• tetra
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Topic: TotalMix settings file location on Mac

What folder(s) is/are used for storing TotalMix FX snapshots and layout presets on a Mac?

I have recently upgraded my audio interface to the Babyface Pro FS. And it is pretty wonderful. The hardware and the software (TotalMix) works really well with my personal MacBook. With my work laptop, however, I am not able to save snapshots or layout presets. On days that I work at home, I want to play music through my studio monitors. And the simplest way is to send it through my audio interface (the Babyface). I have it working, except for some configuration ability.

I would like to set up a couple of different snapshots with different volume settings for monitor and headphones, but I cannot figure out how to save it on my work laptop. There are no errors or indication of failure, but when I click between snapshots, it is obvious that nothing was saved. It all works fine on my personal laptop, so I am pretty sure I know how to perform the steps. I suspect that the folder that it writes the settings to on my work laptop does not have the correct permissions. But I cannot figure out which folder that is. Is it under ~/Library/Preferences somewhere? Another place?

Thanks,
Mark

2 Reply by MC

  • MC
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Re: TotalMix settings file location on Mac

The path is in the manual:

Mac Current User: user/Library/Application Support/RME TotalMix FX

Mac All Users: /Library/Application Support/RME TotalMix FX

Regards
Matthias Carstens
RME

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  • tetra
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Re: TotalMix settings file location on Mac

Thank you! I see it now in the manual. I had been looking in the section of the manual specific to the Mac and I searched for the wrong terms "folder" and "directory".

  • tetra
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Re: TotalMix settings file location on Mac

Well - I am baffled with this software. I'm still unable to get any settings to save and "stick" (restore after quitting the totalmix app and restarting it) on my work laptop.

- On my personal laptop, where it works, I can see the files in the user folder (~/Library.../RME...) being updated when I make changes. On this laptop, there are no files in the "all users" /Library...RME folder.

- On my work laptop where it does not work, there were files in both the /Library and ~/Library locations (all users and specific user). I clicked, saved, modified, etc. on the work laptop, and none of the files in either of those locations changed.

I deleted the "all users" files from /Library... but this did not seem to change anything. Nothing would save. I ended up copying the file last.BabyfacePro<myserialnumber>.xml from my personal laptop to the ~/Library folder on my work laptop. Now it at least opens with those settings and avoids the EXTREMELY HIGH OUTPUT level that makes me say bad words if I forget to adjust the output levels.

Curious stuff. Not overly impressed with the software so far. The hardware is pretty fantastic.

5 Reply by MC

  • MC
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Re: TotalMix settings file location on Mac

You could ask the responsible guy that restricted your work laptop (network admins, IT department...) to allow TM FX to perform these tasks. Might be impossible due to company rules, though.

Regards
Matthias Carstens
RME

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  • tetra
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Re: TotalMix settings file location on Mac

Yes, I am sure the IT people have somehow caused the app to run at some lowered permission level so that it cannot write. The permissions of the files in that folder seem to be normal. Nonetheless, since I can copy in a file manually, I can make it work as needed. I don't need to make modifications once I get the desired settings on that laptop. It is only for playback.

Thanks for the assistance.

7 Reply by maggie33 (edited by maggie33 2023-08-18 04:04:01)

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Re: TotalMix settings file location on Mac

I deleted the "all users" files from /Library... but this did not seem to change anything. Nothing would save. I ended up copying the file last.BabyfacePro<myserialnumber>.xml from my personal laptop to the ~/Library folder on my work laptop. Now it at least opens with those settings and avoids the EXTREMELY HIGH OUTPUT level that makes me say bad words if I forget to adjust the output levels.

-> so your "Store Settings for all users" checkbox in Totalmix FX ->Settings is off?

However, a workaround (if you are really restricted), could be as follows:

- Save a copy of your workspace after making all settings, to your desktop. lets say as "mycoolws.tmws"
- Right click yor file "mycoolws.tmws" in Finder -> Informations
- In "open with" section, select the Totamix.app
- Click on the button "Change all..." (Open all docs of this kind with this app)
- So, you can double-click on any .tmws file, and it always opens in Totalmix.app
- Open the Mac-Settings App -> General -> Login objects
- under the + sign,  Select your tmws file

From now on, Totalmix always opens this file after Login. regardless of any os-related stuff.

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  • tetra
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Re: TotalMix settings file location on Mac

Thanks maggie33! I will give that a try. That seems like a perfect plan. I've never looked at that those login items/objects in the app settings. I have learned something new today!

Thanks,
Mark

  • nack
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Re: TotalMix settings file location on Mac

For anyone curious, here's how you see hidden files in Finder on Monterey and above...

cmd + shift + .

More here:
https://www.macworld.com/article/671158 … hift%20%2B

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Re: TotalMix settings file location on Mac

I'm struggling with the TotalMix settings on a MacBook with dual boot, where I want both systems to use the same settings.

I want to store the TotalMix FX setting folder on another volume that is visible to both systems. Is that possible?

I tried symlinking "/Library/Application Support/RME TotalMix FX" to "/Volumes/RME TotalMix FX" and enabled "Store settings for all users" in Totalmix.

But Totalmix opens with a clean setup as if it couldn't read the settings. I also tried using "Store settings for all users" set to off, and linking to user account Application Support, but with no luck.

How can I solve this?

11 Reply by hselters (edited by hselters 2023-11-15 15:47:13)

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Re: TotalMix settings file location on Mac

What do you mean with dual boot?
Two users on the same install of macOS or two separate instances of macOS on the same computer?

A shared Workspace file should work, it could be in the login items as described above.
It will require saving that workspace anytime you do changes though, to stay in sync.
Maybe there's a more elegant solution.

