Translator™ Troubleshooting

Your Translator™ program should be rock-solid and give you no problems. However, there is always stuff that can go wrong.

Below are some techniques on wiggling Translator™ out of a crashing or sticky state. If none of these help, please contact Chicken Systems Technical Support at [email protected] or call 320-235-9798.

Installation Issues
It should be as simple as inserting your CD into your optical drive and running the installer. If you do not have an optical drive on your system, you either need to get one (an external optical drive via USB is very inexpensive and handy) or create an image of the CD using a computer that does have an optical drive, and moving the image to your non-optical drive computer and mount it.

[Mac-only]: If you are installing any Chicken Systems product from CD on OSX 10.10 or above, you may get an error in the installer, saying "Installations cannot proceed; not all requirements were met."

Here's the fix, it's an Apple/Javascript bug related to the installer (which is Apple-provided).

• Copy the installer off the CD and on your Desktop (or wherever).
• Ctl/Right-click and select 'Open Package Contents'
• A finder window opens with the 'Contents' folder showing, enter into it
• Duplicate the 'distribution.dist' file for backup
• Open 'distribution.dist' with TextEdit
• Edit the '10.4.0' string to have it say '10.04.0'
• Save the document.
• Run the installer from that location; it should work.

The problem is that the installers on the CD's have a filter (that we elected to put into it) so any installation attempt on any OSX before 10.4 Tiger will fail. The problem is that the script compares the string '10.10' >= '10.4.0' and for some reason it thinks it is less than '10.4.0'. (We don't know why they are doing string comparisons for equality in the first place.) We've reported the bug to Apple and we'll see how fast they fix it. In the meantime, this workaround works fine.

We've removed the OS check on all updaters to avoid the problem, as we aren't really expecting anyone to try installing any of our products on OS's 10.3 or below anymore. But the installers off the CD are beyond our control, so until Apple fixes this, the above workaround is necessary.

Authorization Issues
When you start up Translator for the first time, you are greeted with the usual Code Entry screen. We call it the "Reg App".

If You Have Not Received Your CD Yet
If you do not have your CD yet - if you have never received it - enter your UnlockCode and Email Address , leave the KeyCode field be, and click Submit. The Chicken Systems Authorization Server will give you a new KeyCode for that computer.

If You Have Your CD
If you have received your CD, put in your UnlockCode, KeyCode and Email Address, with your CD inserted. It should authorize off the CD and start up the program. As long as your computer remains consistant, this authorization will last the life of your computer.

If you have your UnlockCode and Email Address, but do not have your KeyCode, you can retrieve it at www.chickensys.com/translator/register as long as your registered email address is one you can receive your email on. If you lost any of your codes, please email [email protected] and we will dig them up for you. If your email has changed, just use the old, but registered, email address. It's just for ID anyway. If you'd like us to change your registered email address to your new one, just email [email protected] and let us know.

Chicken System products use the CD as a dongle to authorize the software. Authorization is only mandatory upon initial installation. Further authorizations are required if you are reinstalling or installing on another computer. Otherwise, re-authorizing should never be necessary, although it possibly may be due to computer unknowns or similar. In other words, your CD is necessary to retain in order to insure continual usage of the software. If you lose or damage your CD, it can jeopardize future use of the software. If you have lost or damaged your Translator CD, you need to purchase a replacement for a nominal cost. You can order it at SamplerZone.com; go to this URL:

www.samplerzone.com/catalog/product_info.php?manufacturers_id=10&products_id=47

Please store your Translator CD away for access when you need it, and make a CD copy of it for greater security.

Startup And Operation Issues

[Mac-only, OSX 10.8 and up]: Translator by default starts up with the standard OSX authentication dialog, saying that "IPC Receive wants to make changes". This is normal, it is what allows Translator to read and write proprietary disks (Akai, Roland, etc.). If you don't desire this feature, you can turn it off under Preferences-General-Show Proprietary Drives

Startup Issues
If you have issues starting up Translator™, the first thing to do is to to trash your preferences. Many issues are related to that. Here's how:

• Selecting Operations-Restore Default Options and restarting Translator™, or
• Press the SHIFT button during start up, or
• (Mac-only) Go to /Users/[you]/Library/Preferences and delete the com.chickensys.translator6.plist file
• (Windows-only) Go into the Registry (use RegEdit) and delete the HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/Chicken Systems, Inc./Translator 6 key.

These techniques trash your user preferences; it does not trash your registration codes etc.

Another startup issue is that Translator™ 6 remembers the last location you were at in the browser. Pressing the CONTROL key during startup allows Translator to ignore this setting and just start up without drilling and selecting the last position.

[Mac-only, OSX 10.10 and up]: Translator can stall on startup in OSX 10.10 Yosemite or higher. We investigated, and deleting or moving these (or similar) plug-in files eliminated the problem.

• /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/HAL/Avid CoreAudio.plugin
• /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/HAL/Digi CoreAudio.plugin
• /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/HAL/Hear.plugin

Please note that this is NOT your User Library in your home folder, it is the Library folder on your root drive. Please also note that Apple usually hides these folders -the best way to reach them is to use the Finder’s “Go to Folder...” option on it’s top menu.

The reason this stalls Translator is that CoreMIDI enumerates and loads the contents of the Plug-Ins folder and that those plug-ins may be carried over from an update of an older OSX. Specifically, if you had ProTools installed, it deposits the old plug-ins in the Plug-Ins folder and they don’t work on 10.10 and up, and worse, they stall when enumerated/loaded.

So we recommend you move the plug-ins and see if Translator starts up - it should. Then, run ProTools (if you are using it) and see if that starts up. It should. If you have any issues, please contact us.

Translator™ 6 also supports a series of key pressing during start up that can help. These can be pressed in any combination.

[Windows-only]: There are several similar "switches" you can add to your shortcut to enable these types of options. An example of this usage is in the Target field of your shortcut, disabling MIDI would look like this:

"c:\Program Files\Chicken Systems\Translator 6\Translator 6.exe" /NOMIDI

Other Operation or Translation Issues

Most other issues occur during the conversion stage. Almost always, to report this, use the Bug Reports page and zip up and submit the file you are trying to convert. If that file is on a proprietary disk, use these techniques from the Sending Files section of this document to make a file that can be sent to Bug Reports.

For all other queries, please contact Chicken Systems Technical Support at [email protected] or call 320-235-9798.