Exponential Audio has recently announced that their Stereo Classic family of plug-ins - PhoenixVerb, R2, M7Control and Excalibur have now been expanded to include machine-based licensing in addition to conventional iLok licensing.  Exponential Audio has told us that nearly all new and existing licenses are covered by this change with a few exceptions which we will cover below. 

How To Move A License From An iLok To Machine Hosted

Launch iLok License Manager and sign in to your account. On the left side of the window, you'll see an icon and the name of your iLok. Click on the icon and you'll see all the licenses on your iLok. Select the license you want to move and drag it to your account (upper left corner in blue).

Note that you can only move a license to be machine-based of it has the little computer icon highlighted as the Phoenixverb and R2 licenses do in the above image.

This will move the license off your iLok and back to your account into the cloud.

Now click on your account and you'll see all your licenses. Find the license you just moved, select it and drag it to the icon for your computer. That's it.

If you're purchasing a new license, you'll be given the choice as to where the license should go when you install it.

What Is The Best Option?

We still recommend that an iLok is the best place for your iLok licenses as it is our understanding that the machine-based option is less secure than using the iLok or iLok Cloud options. This may be the reason you only find the lower value plug-ins and software offer machine-based license option. It is up to the plug-in developers to decide whether to offer machine-based licensing and that is what Exponential Audio has done with some of their products.

That said, you may find CPU licensing to be a good solution when you're on the go. You can easily move the license between iLok and CPU especially until more developers offer the iLok Cloud option.

Don't Change Anything On Your Computer

There are some other things to be aware of if you choose the machine-based route. Before you make any hardware changes to your computer, use the iLok License Manager to move your license off the computer and back to your account. Then once you have finished working on your computer, make sure it's working well. Then, and only then, move the license back to the computer.

What If My Computer Dies?

If however, your hard drive has crashed, or your computer has been stolen, or your computer motherboard has died and you are using machine-based licensing, Exponential Audio recommend that you contact them through their support page and let them know what happened. At their discretion and a small fee, they can choose to reset your license so that you can continue using it, but be polite or they might not be as cooperative.

Update Your Plug-ins

In order to take advantage of Exponential Audio machine-based licensing, you'll also need to update the appropriate plug-ins.  Please head to their download page to get the newest versions.

Not All Plug-ins Can Be Machine Licensed

Please be aware that all other Exponential Audio plug-ins (NIMBUS, R4, PhoenixVerbSurround, R2Surround, Stratus and Symphony) remain iLok-only products and that some Exponential Audio NFR and EDU licenses issued before 11th May 2018 will not be updated to include CPU licensing.