I used to run Csound from the build directory in order to test new features and debug. Then this quit working because I would get an error to the effect that libFLAC-8.dll couldn't be loaded. I tried many ways to debug this but nothing worked until now.

I ran the dependency walker on Csound in my build directory and saw that libsndfile reported a missing dependency on libFLAC-8.dll (which I do not have; indeed, I suspect it is statically linked to libsndfile). When I have run the dependency walker on Csound in the installation directory, this missing dependency is not reported and indeed libsndfile doesn't even report a dependency on libFLAC-8.dll.

So I copied libsndfile into my build directory and the problem went away.

Some of you may recall that I reported some months ago problems running CsoundVST in Reaper. I copied libsndfile into the Reaper bin directory and CsoundVST started working.

Maybe this quirk applies to other uses of Csound as a plugin and even to other operating systems.

Regards,

Mike