Steven Massey has emailed to Massey Plugins users to announce that AAX plugins set to return to Windows in 2019.

To get things going there is a beta version of the L2007 Mastering Limiter is now available to all existing users. The installer can be found in the login area of the website. so you will need to be a Massey Plugins user to access the beta. Steven has stated that “This plug-in only works with Windows 10 and there are corrections I still need to make but it's feeling stable and useable. See the "release notes" file in the downloaded .zip for details on known issues.

It’s great to finally hear some news from Massey Plugins. They make some great plug-ns that have gone off the radar, so it is really good news to see things happening.

Update 15th April 2019

Steven has announced Windows 10 Beta versions for TD5, TapeHead and vt3 as well as the L2007 announced in January 2019. As with the L2007 these installers can be found in the login area of the website.

Update 26th February 2020

Steven Massey has now emailed users with an announcement that the demo plugins for Windows AAX are back and can be found on the Demos page. There is also a link to the Demos Installer too.

Registered customers can find the most up-to-date full version installer in the login area, including a fully functional DRT.

Last, but not least, these updates include the new Golden Master soft clipper.

Who Are Massey Plugins?

If you haven’t heard of Massey Plugins then do check them out. It is a small one-man operation. Steven started the company back in February 2006 with the release of the vt3 EQ. Steven describes himself as a music and audio geek who's been involved in the pro audio industry for well over a decade. An electrical engineer by training, he began his career at Digidesign (aka Avid) in 2001 crafting up things for the plugin architecture of Pro Tools. Following that, he worked with Trillium Lane Labs shipping Aggro, Space and Drum Rehab. He explains that his design philosophy for Massey Plugins is built on a few core principles:

First, the sound is more important than numbers. Numbers on knobs have little meaning in the context of artistic creation. They are simply symbols to help mark your way.

Secondly, less is more. More parameters on a piece of gear do not inherently make it better. He has found that carving away the rough edges and honing the useful intersection of a product's wholistic control set is, in the end, significantly more burdensome. He continues…

“Some designers choose a lazier approach: throwing more controls at the end user, telling us in essence, ‘Deal with this yourself 'cause I couldn't be bothered.’ This isn't to say that a rich palette of controls isn't sometimes very useful and totally merited, but I find those circumstances more applicable to that class of ‘surgical audio tools’. When you need to ‘fix’ something, then you usually need more variables to hone in on the problem. Hence, you'll find that my deesser and drum replacement plugins have much richer sets of controls.”

And lastly for Steven, form and function are inseparable. He continues…

“Research has shown that attractively designed things work better. A pretty, virtual faceplate on an audio plugin ain't just marketing. It helps form an important emotional bond of usability between your brain and the functionality of the product which persists over time.”