FAQ

Our plugins come in a bundled software installer, that is specific for your operating system. Before installing make sure you have downloaded the correct installer archive for your system ending with _win.zip or _mac.zip. Then perform the following steps:

1.) Unzip the installer archive.
2.) Start the installer.
3.) Choose the components you want to install (plugins, supported formats).
4.) Done!

We use so called wrappers to expose our plugins to different host environments. That means, the actual plugins are installed in /Applications/Black Rooster Audio/Plug-Ins (Mac OS) and [BOOTDRIVE]:\Program Files\Black Rooster Audio\Plug-Ins which is completely normal and intended.

Additional wrapper Black Rooster Audio dlls / bundles will be installed in the respective plugin directories for every plugin format you wish to be supported, depending on the selection you made during the installation process.

We offer a "Legacy VST Support" option for VST hosts that do not support the described technology. Just select the "Legacy VST Support" option on the customize page during the installation and ordinary VST plugins will be placed in a Black Rooster Audio directory in your selected VST folder.

On Mac OS navigate to /Applications/Black Rooster Audio/Uninstaller in Finder and run the uninstaller by double-clicking the pkg file.

On Windows navigate to [BOOTDRIVE] :\Program Files\Black Rooster Audio\Uninstaller in Explorer and run the uninstaller by double-clicking the exe file.

To remove specific plug-ins you do not wish to show up in your DAW anymore, simply run the uninstaller in /Applications/Black Rooster Audio/Uninstaller (Mac OS) or [BOOTDRIVE]:\Program Files\Black Rooster Audio\Uninstaller and re-run the installer package and de-select the components you want to be removed.

You can also navigate to /Applications/Black Rooster Audio/Plug-Ins (Mac OS) or [BOOTDRIVE]:\Program Files\Black Rooster Audio\Plug-Ins (Win) and delete the plug-in bundles you want to remove. We strongly discourage you from using this flavour because it will cause issues in AudioUnits host.

Some users have experienced a de-authorization of plug-ins on every DAW restart. Sometimes a single plug-in keeps the authorization, while others seem to have randomly lost the license. Thanks to new sandboxing strategies of DAWs such as Reaper, plug-ins are executed within "virtualized containers", where there is no proper access to the host's file system or there is a backup system running --

1.) Please make sure to have the latest version of our plug-ins installed. The current version is v2.6.6.

2.) If you are running a backup system (time capsule, time machine or others), please make sure to exclude the "/Library/Application Support/Black Rooster Audio" folder from syncing. The licenses shall not be duplicated through backups, as this would cause the random de-activation of your plug-ins.

We are working on a fix for this. A proper work around would be to store the license on any USB drive, when prompted for authorization.

You need to create a Black Rooster Audio account whether the plugins are free to get the serial number to be able to activate it.

Get in touch via the support form.

Thank you for your interest in our free plug-ins. To create a license for the plug-ins all you need to do is:

1.) Register an account with us and activate via e-mail
2.) Log in and scroll down to the free plug-in you'd like to activate
3.) Press the activation button
4.) Scroll to the top and grab your serial from there.

You can now copy/paste the serial into the licenser dialogue within your DAW/plug-in and enjoy your free unit.

Our plug-ins can be tested before purchase (14-day trial). Just follow the steps below:

1. Register an account (sign up)
2. Log into your newly created account
3. Find the products, you want to try and click on "Create trial"
4. Grab your new serial from the license manager
5. Download the plugins, install and activate with your email and serial

Use our new License Manager to retrieve your personal serial number. When prompted for activation by our plugins enter your email address and the serial from the license manager and hit "Unlock Plug-in". You are free to choose between your HDD or any USB flash drive as the destination device for your licenses.

Using a USB flash drive allows you to take your licenses with you for mobile or offline use. Just plug it in on any system that runs our plugins and it will activate the products you own licenses for just like any other dongle.

If you encounter this message go back to our license manager and check whether you actually have a license for the plugin you're trying to activate. Hit the "Create trial license" button if you still have a trial license available and the license manager will deposit a fully functional 14-day test license for the selected product and generate a new serial. Enter that new serial and hit "Unlock Plug-in".

Version 1.7 of the Black Rooster Audio Plugin Pack introduces a new and heavily simplified activation system. Due to the tremendous amount of customer feedback we have decided to go from a challenge/response based method to a simple serial number based system.

Versions 1.6 or older are no longer supported. Please update to the latest version if required. The latest plugin pack can be downloaded here. Don't worry about lost licenses, all your old data have been imported into the new system. Just follow the procedure described below and you should be good to go:

The Black Rooster Audio license manager is a simple and straightforward online application that gives you an overview of all the licenses currently stored in your account. To access the License Manager log in here using your personal credentials. You can also create trial licenses for the products you would like to test drive here. Simply click "Create trial license" for the plugins you would like to check and the license manager will deposit a fully functional 14 day trial license in your account.

Every time you create a trial license or purchase a plugin your personal serial number will be updated to reflect those changes. You can find it in the top area under "Your serial". Use the "Copy to clipboard" function, write it down to a piece of paper or use your cell phone and transfer it to the License Service Application (LSA) in the plugin along with your email address when prompted for activation by any of the plugins. Serial numbers consist of five 8-character blocks. Valid characters are [A-Z] and [2-7]. Serials never contain the characters 0, 1, 8 or 9.

