General
Mac:
- 2GHz CPU, 4GB RAM
- macOS 10.10 or later
- Apple Silicon compatible
- AU, VST3 or AAX compatible host (64 Bit)
Windows:
- 2GHz CPU, 4GB RAM
- Windows 7 or later
- VST3 or AAX compatible host (64 Bit)
You can completely remove our products from your computer by deleting the respective plugin files in the follwing install locations.
Mac:
- AU:
/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/Components - VST3:
/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/VST3 - AAX: /Library/Application Support/Avid/Audio/Plug-Ins
Windows:
- VST3:
C:\Program Files\Common Files\VST3 - AAX:
C:\Program Files\Common Files\Avid\Audio\Plug-Ins
From macOS 10.13 (High Sierra) on, under some circumstances newly installed AU plugins are not found directly after installation.
Rebooting your computer usually solves this. Alternatively – if you feel comfortable using a command line terminal – you can restart the AudioComponentRegistrar service by opening a terminal (under /Applications/Utilities/Terminal) and entering the following command:
killall -9 AudioComponentRegistrar
We do not offer a refund policy for purchased and successfully delivered licenses.
To make sure that our products are right for you, we strongly encourage you to use the 14-day free trial period that we offer on all our products. These trial licenses are fully functional and enable you to test all features and compatibility with your setup before making the purchase.
We do offer student discounts on an individual basis. Please reach out to us if you are currently enrolled at an academic institution.
Dynamic Grading
We understand where you’re coming from: there are graphs that look like a spectrum analyzer, and somehow you can adjust what looks like crossover frequencies. But take a closer look!
Those scales are in Decibels, not Hertz. So what you’re seeing is not the typical spectrum analyzer display, but a histogram of loudness levels that occurred within the analysis time window. Consequently, think of the graphical handles more as a way to adjust thresholds, ratios and makeup gains that result in a more advanced gain curve that is applied to your dynamics. By the way, you can display that curve by clicking the curve button.
There are no crossovers and no frequency ranges involved in this product. It all works in a broadband way.
Yes you can! In Dynamic Grading, you can easily adjust the output level by moving all target handles (the ones to the right) at once. To do this, just grab the middle of the target body range and move it up or down.
Similarly, you can move all handles together by grabbing the middle of the source body range on the left. This corresponds to adjusting an input gain and at the same time compensating the output gain in opposite direction, which is useful when you want to adapt to a changed input level in a neutral way.
Dynamic Grading internally maps the graphical handles to multiple parameters. Thus when you move these handles, multiple parameters are changed at once, and you DAW will not know which one to assign the controller to if you use a MIDI learn function.
Depending on your DAW you might be able to manually assign controllers to parameters. Please refer to your DAW’s manual to find out how to do that. Here’s an explanation of the relevant parameters, for reference:
- Source/Target Body Level: The center of the body ranges
- Source/Target Body Range: The radius of the body range around the center level
- Source/Target Punch/Floor: The size of the punch/floor ranges
Dynamic Grading is designed for you to easily tailor settings for the audio material at hand, using the combination of dynamic histograms and in-place graphical editing. As a consequence, a specific setting only makes sense in conjunction with specific source audio and can hardly be transferred to other (even similar) recordings.
This is actually a problem with many dynamic plugins that come with lots of factory presets: they usually don’t fit your situation, and thus aren’t very helpful. In Dynamic Grading, you would notice right away when a random “Female Lead Vocals” preset doesn’t have anything to do with the reality of your specific female lead vocal track.
Trust us, you don’t need factory presets.
Licensing
Playfair Audio uses iLok by PACE Anti-Piracy Ltd. for copy protection and license activation. To use our software, you need to have an account on iLok.com and have the iLok License Manager installed. If you have not used iLok before, please go to iLok.com to sign up and download the License Manager.
Licenses for Playfair Audio products can be stored on an iLok USB key (2nd generation or later), the iLok Cloud or your local computer. You can activate the licenses on up to 2 locations simultaneously.
Just download and install the product. When you attempt to open the plugin for the first time, you are prompted to either activate the 14-day trial period or enter an activation code (available for purchase on our website).
The dialog looks like this:
To start the trial period, click “Try”. If you want to activate your perpetual license, click “Activate”. In both cases, follow the instructions to log into your iLok account and start the trial or enter the activation code you’ve received after purchasing a license from our store.
During the trial period a similar dialog will appear from time to time, where you can start the license activation process.
Yes, you can sell and transfer your license to another person using the iLok License Manager. The license transfer is subject to a fee ($25 per license) charged by PACE.
For more information, see the iLok FAQ.
