EqAPO64 with VST3 Support 2.0.3

Native Tools And Editor Update - June 18, 2026 (Exp Branch)

The June 18, 2026 update focuses on keeping the native audio tools practical
and predictable inside the Configuration Editor while preserving the normal APO
signal path.

Editor Workflow

• Adds reset actions to native filter rows that were missing a module-level
  reset control.
• Adds double-click reset behavior for slider and numeric controls where
  supported by the editor widgets.
• Keeps reset behavior local to the selected filter type, so parametric filters
  return to the defaults that match their current filter shape instead of a
  generic global default.
• Keeps clone, add, remove, and edit controls visible in denser rows by
  improving row spacing and control placement.

Native Crossfeed

• Adds a native Crossfeed: filter intended for headphone listening.
• Provides Natural and BS2B processing modes.
• Adds anatomy-based controls for head circumference, width and length, with
  average female and average male presets.
• Exposes the main crossfeed parameters through editor sliders so the filter
  can be tuned without hand-editing every token.

VU Meter

• Improves the floating VUMeter: panel for multi-channel layouts.
• Keeps the numeric measurement area separate from the scrolling channel meter
  area, making surround devices easier to inspect.
• Adds LUFS/RMS standard selectors in the filter row, defaulting to AES17
  for RMS and ITU-R BS.1770-5 for LUFS.
• Keeps the meter passive: it reports the signal at the position where the
  VUMeter: filter is inserted and does not alter audio.

EqAPO64 with VST3 Support 2.0.2

Installer Update - June 5, 2026 (from Exp Branch)

Stability, Out-of-process VST, Audio Tools And Convolution Update

Version 2.0.2 is the next release after 2.0.1. It includes the
audio-tool and convolution work from the June 3, 2026 build, plus additional
fixes for out-of-process VST lifetime, Configuration Editor stability, row
workflow and installer packaging.

The previous 2.0.1 package should be treated as a broken record-keeping build.
It was uploaded to preserve the development snapshot, but 2.0.2 is the intended
package for testing these features.

Highlights

• Keeps OutProcVSTPlugin: hosts alive when Editor.exe is closed.
• Launches EqApoOutProcHost.exe detached from the Configuration Editor.
• Keeps hide/show panel behavior separate from plug-in lifetime.
• Adds native pan, chorus, reverb, tone-generator and VU-meter filters.
• Adds FIR export and safer convolution sample-rate handling.
• Adds row cloning and improves dense Configuration Editor layouts.
• Updates the x64 installer payload and runtime staging.

Included From 2.0.1

Experimental Out-of-process VST Hosting

• Adds the experimental OutProcVSTPlugin: path, which runs plug-ins in
  EqApoOutProcHost.exe so many plug-in crashes can be isolated from the
  Configuration Editor and the APO audio engine.
• Shows out-of-process VST editor windows with live GUI animation support for
  plug-ins that render animated meters, curves or visual feedback.
• Improves out-of-process panel lifecycle handling: show/hide does not unload
  the plug-in, removing the row shuts down the matching host process, and stale
  host sessions are cleaned up more reliably.
• Synchronizes VST state between the editor, audio engine and analyzer at a
  conservative interval so analyzer-only plug-ins do not continuously recreate
  host instances.
• Stores richer VST state for both VST2 and VST3 while remaining compatible
  with older ChunkData entries.
• Installs EqApoOutProcHost.exe next to the main Equalizer APO binaries.

New In 2.0.2

Out-of-process VST Lifetime Fixes

• Fixes a critical issue where closing Editor.exe could terminate or disable
  an active OutProcVSTPlugin: host.
• Launches the VST GUI host with QProcess::startDetached(), so the host
  process is not owned by Qt's QProcess object inside the editor.
• Prevents FilterTable destruction during normal editor shutdown from calling
  prepareDelete() on every row. This keeps closing the editor distinct from
  actually removing a plug-in row.
• Keeps the .opvs host configuration file alive while the detached host is
  alive, avoiding an inconsistent host session after the editor closes.
• Remove, plug-in path changes and the reload action still explicitly
  terminate the matching out-of-process host through GuiExit, PID mapping,
  PID file fallback and detached PID termination.
• Reopening the panel first tries to reconnect to an existing host session for
  the current HostId before launching a new process.

VST Workflow

• Adds a reload action for VST rows. This lets users restart the current VST
  host without manually deleting and recreating the module.
• Keeps VST state synchronization conservative to avoid analyzer-only plug-ins
  continuously recreating host instances.
• Preserves the existing VSTPlugin: syntax and behavior for the in-process
  loader.
• Preserves OutProcVSTPlugin: as an explicit experimental path rather than
  replacing the normal VST loader.

