Support

Contact

support@tsukubaonkyo.com

Replies go out on weekdays and may take a few days — this is a one-person operation, so thank you for your patience. Including the following makes things faster:

• Your macOS version (Apple menu › About This Mac)
• The name and version of your DAW
• The plug-in format (Audio Unit / CLAP)
• The AD-1 version (under the model number on the panel, or in the zip filename)

The plug-in does not appear in my DAW

It is almost always one of these three.

1. The DAW has not been restarted

Some hosts only scan for plug-ins at launch. Quit completely and open it again. In Reaper and Bitwig you also need to run “rescan plug-ins” explicitly from the settings.

2. The quarantine flag is still set

This is the most common cause. AD-1 has no Apple Developer ID signature, so macOS marks the downloaded files as quarantined, and your DAW will not load them as they are. If you copied the bundles by hand instead of using install.command, the flag is still there.

You can check whether the flag is still set with the following. No output means it has been cleared:

xattr -r -p com.apple.quarantine ~/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/CLAP/"Akadem Drive AD-1.clap"

3. It is in the wrong folder

Each format has exactly one place it can live.

~/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/Components/   Audio Unit
~/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/CLAP/         CLAP

~/Library is hidden in the Finder. Open the Go menu and hold option, and Library appears.

It does not appear in Logic or GarageBand

Audio Units are validated separately by macOS. Run this in Terminal and it will tell you why:

auval -v aufx Ad01 Tsuk

If it ends with AU VALIDATION SUCCEEDED, the plug-in itself is fine. In that case, rescan manually from Logic's Plug-in Manager.

If it says didn't find the component, macOS has not registered it yet. Run the following and wait about a minute:

killall -9 AudioComponentRegistrar

It does not work in Pro Tools

Pro Tools is not supported. It reads only its own AAX format, and there is no AAX build of AD-1. Developing for AAX requires a contract with Avid and code signing, which is not something a free product can carry.

No sound, or something sounds wrong

The sound gets thin

Check whether MIX is somewhere in the middle. Dry and processed are polarity-matched, so nothing cancels — but turning MIX down does reduce how much processing you hear.

There is a gritty noise on top

Look at the LOCK lamp on the panel. Green is normal. If it has gone out, the circuit solution is not converging. Backing DRIVE off slightly, or raising SOLVER, fixes it. If it goes out at a setting you use routinely, please send us that setting — that is a bug.

High notes buzz

That is aliasing. Raise SOLVER to ×4 or ×8; the default is ×4. On the OP-AMP circuit — and only there — ×8 makes a clear difference.

The bounce differs from what I was hearing

During a bounce, SOLVER rises automatically to at least ×4 and the iteration limit comes off. The only thing that changes is the amount of aliasing — neither level nor the amount of distortion moves. This is intended; see the manual for detail.

It is heavy on the CPU

Turn SOLVER down to ×2. Measured at 48 kHz on Apple Silicon, one instance runs at 27× real time at ×2, 15× at ×4 and 8× at ×8 (higher is lighter). Bounces raise it to at least ×4 automatically, so leaving it at ×2 while you work is fine.

I want to remove it

Double-click uninstall.command in the download. To do it by hand, just delete what is at the two paths above. Your settings live inside your host's project files, so nothing is left behind on the plug-in side.

Version and requirements