Every Hardwave plug-in, paid or free, is installed and updated by one desktop app: the Hardwave Suite. There are no separate installers to download and no licence files to move around. This page says why it works that way and what it means for you.
What the Suite is
A small desktop app for Windows and macOS. You sign in once with your Hardwave account, and it shows every plug-in your account has. Install puts the plug-in in the folders your DAW scans. Update replaces it in place. That is the whole job.
The Suite itself is free, and so is the Hardwave Analyser inside it. You do not need a purchase to use either.
Why one manager instead of an installer per plug-in
- The version you have is the version we shipped. With separate installers, a producer ends up with one plug-in from March and another from August, and a bug report becomes a guessing game about which build is on the machine. The Suite shows the installed version next to each plug-in.
- Updates actually reach people. A fix is only worth writing if it gets installed. An installer downloaded once never updates itself.
- Your licence lives on your account, not in a file. Sign in on a new machine and your plug-ins are there. Nothing to find, nothing to lose, no licence file to email yourself.
- One place to see what is yours. Owned, included with Pro, or free: the Suite lists it the same way.
What it means when you buy or subscribe
A plug-in you bought outright stays yours and keeps working, including its updates. A Pro subscription adds early access: plug-ins in beta before they launch, and the beta channel in the Suite. If a subscription ends, what you bought outright is unaffected, and the free Analyser stays free.
The beta channel
Turn the beta channel on in the Suite's settings and it offers release candidates as well as stable builds. A release candidate is a build we think is right but that has not been in enough hands yet. If you run one, tell us what you find: bugs reported from a release candidate are the reason the stable build is boring.
What we do not do
We do not hand out direct plug-in downloads. A loose .vst3 file on someone's drive is exactly the situation the Suite exists to prevent: no updates, no version we can trust in a bug report, no way to tell you the fix is already out. The Suite is the delivery, and that is deliberate.
Where to start
Download the Suite from the downloads page, sign in, and install what you need. If your DAW does not see a plug-in afterwards, the folders it writes to and how to make each DAW rescan are set out in [Where Hardwave Suite puts your plug-ins](/learn/plug-ins/where-hardwave-suite-puts-your-plug-ins-and-what-to-do-when-your-daw-cannot-find).