Configuration Editor Workflow

• Adds clone-above and clone-below row actions.
• Cloning an OutProcVSTPlugin: row generates a fresh HostId, preventing two
  cloned rows from fighting over the same host session.
• Improves filter-row spacing so add, clone, remove and edit controls remain
  visible in dense configurations.
• Fixes context-menu placement and submenu parenting issues that could cause
  menus to appear oversized, offset from the cursor or inconsistently scaled.
• Keeps GraphicEQ controls easier to access by widening the numeric table area
  and preventing old narrow table preferences from collapsing it.
• Improves Qt plug-in discovery when launching Editor.exe,
  DeviceSelector.exe or UpdateChecker.exe from a non-standard working
  directory.

Native DSP Filters

• Adds a channel-aware Pan: filter for positioning and stereo-width control.
• Adds a native Chorus: filter with adjustable rate, depth, mix and feedback.
• Adds a lightweight native Reverb: filter with room size, damping, wet/dry
  balance and width controls.
• Provides practical slider controls for these filters instead of requiring
  users to edit every parameter manually.
• Supports applying the filters to all available channels or selected channels,
  including common surround layouts.

Tone Generator

• Adds a native ToneGenerator: filter that generates audio directly inside
  the APO pipeline.
• Supports sine, white-noise, pink-noise, brown-noise and looping sine-sweep
  modes.
• Provides play/stop, level, frequency, sweep range, duration, channel
  selection and replace/mix controls.
• Can target all available channels or selected channels on playback and
  capture endpoints.

Professional VU Meter

• Adds a pass-through VUMeter: filter that measures the real audio stream at
  its exact position in the configuration.
• Provides a resizable floating DAW-style meter panel from the filter row.
• Displays per-channel peak, peak hold, RMS, clipping and dB scales together
  with LUFS momentary, short-term and integrated measurements.
• Supports reset and channel-aware metering without altering the audio signal.
• Can meter microphone or other capture-device audio when placed in a
  Stage: capture section.
• Measures only audio that actually passes through Equalizer APO. WASAPI
  exclusive and ASIO streams that bypass APO are not visible to the meter.

Convolution And FIR Workflow

• Fixes convolution memory handling and improves stability when audio block
  sizes change.
• Adds an internal HybridConv correctness benchmark covering 44.1, 48, 96 and
  192 kHz processing.
• Requires loaded IR/FIR files to match the current device sample rate.
• Clearly reports mismatched IR/FIR sample rates and avoids silently applying
  impulse responses at the wrong rate.
• Detects IR/FIR sample-rate mismatches immediately when a file is selected or
  its path is edited, using the live sample rate reported by the current audio
  endpoint.
• Adds a Regenerate / create a sample-rate-matched IR/FIR for the current
  device action beside the displayed sample rate.
• The regeneration action extracts the loaded IR/FIR magnitude response and
  creates a new matched FIR for the current device sample rate.
• Adds FIR export from GraphicEQ at the selected device sample rate, providing
  the preferred path for creating native FIR files from custom EQ curves.

Installer And Packaging

• Stages EqApoOutProcHost.exe beside the main Equalizer APO binaries.
• Bundles the required x64 Visual C++ runtime DLLs app-local.
• Stages Qt runtime DLLs and required Qt plug-ins under the installer payload,
  including platform, style, image-format, TLS and network-information plug-ins.
• Removes stale experimental JUCE host files during install/upgrade if they are
  present from previous local builds.
• Keeps the one-command build flow:

Known Limitations

• VST2/VST3 compatibility is not universal. Some plug-ins require host features
  that Equalizer APO does not expose.
• OutProcVSTPlugin: is still experimental. It improves crash isolation but
  does not make every plug-in fully compatible with APO or the Windows audio
  engine.
• The VU meter measures APO pipeline audio only. It cannot see WASAPI exclusive
  or ASIO streams that bypass Equalizer APO.
• Convolution IR/FIR files should match the current device sample rate, or be
  regenerated/exported for that rate.

How to use the improved VST loader:

To use the new OutProcVSTPlugin mode, simply open editor.exe, add a VST filter named “out-of-process VST plugin,” and you'll be able to load a VST2 or VST3 using this improved mode.

Thanks to Peter Verbeeks (Developer of PEACE GUI for EqAPO) for the detailed explanations about APO’s architecture.

Installer General Functionalities:

• Attempts to create a Windows restore point before installation.
• Bundles the required x64 Visual C++ runtime DLLs app-local.
• Verifies that EqualizerAPO.dll can be registered before modifying audio devices.
• Uses a multilingual NSIS installer with English, Spanish and German.

Safety And Recovery

This installer registers an Audio Processing Object with selected Windows audio
devices. If Windows reports missing runtime DLLs, or if the Windows Audio service
becomes unstable after installation, remove Equalizer APO from the selected audio
devices first:

1. Open Equalizer APO Device Selector from the Start menu.
2. Uncheck all selected playback and capture devices.
3. Apply the change and reboot Windows if requested.
4. Then uninstall Equalizer APO normally.

