Audio plug-ins not working any more

Before looking at the Etre output (below), this exchange with the support guy at Cherry Audio may help cut to the chase:

I made some time this weekend to run a test to see if I could help any further with this - I have a 2011 Macbook Pro with a few different partitions, all running 10.12.6. One partition was a relatively fresh install, and the other, a rather old one. 

I don't have Studio One v4, but a customer who experienced this issue last week was using REAPER, and I noticed a couple of others on their forums mention this issue around the same time. So, I decided to use REAPER as my testing DAW.

The relatively old partition of 10.12.6 is in a good state, everything works as it always did, so this was my baseline. The relatively new partition was working when I tested an initial install of a Cherry Audio VST3i and AUi earlier in March. OSX available updates had been run (see attached screenshot from the non-updated partition), and sure enough, REAPER didn't see the VST3i at all and could see the AUi plug-ins but did not load them. I should mention that Ableton Live 9 was able to see and launch the plug-ins. Lastly, I ran PM Chainer and tried to load up a Cherry Audio plug-in. It crashed, and I discovered a curious error in Console:

Error loading /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/VST/DCO-106.vst/Contents/MacOS/DCO-106: dlopen(/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/VST/DCO-106.vst/Contents/MacOS/DCO-106, 262): Symbol not found: __os_crash_fmt

 Referenced from: /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/MobileDevice.framework/Versions/A/MobileDevice

 Expected in: /usr/lib/libSystem.B.dylib

 in /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/MobileDevice.framework/Versions/A/MobileDevice

I quickly ran a couple of paths from the error message and found myself in a jungle of possibilities. I have Xcode installed on that machine; this was one lead that could be possible (I might have used homebrew to install, which apparently can cause some issues?). It appears as though there is an underlying library linking issue that some applications seem to handle and others don't. 

I know this isn't a solution to your issue, but hopefully, this information can be helpful in the pursuit of one.

[Cherry screenshot here]

-----

So, having read that, I likewise ran PM Chainer with the Console open, and bingo!

default 08:12:00.037966 +0100 PM-Chainer Error loading /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/VST/Mercury-4.vst/Contents/MacOS/Mercury-4: dlopen(/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/VST/Mercury-4.vst/Contents/MacOS/Mercury-4, 262): Symbol not found: __os_crash_fmt

Referenced from: /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/MobileDevice.framework/Versions/A/MobileDevice

Expected in: /usr/lib/libSystem.B.dylib

in /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/MobileDevice.framework/Versions/A/MobileDevice

Same thing with another plugin (effect rather than instrument) from another maker:

default 08:36:35.798724 +0100 PM-Chainer Error loading /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/VST/Eventide/UltraChannel.vst/Contents/MacOS/UltraChannel: dlopen(/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/VST/Eventide/UltraChannel.vst/Contents/MacOS/UltraChannel, 262): Symbol not found: __os_crash_fmt

Referenced from: /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/MobileDevice.framework/Versions/A/MobileDevice

Expected in: /usr/lib/libSystem.B.dylib

in /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/MobileDevice.framework/Versions/A/MobileDevice

Anyway, the Etre report - yes, it's out of date hardware and software, but it works in other respects well enough for me to make a living using it. Hope you can see something out of that together with the other material that makes sense:

<script src="https://pastebin.com/embed_js/wNxMZgds"></script>

@BDAqua - this is the issue, I am sure of it.

/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/MobileDevice.framework/Versions/A/MobileDevice is dated 9 March 2002 at midnight (I'm safely tucked up in bed at that time – the update is not something I would have done).

Permissions are -rwxr-xr-x owned by root of course

TimeMachine confirms this - the previous entry was Created/Opened/Modified in October 2019.

The new version is 15MB - the old one is 4.5MB! What has changed?

Now how to replace this - TM won't allow me to do it. However, I can find it in the CCC SafetyNet for my nightly backups and I've rescued it from there so it won't get overwritten.

I'm tempted to

sudo cd /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/MobileDevice.framework/Versions/A/

mv MobileDevice MobileDevice.bad

cp ~/Documents/Temp/MobileDevice ./MobileDevice

but I am frightened of producing knock-on effects which might prevent a boot. I really don't know what other bits and pieces depend on it. It doesn't seem to have a hashed code signature so that won't break anything...

BDAqua wrote:

What makes you think this is the problem?

The fact that the timings coincide (update to MobileDevice and plug-ins ceasing to function).

I can reproduce this message on the console when I try to load one of the offending plugins,

The support staff at one of the vendors also see this message on a system with the same OS and updates, but not withour the update.

The symptom I am describing has also been experienced by other users with similar setups.

The message does not appear when I load a "good" plug-in.

FWIW, Eventide have confirmed that it is a bug introduced by Apple in their upgrade to the MobileDevices framework. They suggest an upgrade to 10.13, which I'm reluctant to do at the moment, despite having safe copies of the boot disk, etc.

@BDAqua - a good thought. Sadly, no change, so I don't think it's something that I've added to the system that's caused this problem.

Don't seem to be able to get <script> to work.