Archives: FAQs

It can sound trite, but as with most software issues, if you are having difficulty, please ensure you have updated to the latest version, and try a reboot, to see if that helps. If that doesn’t work, please use the contact page to report your issue or bug, in as much detail as possible and we’ll get back to you asap.

If you are having difficulty with permissions, here is how to fix them:

== Win
You can manually reset the permissions on the folder that stores the authorisation which can help. To do so please follow these steps:

1. open an elevated command prompt by pressing the Windows+ X key, then selecting “Windows PowerShell (Admin)”
2. run this command replacing the start of the path in quotes with your username and Documents folder name:

     icacls "C:\Users\Your User Name\Documents\Cytomic" /reset /t /c /l

== macOS
Open a terminal and run the following commands, you can replace whoami with your username if you know what that is:

     chown -R whoami ~/Music/Cytomic

     sudo chmod -R u+rw ~/Music/Cytomic

If you would like a link to access to an older version of one of our plugins you can contact us via support, however please understand that for versions more than a year old, we cannot provide further support.

Cytomic doesn’t currently support Linux. Current graphics issues are due to Wine not supporting Direct2D v1.3. Please contact Wine.

Cytomic does not run temporary sales at particular times of year (like EOFY or Black Friday), but we do have a permanent discount offer and bundle deal. We do this for price stability and to remove any time pressure on your purchase. You never have to delay your purchase to wait for a sale – or get that yucky feeling of buying something and having it go on sale next week!

Most importantly, although we don’t have sales, we never have and never will charge for software updates or “update plans”, and we refuse to move to a subscription offer.

Yes! If you have already purchased a plugin with us we offer a returning customer discount deal: after spending $99 at the Cytomic store, and still own the license(s), you get 30% off all future purchases. For example if you buy The Glue for $99 you can buy The Drop for $69 (or vice versa).

Our Bundle deal is if you purchase two or more plugins at once we offer a 15% discount off the order total.

All discounts are automatically applied at the checkout, but please make sure you are logged into your account before purchasing, otherwise we can’t check our records for what you’ve purchased already.

Original licenses purchased directly Cytomic can be sold at our discretion once a USD29 transfer fee has been paid, please contact support before selling your license to anyone to double check it will be possible. Second-hand licenses cannot be on-sold further. Not For Retail (“NFR”) copies are non-transferable.

Yes! We have tens of thousands of customers and have been in operation since 2009. We take everyone’s privacy and security seriously. We will not sell or disclose your details.  Downloads from our webpage are secure and virus-free. We use PayPal as our payment gateway. We require our users to create an account for copy protection and tax reasons. 

Cytomic plugins use an authorisation file based copy protection system, we don’t use dongles or iLok. For computers connected to the internet you can authorise directly from within the plugin, your machine’s id will be sent securely to out website, and the authorisation file downloaded and placed in the correct folder to authorise that machine. For other computers you can download an authorisation file from your Cytomic account, once you have entered a machine ID, then either drag and drop this file onto the plugin, or manually copy the authorisation file to the correct folder. Once authorised on a machine the plugin will run indefinitely if no changes are made to that machine. Cytomic never “calls home” to check, the authorisation process only needs to be done once after installation or minor version updates.

Each license can run on up to two computers simultaneously, and allows for three authorisations per year to cover computer updates. It is easy to occasionally request an extra one if you need more, just let support know the circumstances. If you need to regularly authorise on more than two computers at once we recommend buying a second license, remember to log in to your account prior to purchase to obtain any customer discount you may have earned. We prefer this to any dongle based security which sometimes have their own issues.

Cracks suck. Some people will always want to use them. We try to limit piracy with thanks to Tracksaur. https://tracksaur.com/. We use copy protection that doesn’t suck for you, our users. There is a trial version for each of our products with very few limitations which everyone can use. 

No, this website is the only place to buy new Cytomic plugins. If you’re paying elsewhere, you’re paying for a crack. Please don’t! Thanks to all our lovely customers past, present, and future, who do the right thing.

If you are new to Cytomic, after payment, you will receive an email with your account details. Please log in to your account, where you will be prompted to change your password. Once successfully entered, you can navigate to My Account, then, Downloads and Licenses. You can download the correct version for your system from here, or from the plugin page. You may have already done this in order to run the trial.

In your DAW of choice, load the plugin, and choose authorise instead of trial on the About box, enter your username and password and you are all good!  If you wish to do a manual authorisation on- or off-line, please follow the instructions in the pop up.  If the pop up does not appear, click on the name of the Plugin in the header bar. 

You are always welcome to contact us via the contact page or email at support@cytomic.com if there are any problems.

Sometimes the login email takes a few minutes to get through various security checks, or it may have gone to junk, Sometimes you may have had a typo when registering. Whatever the issue please contact us at support@cytomic.com or via the contact form and we will be happy to help.

Please don’t authorise, simply contact us straight away and we can swap it for the right one.  Once the software is authorised, you may sell or keep it, but we cannot swap it or issue you a refund.

For forgotten passwords please reset here:  https://cytomic.com/my-account/lost-password/

If you’ve lost access to an old email or can’t remember your login details please contact support with your purchase email/order number/details etc and we’ll be happy to check for and reinstate your account for you – we have meticulous records of every order made.