12 Reply by stephan_martin (edited by stephan_martin 2023-11-15 21:28:25)

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Re: TotalMix settings file location on Mac

Two separate instances of macOS on the same computer. Everything has to be fully automatic. Just being able to manually set Totalmix settings location would be ok, or if the Totalmix application would follow symlinks.

13 Reply by maggie33 (edited by maggie33 2023-11-16 02:24:09)

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Re: TotalMix settings file location on Mac

@stephan_martin

I think i undestand what you mean. had the same issue a time ago. Seems that TMFX does not accept symlinks of its Folder in Application Support. But i did not investigate deeper, as it was not really mandatory for me.

Have two Ideas, you could try:

1) Check (and lower if neccessary) the access rights of symlink itself and the destination (u,g,o - rwx) for all folders and their content?
2) Afaik 4 files are relevant inside the folder: rme.totalmix.preferences.xml, rme.totalmix.presets.xml, rme.totalmix.default.xml and last.<YOURDeviceYOURSerialNo>.xml - maybe a direct symlink to these 4 files helps you out?

Anyhow: You should know that these files are only modifyed if you close a Totalmix Session.

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Re: TotalMix settings file location on Mac

Symlinking only the files did not work and changing access rights did not work, unfortunately.

15 Reply by ramses (edited by ramses 2023-11-17 10:59:56)

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Re: TotalMix settings file location on Mac

stephan_martin wrote:

Symlinking only the files did not work and changing access rights did not work, unfortunately.

If the usual things around symbolic links in Unix are applicable for macOS as well:

Symbolic links have no access rights of their own.

1. to access a "symlink" you need only access to the parent directory (where the symlink is in)
2. you have to inspect the permissions of the target directory where the symlink is pointing to

A symbolic link is like a file containing the "path" to a target file or folder, which can even reside on a different file system.

BR Ramses - UFX III, 12Mic, XTC, ADI-2 Pro FS R BE, RayDAT, X10SRi-F, E5-1680v4, Win10Pro22H2, Cub14
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Re: TotalMix settings file location on Mac

Yes, I have set all files in the directory to 777 just to check if that is the problem. No luck

  • ramses
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Re: TotalMix settings file location on Mac

stephan_martin wrote:

Yes, I have set all files in the directory to 777 just to check if that is the problem. No luck

ok, directory one thing, how about the permissions of the files? Or of the folders above?

BR Ramses - UFX III, 12Mic, XTC, ADI-2 Pro FS R BE, RayDAT, X10SRi-F, E5-1680v4, Win10Pro22H2, Cub14
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Re: TotalMix settings file location on Mac

Yes, tried that too. Directly on the files. No luck

19 Reply by maggie33 (edited by maggie33 2023-11-18 05:45:36)

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Re: TotalMix settings file location on Mac

Symbolic links have no access rights of their own.

not really... a symbolic link, from the point of filesystem, is a "regular file" which can have its own permissions.

@stephan
How does a 

ls -latr "/Library/Application Support/"

look at the moment for the "RME TotalMix FX" symlink?

And a 

ls -latr "/Library/Application Support/RME TotalMix FX"

?

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  • ramses
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Re: TotalMix settings file location on Mac

maggie33 wrote:

Symbolic links have no access rights of their own.

not really... a symbolic link, from the point of filesystem, is a "regular file" which can have its own permissions.

Maybe a different implementation on macOS. As I have currently no Unix System at hand, but worked decades with it, I am pretty sure that the implementation on a real Unix systems is different.

When using google I found this information: "On Linux, the permissions of a symbolic link are not used in any operations; the permissions are always 0777 (read, write, and execute for all user categories), and can't be changed. Symbolic links are handled either by operating on the link itself, or by operating on the object referred to by the link."

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Re: TotalMix settings file location on Mac

Perhaps someone from RME can answer if a solution with symlinks is feasible.

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Re: TotalMix settings file location on Mac

you are right, ramses. but here an example of my symlink, pointed my Logic Loops Library to another Drive.
This works without problems. and this was the cause of my idea with symlink-rights...

maggie@mac Apple Loops % ls -latr
total 24
drwxr-xr-x  13 root    wheel   416  8 Nov 23:28 ..
lrwxr-xr-x   1 maggie  admin    54  9 Nov 04:14 Apple -> /Volumes/Audio SSD/Library/Audio/Apple Loops/Apple
drwxrwxr-x   4 root    admin   128  9 Nov 04:14 .

but thats not the point of the fact, that TM seems to rely that its xml files should stay in the main OSx Volume.
Just tried all the variations: symlinks, hardlinks, and aliases - has to do with inode stuff (but i dont want to explain it here)
Fact: none of them work if you link it to another volume.
And it is independant if you use the AllUsers Option or the Local User (After launch TM looks into /Library/Application Support/RME TotalMix FX/rme.totalmix.main.xml to check wether the option AllUsers or Local User is set)

What worked, is if i rename the dir "/Users/maggie/Library/Application Support/RME TotalMix FX" to "/Users/maggie/Library/Application Support/RME TotalMix FX test" and then symlink RME TotalMix FX to RME TotalMix FX test

So it has to stay in the same base directory. Sure, makes no sense for our scenario.

If i point the link to an external volume, TM even crashes with a cash report if i select a QuickWokspace (which it cannot find)...

snip:

1   libobjc.A.dylib                     0x0000000189531eb4 objc_exception_throw + 60
2   Foundation                          0x000000018b1fb0a4 _NSFileSystemRepresentationWithPath + 452

Maybe TM uses hardcoded paths for this inside? Dunno...

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