Platform specific Manufacturer and Plugin Code?

Audio Plugins
1

Hi all,

Is it possible to define the 4-character Plugin and Manufacturer Code for each plug-in platform (AAX/VST/AU) separately?

I started my plug-in development with AAX and didn’t care enough about those.
I used uppercase only for manufacturer and mixed upper/lower case for the plugin code.
Now, moving on testing VST and AU, I realize that AU require the first character being upper case and the other three lower case. Otherwise it won’t get loaded by hosts (tested with Garageband).
If I change both IDs to the required format, my AAX plug-in won’t be backward compatible anymore.

Any hint would be much appreciated.

Thanks,
Stefan

2

I think you’ll need to create unique projects if you want unique plugin codes. If you’re using CMake this is relatively simple.

3

Okay thanks Rory. I’m still using Projucer but may considering moving to Cmake eventually.

4

I used to do similar using the Projucer. I wrote a series of Python scripts that would parse each of the Projucer files (they are just XML data), update various entries, and then generate all the projects for me. It was a pain to get going, but once it was working I rarely had any issues with it. Now I use CMake and the situation is much easier.

5

There must have been another problem with your testing before. There are no upper/lowercase rules.

Our manufacturer ID: reFX
Our plugin ID: NEXU

Everything works just fine and has been working fine for the last 16 years with those IDs.

Your problems must come from somewhere else.

6

There is in AudioUnit, the manufacturer code needed one uppercase letter

7

yes, with the hardcoded exception of ˋapplˋ.

8

How random is that? Why? So Apple decided to intentionally LOWER entropy on purpose? WTF?

1 Like
9

Surprised? - SCNR

I tried to find an official statement, but only found a discussion on apple.com:
https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/38058

Things to definitely avoid:

Don’t use all lowercase - reserved for Apple.

Don’t use ‘Demo’ - reserved for Apple Sample Code.

Don’t use ‘DEMO’ - ‘DEMO’ used for type, subtype or manufacturer is ignored by the system and will result the following console spew - “Can’t register component with ‘DEMO’ type, subtype, or manufacturer.”

At least it’s the accepted answer, and I remember I was bitten as well. When this hint fixed it for me I didn’t investigate further…

1 Like