Before installation, the installer also attempts to create a Windows restore
point named EqualizerAPO_<version>_PreInstall. This is best-effort: Windows may
reject it when System Protection is disabled or another restore point was
recently created. The installer bundles the required x64 Visual C++ runtime DLLs
app-local and stops before modifying audio devices if the APO cannot be
registered.

Audio Tools And Convolution Update

Audio Tools And Convolution Update - June 3, 2026 (Exp Branch)

(Broken release: Uploaded for record-keeping purposes. The upcoming 2.0.2 release will include these improvements, as well as additional fixes and enhancements.)

The June 3, 2026 update extends the experimental branch with native audio
tools, measurement features, FIR export and a safer convolution workflow. The
new filters use the same Equalizer APO pipeline as the existing filters and can
therefore be applied to both playback and capture devices when the APO is
installed on the selected endpoint.

Native DSP Filters

• Adds a channel-aware Pan: filter for positioning and stereo-width control.
• Adds a native Chorus: filter with adjustable rate, depth, mix and feedback.
• Adds a lightweight native Reverb: filter with room size, damping, wet/dry
  balance and width controls.
• Provides practical slider controls for these filters instead of
  requiring users to edit every parameter manually.
• Supports applying the filters to all available channels or selected channels,
  including common surround layouts.

Tone Generator

• Adds a native ToneGenerator: filter that generates audio directly inside
  the APO pipeline.
• Supports sine, white-noise, pink-noise, brown-noise and looping sine-sweep
  modes.
• Provides play/stop, level, frequency, sweep range, duration, channel
  selection and replace/mix controls.
• Can target all available channels or selected channels on playback and
  capture endpoints.

Professional VU Meter

• Adds a pass-through VUMeter: filter that measures the real audio stream at
  its exact position in the configuration.
• Provides a resizable floating DAW-style meter panel from the filter row.
• Displays per-channel peak, peak hold, RMS, clipping and dB scales together
  with LUFS momentary, short-term and integrated measurements.
• Supports reset and channel-aware metering without altering the audio signal.
• Can meter microphone or other capture-device audio when placed in a
  Stage: capture section. It measures only audio that actually passes through
  Equalizer APO; WASAPI exclusive and ASIO streams that bypass APO are not
  visible to the meter.

Convolution And FIR Workflow

• Fixes convolution memory handling and improves stability when audio block
  sizes change.
• Adds an internal HybridConv correctness benchmark covering 44.1, 48, 96 and
  192 kHz processing.
• Requires loaded IR/FIR files to match the current device sample rate. A
  mismatched IR/FIR is clearly reported and is not applied, preventing silent
  timbre changes caused by interpreting the impulse response at the wrong
  sample rate.
• Detects IR/FIR sample-rate mismatches immediately when a file is selected or
  its path is edited, using the live sample rate reported by the current audio
  endpoint.
• Adds a Regenerate / create a sample-rate-matched IR/FIR for the current
  device action beside the displayed sample rate. It extracts the loaded
  IR/FIR magnitude response and regenerates a new matched FIR for the current
  device sample rate.
• Adds FIR export from GraphicEQ at the selected device sample rate, providing
  the preferred path for creating native FIR files from custom EQ curves.

How to use the improved VST loader:

To use the new OutProcVSTPlugin mode, simply open editor.exe, add a VST filter named “out-of-process VST plugin,” and you'll be able to load a VST2 or VST3 using this improved mode.

Thanks to Peter Verbeeks (Developer of PEACE GUI for EqAPO) for the detailed explanations about APO’s architecture.

Installer General Functionalities:

• Attempts to create a Windows restore point before installation.
• Bundles the required x64 Visual C++ runtime DLLs app-local.
• Verifies that EqualizerAPO.dll can be registered before modifying audio devices.
• Uses a multilingual NSIS installer with English, Spanish and German.

Safety And Recovery

This installer registers an Audio Processing Object with selected Windows audio
devices. If Windows reports missing runtime DLLs, or if the Windows Audio service
becomes unstable after installation, remove Equalizer APO from the selected audio
devices first:

1. Open Equalizer APO Device Selector from the Start menu.
2. Uncheck all selected playback and capture devices.
3. Apply the change and reboot Windows if requested.
4. Then uninstall Equalizer APO normally.

Before installation, the installer also attempts to create a Windows restore
point named EqualizerAPO_<version>_PreInstall. This is best-effort: Windows may
reject it when System Protection is disabled or another restore point was
recently created. The installer bundles the required x64 Visual C++ runtime DLLs
app-local and stops before modifying audio devices if the APO cannot be
registered.

