XO Wave: Support for Audio Units (Technical Note)

Important Notice: Although XO Wave will continue to be available for some time, it will be discontinued as we prepare to bring you the next generation Digital Audio Workstation. The new software we are developing is called Xonami and it will have many, but not all, of the features of XO Wave. A discount upgrade path will be available for users who purchased XO Wave September 1^st, 2010.

We realize that there are few professional CD mastering options with the full range of capabilities offered by XO Wave, so we will continue to offer the package as long as possible. However, please keep in mind that as discontinued software:

This site may not contain up-to-date information.
Technical Support will be discontinued on November 30th.

For up-to-date information about our upcoming software, please join our mailing list.

This page describes how XO Wave works with Audio Units, Apple's plug-in architecture for audio effects. For a list of Audio Units that are compatible with XO Wave, see our Wiki. If you are interested in buying XO Wave Pro, and want to see if a particular Audio Unit works as you expect in XO Wave, the best thing is to download XO Wave Free and try it out. In XO Wave Free, Audio Units work the same as in XO Wave Pro, except that the audio going into the Audio Unit will occasionally be muted.

Multiprocess Model

XO Wave is made up of several components, which communicate with each other so that they work together like a single program. This design is extremely flexible, and allows for Offline Operations, increased stability, and even the ability to use multiple machines over a network.

Audio Unit plug-ins, however, are designed to both display custom interfaces and process audio in a single program (component). Because of this limitation, XO Wave is currently unable to display the custom interfaces of Audio Units.

The Solution

Like many other audio applications, XO Wave overcomes this weakness by displaying a "generic" interface: XO Wave builds its own interface based on information that the Audio Unit provides to XO Wave. In many cases, this information makes the interface functionally equivalent to the custom interface provided by the Audio Units.

In addition, XO Wave supports the standard preset store and recall features, so favorite settings from Audio Units can be imported into XO Wave, including nonstandard settings which are not directly accessible in the "generic" interface.

Limitations

Many Audio Units, even very pricy ones, do not correctly publish information about themselves. This may be a result of a very unique interface or simply due to laziness on the developer's part. Such Audio Units may be difficult to use with XO Wave, although you will still be able to save and restore presets even with the worst offenders.