You can use your license on up to 5 machines.

Since v2.4.1 we are compiling our plug-ins for 64bit OS & host software only, as newer developer tooling for Mac is bound to 64bit. Unfortunately we cannot provide 32bit software for Mac from this point.

Please make sure you have selected the "AU Support" component on the customize page when running the Plugin Pack installer.

If the "Black Rooster Audio.component" bundle is installed in your AudioUnits folder and the plugins still do not show up in your AudioUnits Host, please try to force an AU rescan by clearing the system's AudioUnit cache:

1.) In Finder choose "Go to Folder" in the Go the menu.
2.) Type ~/Library/Caches in the text field.
3.) Press the Go button
4.) Delete the "com.apple.audiounits.cache" file.
5.) Delete the ~/Library/Caches/AudioUnitCache folder.
6.) Restart your DAW. It will now re-scan all installed AudioUnits.

If you are experiencing any issues with Audio Units (AU) after installation of v2.4.2, please run the following:

1st apporach

2nd approach

1.) Open terminal and run the following:
2.) xcode-select --install
3.) cd /Library/Audio/Plug-ins/Components/
4.) sudo xattr -cr ./Black \Rooster \Audio.component
5.) sudo codesign --force --deep -s - Black\ Rooster\ Audio.component

Steinberg seems to be deprecating features their implementation of the VST2.4 protocol. As a consequence, our plug-ins do not load in Cubase 9 unless you select the "Legacy VST support" option on our installer's customize page.

VST3 support will probably be added at a later stage to overcome this problem the "clean way".

This is a known issue that has been reported for Pro Tools 11.x and 12.x on Mac OS. It has to do with the way Pro Tools manages its cache of installed plug-ins. Shutdown Pro Tools, run Terminal and type in the following commands to force Pro Tools to rescan the Black Rooster Audio AAX shell which will fix the problem:

cd "/Library/Application Support/Avid/Audio/Plug-Ins" [HIT ENTER]
touch "Black Rooster Audio.aaxplugin" [HIT ENTER]

Restart Pro Tools.

Below is a list of known issues for our plugins:

• UI re-sizing glitch in REAPER on Windows
• Using the mouse in Garageband drags the entire UI -> Use mouse wheel
• UI Flicker on Mac OS 10.12.3 with ATI graphics cards
• CPU load isn't released when bypassing the plugin
• UI Switches don't react to mouse wheel interaction

Please carefully inspect this list for your issue before contacting our support team. We're trying to resolve as many of these issues as possible, as soon as possible. Thanks for your patience!

Sure, all of our plugins can be test-driven for 14 days! Just activate your plugin as described below and our system will automatically deposit a trial license into your account:

1. Register an account (sign up)
2. Log into your newly created account
3. Find the products, you want to try and click on "Create trial"
4. Grab your new serial from the license manager
5. Download the plugins, install and activate with your email and serial

MINIMUM SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS (MAC)

• SSE2 compatible processor (Intel Core CPU recommended)
• 1GB of RAM
• Mac OSX 10.9 or newer (MAC OS 11+ BigSur not yet supported)
• VST, AU or AAX compatible host
• Display resolution of 1280x1024 pixels or more

MINIMUM SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS (WINDOWS)

• SSE2 compatible processor (Intel Core CPU recommended)
• 1GB of RAM
• Windows 7 or newer
• VST or AAX compatible host
• Display resolution of 1280x1024 pixels or more

We had some reports about Black Rooster Audio plugins not showing up in certain DAW/Host environments (e.g. Native Instruments Maschine, Synapse Orion, iZotope RX). In some cases this is due to the VST2.4 protocol not being supported properly by those hosts. We have thus added a "Legacy VST Support" option in our installer. Please re-install the plugins and select this option along with the other formats. You can find it on the customize page of our installer. Do a re-scan in your DAW afterwards, our plugins should now show up.

If they don't, please get in touch via the support form via our support form.

We have had several reports about an incompatibility with our copy protection system with certain anti-virus and/or firewall software. This may lead to crashes or the activation dialog window being blocked. If you encounter similar issued try temporarily disabling both your firewall and/or antivirus software and see whether it resolves these issues for you. Please also report the incident via our support form.

Software that has been reported to cause problems includes:

• Panda Security Antivirus
• ESET Smart Security

First of all please make sure to read list of known issues in the FAQ above.

If you can't find your problem or a suitable workaround there please get in touch via the support form - our support team will be glad to help you out.

If all else fails you can uninstall our plug-ins using the uninstaller (see above).

Sure, whenever we find time to create a free plug-in, we will do so and of course: What is declared free will be free forever.

Black Rooster Audio is a registered trademark of CUREON. CUREON is the engineering company that manages all products distributed under the Black Rooster Audio trademark. Hence CUREON is also the company that bills all of the plugin purchases performed on this site. Please read more on our Imprint and Terms of Service pages.

Yes, we are fully compatible.