Regarding the “An important update is required for your XLN Audio products” email from XLN Audio

Why have I received this email?

You have received this email because you currently have a version lock on your XLN Audio products that prevents you from getting new updates. We placed the version lock on your products to keep you unaffected from an issue we discovered related to the VST3 versions released last year.

This issue only affected macOS users who updated their XLN Audio plug-ins between 21 June 2022 - 16 August 2022, and we are progressively sending the email to affected users.

What's the issue?

Due to VST2 no longer having full support on computers with Apple Silicon chips, we released VST3 versions of all our plugins in early June 2022. A few weeks later we discovered a problem with a customer’s project, where a project file which worked fine in Windows failed to load our plugins when run on macOS. After investigating this further we found out that we had made a critical mistake in the development process. 

The way a DAW project with a lot of plugins loaded works is that inside of the project file, each plugin is stored with a unique numerical ID, which allows you to transfer a project between different computers and operating systems. When loading one of our VST3 plugins in macOS versus loading it in Windows, the ID’s that identified our products were different. That’s why the projects failed to transfer between Windows and macOS: from the point of view of the DAW, our plugins on Windows were entirely different products than our products on macOS. More investigation revealed that the reason for the ID’s differing was that we had built our products with very subtly different build settings, a certain preprocessor macro was set differently on the two platforms.

We were able to tell from our user account data which users had already downloaded the VST3 versions with the faulty ID problem. If a user had already downloaded this update by the time we discovered the problem, they kept that version, but for everyone else we immediately pulled the VST3 update, and released a different version for macOS with a corrected VST3 plugin ID. This meant that for future users and users that hadn’t updated yet, this would not be a problem: they would just get the versions of our plugins with the correct ID. This left us with a group of users which still had the plugins with faulty IDs.

This group of users would not get updates to our products until we had figured out the best solution that was as non-disruptive as possible. After going through different options to address this we decided for this guide. Going through the steps in the guide will allow for your projects to work with the newest XLN Audio plugin versions, where the plugin ID issue has been fixed.

We know that tons of musicians rely on our products for their livelihood, and we’re very sorry for the inconvenience this has caused.

How do I know if I'm affected by this?

Visit the step by step guide on our website and log in - if you’re presented with the step by step guide (see screenshot below) you are affected and have an active override.

You can also visit the Computers page in My Account - a notification will be displayed if you have an active override for a specific computer.

How does the guide work?

Visit the step by step guide and follow the instructions. The guide will take you through a series of steps, which we’ve outlined below:

1. Do your projects use VST3 plugins?
2. Select the hosts you’ve used in the past year
3. Patch your projects (if applicable)
4. Finish - Run the XLN Online Installer to remove the version lock

If you've only been using Logic, Pro Tools or the AU versions of our plug-ins in other DAWs you won’t be required to patch your projects. However, you still need to complete the steps in this guide. Finishing the guide will remove the version lock for your products on your and let you update to the latest versions.

If your projects use VST3 and you’re using an officially supported DAW/host, the process entails uploading your project files with these outdated XLN Audio VST3 plug-ins using the upload tool at step 3 (Patch your projects). A new, patched project file will be instantaneously sent back for you to download. This does not alter the original project file. It creates a new, patched project file. Once all project files with outdated XLN Audio VST3 plug-ins are patched, the version lock for your products will be lifted and you'll be able to update to the latest, fixed versions through the XLN Online Installer.

The patched project files will be working just as the original project files, while the original project files will have missing XLN Audio plug-ins.

For some DAWs/hosts the patching process is unfortunately more complicated, but it is detailed in the guide.

I haven't used VST3 versions of XLN Audio plug-ins but still received the email, do I need to do anything?

Yes. While you won't need to patch any projects if you've only been using Logic, Pro Tools or the AU versions of our plug-ins in other DAWs you still need to finish the step by step guide. Finishing the guide will remove the version lock on your products and let you update to the latest versions.

I have received the email, but the XLN Online Installer shows that my products are up to date? 

Your products appear up to date because of the version lock we have applied to your products. Below is an outline of the versions your products are locked to:

By completing the step by step guide, the version locks will be removed and you'll be able to update to the newest versions of our products.