Where AAX support stands

The most common question here used to be whether these plug-ins run in Pro Tools. The answer is now yes. Both StudioZIO Mastering Suite and StudioZIO Tempo Delay include AAX builds that are validated in Pro Tools.

The remainder of this note preserves the historical state of the AAX builds during their development.

Both plug-ins had AAX builds early on. Mastering Suite was a universal binary, arm64 and x86_64, against AAX SDK 2.9.0 with JUCE 8.0.4. Tempo Delay was arm64, against the same SDK.

Avid's AAX Plug-In Validator 2024.6.0 instantiated six effect variants from each — three realtime, three AudioSuite — and every functional test passed on all of them. It enumerated 43 parameters on Mastering Suite, which is the 42 the plug-in declares plus the Master Bypass that JUCE synthesises for AAX, and 33 on Tempo Delay.

"Passes the validator" would be an overstatement, so here is the real historical result. One test failed on both plug-ins: test.page_table.load, three of six, with the three AudioSuite variants correctly skipping as offline-only.

That was a real gap rather than a tooling artefact. An AAX page table maps parameters onto Avid control surfaces, and neither build shipped one, which is why both scored zero per cent for page tables. It did not stop the plug-in loading or running; it meant no control-surface mapping on an S6 or similar.

One more thing worth being exact about: both bundles were initially unwrapped and unsigned. Those runs said the plug-ins were structurally sound as AAX. They said nothing at all about whether Pro Tools would load them.

Every AAX plug-in that loads in a normal Pro Tools installation is wrapped by PACE, the company that provides Avid's plug-in security. Without that wrap Pro Tools refuses the binary, and there is no user-side setting that changes it. It is not a warning that can be clicked through.

The SDK, the developer tools and the Avid account were put in place, and PACE returned the next requirements. The physical iLok was registered; the remaining prerequisites were the wraptool licence, the product signing licence and a WCGUID for each product. Until those arrived, the AAX bundles remained unsigned and Pro Tools would not load them normally.