FAQ

No, Educational licenses will not expire, and you will be able to use them after your educational status expires. The only difference is that they are NFR (Not For Resale).

Yes, all FabFilter plug-ins can be used for commercial purposes.

You need to match the bitness of your VST host. A 32-bit host requires 32-bit plug-ins, even on a 64-bit OS.

On Windows, you can simply uninstall plug-ins or bundles via the Control Panel. To uninstall the plug-ins from a Mac, you can just delete the specific FabFilter plug-in files at the following locations:
/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/Components/
/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/VST/
/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/VST3/
/Library/Application Support/Avid/Audio/Plug-Ins/
/Library/Application Support/Digidesign/Plug-Ins/

Finally, if you also want to delete all data written by our plug-ins, you can remove the following folders as well:
/Users//Documents/FabFilter/Presets/
/Users//Library/Audio/Presets/FabFilter/FabFilter
/Users//Library/Application Support/FabFilter/
/Users//Library/Preferences/com.fabfilter...plist

Note: Since OS X 10.7 (Lion), the system and user Library folders are marked as hidden by default. To make them visible again in Finder, open Terminal (found in /Applications/Utilities/) and enter the following commands:
chflags nohidden /Library
chflags nohidden ~/Library

Just download the Total Bundle or single plug-in installer for your platform on a computer with Internet, and copy it on e.g. a USB stick. Also copy your license key (which you can download from your online FabFilter account) in a text file on the USB stick.
On your music computer without Internet, you can now run the installer and register the plug-ins by copy/pasting the license key from the USB stick.

Normally, a FabFilter plug-in will install its factory presets automatically when you run it for the first time. Since late 2021, factory presets will be installed at Documents/FabFilter/Presets/.
On your music computer without Internet, you can now run the installer and register the plug-ins by copy/pasting the license key from the USB stick.
On macOS, earlier versions of the plug-ins would store their presets in ~/Library/Audio/Presets/FabFilter/FabFilter , but this would sometimes fail due to permission errors.
If you only see an empty preset menu, please determine the current location of the presets folder, by clicking opening the plug-in in your DAW and choosing Options > Change Preset Folder in the preset menu. If needed, please change it to the new path in your User documents folder, e.g. ~/Documents/FabFilter/Presets/Pro-Q 3/ .
Now, click on the (empty) preset menu button and choose Options > Restore Factory Presets.

The latest versions of our plug-ins do not support PowerPC anymore. Due to the quite aggressive upgrade policy of Apple, we are forced to drop PPC support for future plug-ins (of which Pro-DS is the first). Sorry!

This is a bug in Cubase, versions 6 and 7 at least, perhaps also earlier versions. Bypassing a mono VST 2 plug-in (with side-chain) using the Cubase-provided bypass button in the plug-in header will mute the plug-in, disabling all audio, instead of bypassing it. Steinberg has confirmed this bug.
To circumvent the problem, we recommend to use our VST 3 plug-ins instead in Cubase. You can find these in the Dynamics, EQ, etc submenus, marked with the VST 3 icon that looks like ///.
Most of our plug-ins, like Pro-DS, Pro-L and Pro-Q, also provide their own bypass button in the bottom bar, next to the output level button. This button will always work correctly.

Important: In our general plug-in updates released in November 2012, we have added a workaround for Wavelab 6 and Adobe Premiere so all our plug-ins work again in these hosts. We recommend you to upgrade to the latest plug-in versions.
Background information: Our stereo VST 2 plug-ins with a side chain actually offer 4 inputs: the first two are stereo input, and the second two are the stereo side chain. This works fine in most hosts, but unfortunately Wavelab 6 will not load a plug-in with 4 inputs.
To circumvent this, we offered a separate plug-in version without side chain in the past: Pro-C, Volcano 2 and Timeless 2 still contain this side chain-less version for backwards compatibility. Because the issue has been fixed in Wavelab 7, we decided to drop this special version without side chain in our later plug-ins like Saturn, Pro-G and Pro-DS.
If you must use Wavelab 6 with our older plug-in versions, you can set a registry option to force the side chain to be disabled. First make sure to close your host completely. Click the Start button in the task bar, click 'regedit', Enter. (You may need to give permission to proceed now.) In the Registry Editor that appears, navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\FabFilter\Pro-DS\1.0. (You can of course replace Pro-DS by another plug-in name here.) Right-click, click New, DWORD setting, name it "VST2_DefaultToNoSideChain", and set its value to 1.

With some graphics cards and host software combinations, the GPU-accelerated graphics acceleration system in our latest plug-ins might cause problems. You can turn off graphics acceleration to find out if this fixes the problem.

Tip: If you experience problems, first try to update your graphics drivers to the latest version!

Windows: Click the Start button, type 'regedit', Enter to open the Registry Editor. (You might have to give permission to continue.) Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\FabFilter. Right-click and select New > DWORD (32-bit) Value. Name it GraphicsAcceleration and ensure its value is 0.

Mac OS X: Open Terminal and type: defaults write com.fabfilter.Common GraphicsAcceleration -int 0
The above steps will turn off graphics acceleration for all FabFilter plug-ins. To re-enable it, change the value 0 to 1 in the steps above.

In WaveLab 8.5.x on OS X, most FabFilter plug-ins show up distorted and with reduced size. We've reported this WaveLab bug to Steinberg, but for now, you can correct the interface behavior by clicking the small 'window' button in the title bar twice (it's next to the close button).