Frequently asked questions.

VST®3 and AU on macOS 11 or later, and VST3 on Windows 10 or later (64-bit). The Mac build is Universal, so it runs natively on Apple Silicon and on Intel Macs, and in a DAW running under Rosetta as well.

Turn off Live’s Auto-Scale Plugin Window for it. In the Device View, right-click the plugin’s title bar, untick Auto-Scale Plugin Window, then close the plugin window and open it again. Live remembers the setting for each plugin, so do it once per Tonestatic plugin.

With Auto-Scale on, Live tells Windows to treat the plugin as one that cannot scale itself, and Windows stretches the picture up to your display scaling. At 125 % or 150 % that softens the text and can leave the window and its contents disagreeing about their size after a resize. Our plugins scale themselves, so with the option off they are sharp at any setting. Other DAWs, and Live on a Mac, do not need this.

No. Alpine and Grains are effects processors: there is no amp model and no cabinet or impulse response in either one. They go after your amp sound, whether that is a real amp, a NAM capture or an amp simulator you already use, the way pedals and rack effects sit around an amp. A DI guitar straight into them will sound like a DI guitar with effects on it.

Alpine’s Drive engine is a drive pedal, not an amp, and it is voiced to be one link in the chain rather than the whole tone.

Yes, as the pedalboard after it. Put Alpine on the same track after the NAM plugin and it adds drive, modulation, delay and reverb to any capture, NAM v2 and A2 included. Alpine does not load captures itself: it processes the audio the plugin before it sends. Its 3.35 ms latency is low enough to play through.

Not at the moment. Effects belong in a chain, after your instrument or amp capture and inside the mix, so we build plugins only and spend the time on the sound. AAX is not part of the first release.

Alpine itself, with all four modules in one window, plus Artifact, Modulation, Delay and Reverb as plugins of their own. Same sound, same face. Use Alpine when you want the whole chain under one preset, or drop a single module on a track when that is all it needs. The EQ and tuner come with it.

Yes. Artifact, Delay and Reverb add no latency at all. Grains adds 1.5 ms, the lookahead of its output limiter, and Alpine and Modulation add 3.35 ms, which comes from the Tape engine’s transport. Each reports it to your DAW so it is compensated. 3.35 ms is about as much delay as standing a metre from your amp.

In Alpine, yes: every module, every engine and its settings, the order of the chain and the header EQ, including whether it sits before the effects or after them, come back together. A Grains preset carries its EQ, Pre or Post, the same way.

Yes. How often grains are born and how far back they read are set in note lengths at the host tempo, the delay times and the LFO can lock to it too, and with the transport rolling the grains read from whole sixteenths, so the cloud sits in time with the song.

Updates are free. Every parameter a session or preset is saved against is frozen, and every release is checked against that list, so a project you save today reopens with exactly the settings you left. If an update changes how a plugin sounds, the release notes say so.