What folder are your plugins in?
This post, albeit from 11 years ago, suggest they should be in /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/LADSPA
I couldn’t find anything specific regarding LADSPA and Mac in the manual
Perhaps architecture mismatch 32 bit LADSPA or PPC?
To check, in a Terminal window, please you run
file ~/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/LADSPA/SOME_Plugin.dylib
(Ardour also accepts .so extension on macOS/X)
Well, it’s funny you bring this up, because this is a part of my confusion. -A “LADSPA” directory has never existed on my machine, and searching for any of the LADSPA v1 plugins I had used years ago with Ardour 2.8.16 (which I still have, and all the plugins are still available) yields no results. (I have two /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins folders by the way, -that one, plus another one for the user “User” (i.e., /Users/User/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins), -and both do not and have not contained LADSPA folders/plugins ever.)
-So does Ardour 2.8.16 contain them internally somehow? I wish I could remember how I acquired those plugins in the first place, but that would have been over 10 years ago now…
I have an Intel Core i7, 15" MacBook Pro from 2011 (A1286) running OS X 10.6.8 (Snow Leopard) if that info. helps any of you guess where these plugins might be.
The hardware does not matter. OSX 16.6 allows you to run PPC, 32bit intel and 64bit intel software regardless of the actual hardware.
So the interesting part is what architecture the LADSPA plugin files are compiled for.
Since you mentioned Ardour 2.8.16, I assume the plugins are not multi-arch, but only made for 32bit or PPC. And you now use 64bit/intel Ardour.
Also check /usr/local/lib/ladspa and /usr/lib/ladspa, Ardour 2.x also used those unix paths on macOS. Perhaps you have also set LADSPA_PATH environment variable?
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-Not in here:
There are a lot of .dylib files in here, none of which seem to immediately suggest that they are the TAP and CAPS plugins, although maybe some are:
I’ve spent some time using an application called “EasyFind” to search for these plugin files, but with no success. -Searching various terms, names, associated tags, author names, etc… -And file names, file contents, hidden/invisible files, etc… -Nothing.
Use find on the commandline instead.
sudo find / -iname '*FILENAME*' 2>/dev/null
Replace FILENAME with caps, c\* for the C* plugins, tap, etc. Leave the leading and trailing asterisk though.
See if that comes up with anything. Will take a while but a much more thorough search that will traverse application bundles etc.
Seablade
It didn’t take very long. I carefully checked the list(s) it spit out, and yeah, they’re not there. I’m thinking at this point that these particular plugins are on my machine with no names/giveaways in the filenames.
So at this point my question is: The old version of Ardour I have (2.8.16) is still communicating with the plugins. -Can’t I use that Ardour to tell me where they’re located?
Thanks for everyone’s help so far! I really appreciate it. 
Hmm… I just tried to Refresh my plugins list in Ardour 2.8.16, and it gave me this message, which might be of interest in this case:
(“Can’t get core function pointer”)
So I can’t remember as it has been some time since a ran an older version of OS X, but on current OS X versions you can double click on the process name in Activity Monitor and get a list of Open Files and Ports. If you have a session open in Ardour with those plugins loaded, you should be able to do this and then go through that list till you find them, which should give you the full path to the plugin.
Seablade
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-Ding ding ding! 
I said earlier maybe they were within the application itself… -I should have checked! haha
I will now see if I can just copy-paste them into a new directory, /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/LADSPA, and get Ardour 6.9.0 to accept them.(!)
Thanks @seablade ! 
So it is likely you will have issues honestly, just given how they are likely compiled. But that is where the file command given above can help identify.
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-Yep. 
-Baby steps, though.
Ardour 6.9.0 now recognizes all the LADSPA plugins in my new folder /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/LADSPA, however, each one exists in error, with the same message: “no matching architecture in universal wrapper”:
Lame…
I think I might just get the LV2 ports @Majik posted… Then again, having the originals is preferred, as transferring projects from Ardour 2.8.16 into 6.9.0 will then include ALL the old plugins I used for this or that project.
If anyone has any suggestions how I might recompile/install the LADSPAs I found to then work with Ardour 6.9.0, let me know. Thanks!
Please check with the file command what architecture(s) the plugins are for.
If they’re for 32bit intel, you could use the 32bit version of Ardour 6.
Then again, the better solution would be to just get the latest C* and TAP plugins
I assume they’re 32bit, but I don’t know how to interperate these results in terms of 32bit or 64bit:
I agree with you. But will Ardour see the newer plugins as valid substitutes for the originals? In other words, if a project in Ardour 2.8.16 containing a LADSPA v1 TAP plugin was opened in Ardour 6.9.0, will that old plugin be ‘swapped’/superseded by the LV2 version, -preserving the various plugin parameter settings?..
(I suppose I can just try this and answer my own question.)
Yes they are. i386 = 32 bit intel.
If you get the LADSPA version, yes.
But LV2 version cannot read LADSPA state. It is theoretically possible to convert he plugin settings, but that does not happen automatically.
I expect there will also be significant other changes. e.g. custom cross-fades were discontinued are are not available since Ardour 3. The session will not sound the same in Ardour 6. So perhaps just do a stem-export in Ardour2, import into Ardour 6 and move on.
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