Ugh, I'm so fed up with this! Just restored my Mac, and for some reason, Logic keeps acting like I have Silk Vocal installed. Never had it on this machine, but it keeps popping up in the plugin manager saying it can’t validate it. Anyone have any idea why it's doing this?

 

Open the Logic plugin manager, find this plugin in the list, hit Reset and Scan Selection, and then screenshot it and the window with the Audio Unit Validation Result.

If you can't provide that, chances are it is a Channel Strip preset or something. Try opening a template Logic project and see if it does the same thing.

 

please see screenshot

 

Look in your waves plugins folder in main applications menu, as it states that you have this component installed. You can also uninstall components using waves central. Failing this (if you can't find traces of the plugin), remove your AU cache file and do a clean rescan of all plugins. It should be rather simple to resolve.

 

Done all that and still didn’t sort it

 

Well, you know you are not chasing a "phantom plugin". It is related to your prior or current Waves install. Your first post says you restored your Mac, but was not specific if you had actually wiped the disk and reinstalled macOS from clean, or if you restored from a Time Machine backup.

There are multiple locations you can look for Waves leftovers and detritus. Do you use the program Find Any File? It's really helpful for things like this. https://findanyfile.app. You can find a [k] version of it for your current macOS version on the Mac site. It will find files in ~/Library and other hidden files, .plist (property list) files, and more tedious things like them to look for.

As @Diamz mentioned, it might be easier for you to just remove Waves completely, then get rid of any leftovers manually from the following locations, and then doing a new fresh Waves install.

Also, do not forget when you install Waves releases; many of the installation methods have you copy the entire Waves content to your /username/public folder so you can do the offline install method. Don't forget to clean there also. Lots of people leave that folder there, when it is a complete waste of about 10gb SSD space.


Mac

1. Main Plugin Folder
   • Location: /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/Components/
   • Look for .component files related to Waves and delete them.
2. VST/VST3 Plugins
   • Locations:
     • /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/VST/
     • /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/VST3/
   • Look for files like WavesShell.vst or WavesShell.vst3 and delete them.
3. Waves System Files
   • Locations:
     • /Library/Application Support/Waves/
     • /Library/Application Support/Waves Audio/
   • Delete the Waves folder(s).
4. Preferences
   • Location: ~/Library/Preferences/
   • Look for preferences files related to Waves (e.g., com.waves.*.plist) and delete them.
5. Caches
   • Location: ~/Library/Caches/
   • Look for Waves-related cache files and delete them.
6. User Data
   • Location: ~/Library/Application Support/Waves Audio/
   • Remove any user-specific Waves files.

I do not like to recommend "cleaner" apps, but I do use this one: https://www.drbuho.com and it really does work as it is supposed to. Way better than CleanMyMac and others. (often bloat/malware/spyware).

 

Last edited: Jan 21, 2025

It does not find anything.

 

All this time I have been thinking I'm going to have to install; everything again from scratch and the best thing actually is just to remove waves completely and start again...save a lot of time

 

Probably takes 30 minutes max. Then you can really dig in and find all the stuff you do not even use and delete it all too. Instruments you never use, gigs of lame impulse responses, multiple copies of Waveshells and VST related files inside bundles in Applications folder. They install gbs worth of trash. Once you have it perfect, do your time machine backup. My V13 install is about 5gb total. The compressed release before install is over 10gb, and only gets larger from there.

 

Last edited: Jan 22, 2025