Please trial our software before you buy. You can check you are happy with it and that it is compatible with your system, before purchase. Downloading the trial is the first step in the purchase process, so there is nothing extra involved. Cytomic trial software has full sound quality and all features, the only limitations are that automation is not supported and you cannot save settings. No risk, no obligation, try it out!

If you accidentally purchase the wrong product, please do not authorise, and contact us at support@cytomic.com straight away and we can swap it for you.

Once authorised, we cannot refund or exchange for a different product. You may sell your software to a third party, however, please note software bought second hand cannot be on-sold.

EU Directive 2023/2673 does not apply once the product has been authorised.

Contact us at support@cytomic.com for questions related to refunds and returns.

Andy is a meticulous and perfectionist craftsman, all of which takes time but is hopefully reflected in the quality of Cytomic’s products, and their longevity. To balance the quality of audio against CPU is a slow built art form.  
There has been a lot of R&D that has gone into the current plugins, and we are just about ready to crank the wheel on that tech to put it into a bunch of new and new and exciting products, all on a much faster timeline, and potentially building a team to assist with the GUI / framework / support fronts.
However, we value quality over quantity, and all Cytomic products, now and in the future, will feature our characteristically exact digital replication of the coolest analog sound.
Thanks, always, to our amazing customers, for your patience & support.

We love to hear what our customers are doing with our products.  Message via the “promo” tab on the contact form or simply email at support@cytomic.com and connect with us via socials.

Our affiliate programme is coming soon, please check back for further details.

If you want to interview Andrew or discuss Cytomic products please contact us via socials, support@cytomic.com or via the webpage contact form.

If you want to do a tutorial or educational video on our products, or a product review, we can help out with an NFR but have some requirements, please email / contact via social to discuss. 

We are a small husband and wife team quietly making some of the best music software in the world. No venture capital, no big team, no massive marketing budget.  Just us.  Hear the difference.  Trial now to find what you’ve been missing.  Cytomic products meticulously recreate famous pieces of analog hardware which of course already sound great. By modeling every component, at every setting, we make software that does too. You can push our software *just like* you can the hardware and it will always give you the same warmth and tone, while not maxing out your CPU. Don’t believe us? Why not download our trial…?

Yes, you can trial our plugins. zero risk, zero obligation!  Please download the appropriate trial version of the plugin(s you are interested in. The trial has full audio quality but does have some limits:

• Automation is disabled, you have to use the graphical interface to edit the plugin settings
• The about box will show every five minutes
• You cannot save settings in songs
• You cannot save presets to disk

Downloading the current trial version is the first step in the purchase process.

Cytomic’s plugin, The Glue, was licensed by Ableton for use in their products from Live 9 and up.  If you are a current Ableton Live user trying to decide if buying The Glue as a standalone plugin is worth it, here is a brief run-down of the differences between the two:

Cytomic’s The Glue plugin and the Glue Compressor device in Ableton Live share most of the same core DSP, apart from the newly added stereo link feature. The plugin version can vary how much stereo linking is present from 100%, which is the default, all the way down to 0%, which behaves as a dual-mono compressor. The Ableton version is fixed at 100%.

The other differences are external to the core DSP, and they are to do with sidechain filtering and oversampling. The Glue plugin supports up to x64 oversampling, with linear phase, intermediate phase, and minimum phase options, and you can automatically switch to a higher rate on render. 

The sidechain filter is a gentle 1 pole high pass, which is best for de-emphasis of bass. There is also an option to include DC blocking filters both pre- and post-compressor.

The Glue Compressor device in Live supports up to x2 oversampling with linear phase (right click on title bar of the device to get the menu), and has a single filter section from EQ8 to do sidechain filtering.

Both will give you great results, but the Cytomic version has the option for much higher oversampling, so if you’re pushing things, or want the highest quality possible on render, then the plugin version is still worth purchasing. The plugin version also means if you use a different DAW you are covered.

We are proud to work with Ableton and you can read more about our partnership here (https://cytomic.com/ableton-and-cytomic/)

There is a lot of discussion of whether hardware or software is better, and there are and always will be pros and cons to each, and fans of one or the other. Cytomic has chosen specific classic pieces of hardware to model because they have stood the test of time and are still loved and much used today.

The term “analog modelling” is pretty broad, anything can be termed a model of something no matter how bad the model is. A straight line can be said to model a circle under certain conditions, but if you actually wanted a circle and were given a straight line you wouldn’t be happy! So we don’t blame you if you think analog modelling plugins are a load of BS, since some of the stuff you’ve tried probably was.

Cytomic models circuits by preserving the location and connection of all the critical components in it. We use the same methods used in circuit simulators, but optimised to run fast. The continuous circuit equations are discretised using MNA (Modified Nodal Analysis) and then solved for using quasi Newton-Raphson iterations to converge on a solution. Equivalent circuits of groups of linear components are pre-computed to save CPU, along with a bunch of other optimisations so that the model can run hundreds of thousands of times per second. A normal circuit simulator can take 5 minutes or more to process one second of audio, our plugins do it in a fraction of a second otherwise your CPU would be maxed out!

If you want to see the depth to which Andy goes to in his modelling, trial the The Scream, where you can pop out the virtual circuit board and play with the components, or read the Cytomic technical papers.