EqualizerAPO-x64-1.4.2 | VST3 support V2

Installer Update - June 1, 2026 (from Exp Branch)

(Production-Ready Installer)

• Adds the experimental OutProcVSTPlugin: path, which runs plug-ins in
  EqApoOutProcHost.exe so many plug-in crashes can be isolated from the
  Configuration Editor and the APO audio engine.
• Shows out-of-process VST editor windows with live GUI animation support for
  plug-ins that render animated meters, curves or visual feedback.
• Improves out-of-process panel lifecycle handling: show/hide does not unload
  the plug-in, removing the row shuts down the matching host process, and stale
  host sessions are cleaned up more reliably.
• Synchronizes VST state between the editor, audio engine and analyzer at a
  conservative interval so analyzer-only plug-ins do not continuously recreate
  host instances.
• Stores richer VST state for both VST2 and VST3 while remaining compatible
  with older ChunkData entries.
• Installs EqApoOutProcHost.exe next to the main Equalizer APO binaries.

How to use the improved VST loader:

To use the new OutProcVSTPlugin mode, simply open editor.exe, add a VST filter named “out-of-process VST plugin,” and you'll be able to load a VST2 or VST3 using this improved mode.

Thanks to Peter Verbeeks (Developer of PEACE GUI for EqAPO) for the detailed explanations about APO’s architecture.

Installer General Functionalities:

• Attempts to create a Windows restore point before installation.
• Bundles the required x64 Visual C++ runtime DLLs app-local.
• Verifies that EqualizerAPO.dll can be registered before modifying audio devices.
• Uses a multilingual NSIS installer with English, Spanish and German.

Safety And Recovery

This installer registers an Audio Processing Object with selected Windows audio
devices. If Windows reports missing runtime DLLs, or if the Windows Audio service
becomes unstable after installation, remove Equalizer APO from the selected audio
devices first:

1. Open Equalizer APO Device Selector from the Start menu.
2. Uncheck all selected playback and capture devices.
3. Apply the change and reboot Windows if requested.
4. Then uninstall Equalizer APO normally.

Before installation, the installer also attempts to create a Windows restore
point named EqualizerAPO_<version>_PreInstall. This is best-effort: Windows may
reject it when System Protection is disabled or another restore point was
recently created. The installer bundles the required x64 Visual C++ runtime DLLs
app-local and stops before modifying audio devices if the APO cannot be
registered.

Improve the reliability and safety of the installer

Installer Update - May 30, 2026

The installer was updated with additional safety and deployment checks:

• Attempts to create a Windows restore point before installation.
• Bundles the required x64 Visual C++ runtime DLLs app-local.
• Verifies that EqualizerAPO.dll can be registered before modifying audio devices.
• Uses a multilingual NSIS installer with English, Spanish and German.

Safety And Recovery

This installer registers an Audio Processing Object with selected Windows audio
devices. If Windows reports missing runtime DLLs, or if the Windows Audio service
becomes unstable after installation, remove Equalizer APO from the selected audio
devices first:

1. Open Equalizer APO Device Selector from the Start menu.
2. Uncheck all selected playback and capture devices.
3. Apply the change and reboot Windows if requested.
4. Then uninstall Equalizer APO normally.

Before installation, the installer also attempts to create a Windows restore
point named EqualizerAPO_<version>_PreInstall. This is best-effort: Windows may
reject it when System Protection is disabled or another restore point was
recently created. The installer bundles the required x64 Visual C++ runtime DLLs
app-local and stops before modifying audio devices if the APO cannot be
registered.

Equalizer APO 64 with VST3 support

Initial Release of Equalizer APO 64 with VST3 Support

Warning

I’m currently reviewing ways to improve the installer’s safety and recovery process, including the possibility of automatically creating a system restore point before installation. This comes after receiving a report from a user who experienced issues with their Windows installation and had to perform a system repair afterward.

The installer was tested on Windows 11 Version 24H2 (OS Build 26100.4652) and worked correctly in my testing environment. I have not personally encountered any problems—otherwise I would not have shared the installer. However, Windows configurations, drivers, installed software, and custom system modifications can vary significantly, so compatibility cannot be guaranteed across all setups.

Please proceed with caution. If possible, test the installer first in a virtual machine or on a non-critical system. I’ll also be adding the relevant warnings and recommendations here and on GitHub.

This repository is a restructured Windows fork based on [TheFireKahuna/equalizerAPO64 (https://github.com/TheFireKahuna/equalizerAPO64), with the goal of keeping the familiar Equalizer APO workflow while adding native VST3 plug-in support.

Install From GitHub Releases

1. Download the x64 installer
2. Run the installer.
3. Choose the playback or capture devices that should use Equalizer APO.
4. Reboot Windows if the installer or Device Selector asks for it.
5. Open Configuration Editor and add filters as usual.
6. To use a plug-in, add a VST plug-in filter and select either a VST2 .dll
   or a VST3 .vst3 bundle.