!
- Download the latest version of the Aurora Plugins for Audacity, noting the version number of Audacity they are for:
http://www.angelofarina.it/Public/Aurora-for-Audacity/
The highest version for Mac is 2.4.1 and for Windows is 2.4.1, too (as of Feb 2021)
Here’s a direct link to the latest version (as of Feb 2021): http://www.angelofarina.it/Public/Aurora-for-Audacity/2.4.1/
When you’ve downloaded, extract the files. If you’re using a Mac, the download is the whole Audacity package with Aurora included. Just unzip and drag it into applications – jump to point 5 to get them enabled!
Let’s look at the PC version – your unzipped folder should look something like the figure below:
- Now, install the corresponding version of Audacity (older versions than the latest can be found at https://www.fosshub.com/Audacity-old.html ). I’m going to put it in a non-default folder to help keep track of versions!
- Now, we need to overwrite files in the Audacity install folder with the Aurora + ASIO ones we downloaded and unzipped earlier:
- You should get something like this warning that Windows needs to overwrite files!
- Now run Audacity as usual. We need to enable the Aurora modules/plugins so we can use them. Find the Generate Menu and select Add/Remove Plugins:
- On a PC, you should see an Aurora plugin at the top (there are others, as well!). Click ‘Select All’ and then ‘Enable’ to turn them all on. If you’re using a Mac, you’ll probably see all your VST plugins in here too. I’ll leave it up to you whether you enable them all…..order by Path (click it!) to have them grouped more sensibly allowing you to just enable the things you want!
Above is the view on a PC. Below, is the view on a Mac after I’ve clicked ‘Path’ and found the Aurora modules:
- Now, if you go back to the Generate menu, you’ll see the top entry is Aurora Sine Sweep Generator – this means it’s all working 🙂
Brilliant, this is so useful Bruce, thanks a million!
Sorry, I missed this comment. You’re most welcome, Enda 🙂
Hi Bruce, this is a nice guide!
Regarding point 2, I made available on my web site the legacy standard version of Audacity 2.4.1 for Windows, so users do not need to search it on the Audacity repository: http://www.angelofarina.it/Public/Aurora-for-Audacity/Audacity_2.4.1_standard/
Thanks, Angelo. I’ll include that in my guide. Thanks for the plug-ins and everything else you share 🙂
Might just be me, but does the premade 2.4.1 build crash on Monterey macOS 12.X?
My mac isn’t on that OS, yet, so I’m not sure……if it does, it’ll be likely that Angelo will recompile for a newer version. I’ll check…..
As mentioned by Will above, v2.4.1 doesn’t work above Catelina. Angelo recommends running the windows version instead, using ‘PlayOnMac’ (which uses WINE)