What StudioZIO is building

Every StudioZIO plug-in is laid out in the order the audio takes. That sounds like an interface preference. It is closer to an argument.

Most processing chains are presented as a set of features — a panel of modules, a rack of slots, tabs across the top — and the order they run in is either hidden, or configurable, or simply not the point. The result is that you can operate the thing for months without being able to say what happens first.

Mastering Suite puts the nine stages on a rail in signal order: mid/side engine, saturation, Pink Match, VCA glue compressor, maximizer, three-band tone EQ, clipper, lookahead true-peak limiter, output. One stage is open at a time. The rail does not reorder, because the order is the design. When something sounds wrong, knowing where you are in the chain is most of the diagnosis.

The meter column stays visible no matter which stage you have open: integrated and short-term loudness, loudness range, crest factor, true peak per channel, stereo correlation.

This is not a feature-list item, it is a position about how these tools should work. The industry norm is that you process in one plug-in and measure in another, which means the moment you make a change and the moment you find out what it did are separated by a window switch. Putting the measurement next to the control is not generosity; it is the only arrangement in which you can learn what the control does.

The same principle produces the smaller decisions. EXPECTED TP is a ceiling-derived estimate, not a measurement of the rendered audio or a guarantee of its delivered peak. Stage rates are fixed per stage; the legacy Oversampling control remains only for older session recall and does not alter processing in 2.1.1. In both cases the plug-in knows something, and the choice is whether to say it.

macOS only. There is no build for any other platform and no timeline for one. If that is a problem, it is better to find out here than after a download.

Mastering Suite is Universal (Apple Silicon and Intel). Tempo Delay is Apple Silicon (arm64) only.

Stating these plainly costs some downloads. It costs fewer than a bad first five minutes does, and a free plug-in has nothing to sell except whether you trust what it tells you.

The installer is a signed and notarised package. You download it, you run it, the plug-in is there. Nothing to activate, no address to hand over, no licence manager, nothing that expires or phones home.

Formats are Audio Unit, VST3, AAX and Standalone for both products.

StudioZIO Mastering Suite 2.1.1 is the nine-stage mastering console described above. Universal — Apple Silicon and Intel, macOS 11 or newer.

StudioZIO Tempo Delay 4.0.1 is a tempo-synced stereo delay whose left and right delay lines are genuinely independent, each with its own buffer and its own note division, so the two sides can sit on different rhythmic values against one tempo. Ping-pong routing, filters and soft-clip saturation inside the feedback loop, three character voicings, LFO modulation, ducking, mid/side width. 32 automatable parameters with stable identifiers, and 0 samples of reported latency. Apple Silicon only, macOS 12 or newer.

StudioZIO MixRack is a modular mixing environment bringing essential processing into one focused rack. In development, with no release date and nothing to download. It is named here because it exists, not because it is close.

Three focused instruments, not a bundle. Each one does a job you can name.