Level Playing Field doesn't work on Apple Silicon

[Dave P]

I was building the QLab file for a show next weekend and started up that awesome "Level Playing Field" script to fix audio levels.  I soon found out it doesn't work on Apple Silicon machines, and when looked on the Cookbook site and saw the disclaimer at the top of the page.  Any chance someone has updated the script to work on Apple Silicon?  I'll be exporting and importing with my laptop for now, but I can't imagine going back to manually balancing levels.  I absolutely love that script.

Dave

[micpool]

There are a lot of articles online which describe how to get intel compiled cli tools to run under rosetta on apple silicon.

I have no idea if they will work in this case, and I don't understand enough to know whether there might be unfortunate side effects so I'm not currently going to test or recommend this course of action.

If someone more terminal savvy than me wants to have a go and see if they can get Audionuma's r128x cli tool to work under Rosetta, that would be cool and it may be possible to include the fix in the Cookbook.

Mic

[Dave P]

Thanks Mic.  It is an amazing tool, you have saved me countless hours of work with this.  I'll be exporting and importing from my desktop to my non-silicon laptop until I upgrade my laptop, I don't look forward to life without this tool.  Hopefully someone figures out how to get that tool working eventually, that is way out of my skillset lol.

Thanks!

[micpool]

I've just realised I have had this working on my M1 Macs since May.

Dave, can you try this

After installing r128x-cli in /usr/local/bin, as currently described in the article, right click on it and open in terminal. Reply to another warning dialog, checking that you really want to open it by clicking Open. When it runs in the terminal window, close terminal. It will then open from the QLab shell script without further problems. 

Mic

[micpool]

Here's a screen recording of it working as expected in QLab5 on an M1 Mac Studio.

[Dave P]

Thank you!  I'll give this a shot

Dave

[micpool]

Let me know how you get on!

Mic

[Dave P]

Mic -

I installed r128x-cli in /usr/local/bin as per the instructions, using the file included in your sample workspace.  I opened it in terminal, which worked fine.  I then opened a QLab 5 file which I had used the tool on the old Mac. It opened three of the warning pop up windows rather than one, and did not adjust any levels. The script didn’t make it to the end as I never got the ending pop up that says it is done. I didn’t have time to troubleshoot it much tonight, I’ll do a restart of the machine and try it again tomorrow. Any thoughts?  I can also get the OS version if that would help (I didn’t do the update that came out today, nor will I until Sam gives the OK).

Thanks,

Dave

[micpool]

Thanks Dave,

Very useful to know it’s still not working for you.

When you say three of the warning poo ups, do you mean a system warning or the first script dialog. 

If you delete (or comment out) the try and end try in the script, you should get an error message when the script fails, which might give us a clue as  to what is going on.

Mic

[Dave P]

It was the pop  up that normally comes up when you run the script, it warns you that it is about to adjust levels and you have to click the OK button to proceed.  I got three of those pop ups all at once.  I clicked OK on each, one at a time, then the script just stopped.  I'll take out the try and end in the script and see if that helps.  

Thanks,

Dave

[micpool]

The only way I can think you would get 3 pop ups at once would be by having three copies of the script with the same trigger. If you open window/workspace status/triggers you will see if there is more than 1 cue with the same trigger. (If it's not obvious from your cue list). But that's not what's stopping it working. If the script ran correctly it would just complete 3 times with the second dialog,  and the levels would change the first  time as  as expected.

The attached workspace has the try end try removed and only has a single instance of the script and works on my M1 Macs.  If close QLaband run this workspace what error do you get? 

Mic

[micpool]

So today I borrowed a 2020 M1 Macbook Air which had only be used for standard office stuff.

Installed r128x-cli, opened in terminal to clear the security hurdles.

Everything worked fine.

Dave, did you manage to run the workspace in my previous post and get an error message?

Mic

[Dave P]

Mic - sorry I didn’t respond sooner, I’ve been tied up in a production and haven’t made it back to the project with that in it. I probably won’t dive into it for another month, building tech for another production currently. I’ll loop back when I get back to it. Sounds like it should work, which is GREAT news. I love that code. 

Thanks, Dave

[WillMcD]

For whatever it is worth, my experience matches that of Mic - on a machine I had not run the script on I grabbed a license for Qlab5, pasted the script into place, and ran the script in the terminal. Once closing Terminal I booted up Qlab5, edited line 4 to look for Qlab 5, not Qlab 4, compiled and ran the script. On my M2 Air it works without issue - One time I did see the warning pop up twice as you reported Dave, but it ran successfully nonetheless and I think that was me triggering it twice by mistake in quick succession more than anything. I also compared the LUFS of the audio file, and what the script set the output to in my file, and that lined up as expected for multiple files in multiple projects.

Will

[micpool]

Returning to this. I still can't get it not to work.

I've just installed it on a clean install of Sonoma on an M1 MacBook Pro.

The only difficulty I had is that there is no bin directory in /usr/local so I had to go there and make a new folder and name it bin.

I am completely baffled why even the original developer of 128x-cli has said it's incompatible with modern mac OS's and has frozen development, or why people can't get it to work on  M1 Macs when I have level playing field  working fine on every Apple Silicon computer I own on every OS they will run

Any one have any ideas?

[WillMcD]

Unsure why it seemingly works consistently for me either on an M2 Air. However, it seems like there is an updated version that is compatible with modern MacOS. I wonder if someone is able to compile the CLI version and compare to the example included with the cookbook article. At the very least people could use the GUI to manually get the levels as a start.

https://github.com/ShikiSuen/r128x

[Dave P]

I have only one computer that it will not work properly on, an M1 iMac.  I've tried all of micpool's suggestions and nothing worked.  I always have my Macbook Pro with me, so I just use that to modify the file whenever I need it.  Every other Mac it runs fine.  That makes me think it may be a configuration issue on the one Mac I'm having issues with, perhaps a software installed on it conflicts.  Not sure.  It's much easier to work around the issue at this point, I just use my laptop at that theatre when I have a show were I need to level files.  

The OS has been updated a couple of times since I last tried to make it work, I could try again, but honestly the workaround doesn't take much time.  It also puts a backup of the showfile on my laptop, which is never a bad thing to do.

Dave

On Tuesday, October 3, 2023 at 6:07:31 AM UTC-4 micpool wrote:

[micpool]

Thanks Dave,

Just to Clarify, does this mean you have seen this working on Apple Silicon, and that your M1 iMac is the only Apple Silicon conputer that won't run it, or d you mean that your iMac is the only Apple Silicon computer you have tried it on?

Mic