SWAM VST2 plug-ins not recognized in Komplete Kontrol, Reason and Ableton Live (macOS)

Modified on Wed, 17 Dec at 5:34 PM

Note: this article applies to discontinued SWAM Solo Woodwinds v2 and SWAM Solo Strings v2 products

SWAM VST2 plugins (Solo Woodwinds and Solo Strings) are not recognized in Komplete Kontrol, Reason, and Ableton Live on macOS.

The reason is that Komplete Kontrol, Reason, and Live are ignoring symlinks (e.g. aliases).

Our SWAM components have been made with a technique called "polymorphism", i.e. a single component is an Audio Unit, VST, and AAX at the same time. The SWAM installer installs a single component in /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/Components and uses a symbolic link (i.e. alias) to it for the VST plugin in /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/VST. The VST plugin file is not a real VST component, but it refers to the component in the folder /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/Components.

This technique is used by other plugin developers and vendors. Symlinks are currently supported by many popular DAWs.

To solve the issue, a manual procedure is needed:

1. Go to [HD]/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/VST and delete all "SWAM * 64bit.vst" files. Even if they seem like regular files, they are only Aliases (i.e. pointer to other files).

2. Go to [HD]/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/Components and copy all "SWAM * 64bit.component" files.

3. Go to [HD]/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/VST again and paste the copied components there.

4. Rename all the "SWAM * 64bit.component" files (the ones you have just pasted) to "SWAM * 64bit.vst". Change the extension from .component to .vst. Be sure that the system does not automatically append the extension ".component" at the end.

5. Launch Komplete Kontrol / Reason / Live.

Note: In Ableton Live, there is no need to use VST2. Just activate the support of AU plugins.