Install and licence

The voice tuner is one download, and it's free. Install it and it tunes your voice at full quality with no licence at all. A licence is a small text file that adds the other voices: harmony, doubles and MIDI. This page covers putting the plugin where your DAW can find it, and dropping in the licence if you have one.

macOS only for now, Apple Silicon native. Windows is coming.

Install the plugin

Get the current build from the download page. It's a zip with two plugins inside, so both formats come from the same download:

• SFMVoiceTuner.vst3 is the VST3, for Ableton Live, FL Studio, Cubase, Studio One, Reaper and most other hosts.
• SFMVoiceTuner.component is the Audio Unit, for Logic Pro, GarageBand and other AU hosts.

Copy each one into its folder. Create the folder if it doesn't exist:

Format	Folder
VST3	~/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/VST3/
AU	~/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/Components/

~ is your home folder. In Finder, choose Go → Go to Folder… and paste the path. To install for every user on the Mac, use the same paths without the ~ (/Library/Audio/…); macOS will ask for your password.

Both plugins are signed and notarised by Apple, so they open straight away, offline, with no security warning. You don't need to right-click-open them or clear anything in System Settings.

Get your DAW to see it

Most hosts pick up new plugins on their next scan. If the tuner doesn't appear, nudge the scan:

• Ableton Live: Settings → Plug-Ins. Turn "Use VST3 Plug-In System Folders" off and on again, or press Rescan.
• FL Studio: Options → Manage plugins → Find more plugins. Tick "Verify plugins" to force a full rescan.
• Logic Pro: quit and relaunch Logic; it checks new Audio Units on launch. If it's still missing, open Logic Pro → Settings → Plug-in Manager, select it and choose Reset & Rescan Selection.

It shows up as snails.fm voice tuner, filed under the maker snails.fm. In Logic it's an Audio FX.

To check the Audio Unit outside any DAW, run this in Terminal:

auval -v aumf vtnr SnFm

A good install ends with AU VALIDATION SUCCEEDED.

What's free and what the licence adds

The free version is the whole tuner. Nothing in it is reduced, muted or time-limited, and it never asks you to buy anything.

	Free	Licensed
Correction: scale, retune, formants	✓	✓
Scale personality, masking and per-note bias	✓	✓
Both engines, Studio and Live modes	✓	✓
The display, meters and info line	✓	✓
Harmony: up to fifteen voices from a held MIDI chord		✓
Double and Ensemble		✓
MIDI mode: retune to the notes you hold		✓

The dividing line is the number of voices. Free corrects your voice. Every voice beyond yours is what the licence adds.

Without a licence the extra controls are still on the panel, dimmed, so you can see exactly what's there. Hover one and the info line says harmony — unlocked with a licence · snails.fm.

Install your licence

Your licence arrives by email as a file called snails.fm-voice-tuner-licence.txt.

Drag the file onto the plugin window. That's all. The tuner checks the file, keeps its own copy, and the dimmed controls light up at once. There's nothing to restart and nothing to reinstall.

The plugin keeps that copy in ~/Library/Application Support/snails.fm/, and every copy of the tuner reads from there. So one drop covers VST3 and AU, every DAW and every project on that Mac. You can also put the file in that folder yourself, with any filename. The plugin finds it the next time it loads.

To confirm it worked, click the snails.fm wordmark on the panel to open the About panel. Under licence it reads perpetual, and "licensed to" shows the name the licence was issued to. Without a licence it reads free.

How the licence works

• Offline, always. The licence is checked on your machine against a signature built into the plugin. There's no account, no activation, no internet check, and nothing is ever sent anywhere.
• Perpetual. It doesn't expire and there's nothing to renew.
• Every build. One licence works with every build of the voice tuner, including future updates. Updates are free.
• Readable. Open the file in any text editor to see what it says: the product, your name, the date, and a signature.

If something goes wrong

The plugin says "licence not valid". The full message is licence not valid — check it came from your purchase email unmodified. The signature covers every byte of the file, so a single changed character breaks it. That's usually an email client or text editor quietly re-saving it. Save the attachment straight from the original email again, or get a fresh copy from resend.

I've lost the file. Go to resend and enter the email address you bought with. Your licence and a link to the current build go to that address.

I've moved to a new Mac. Install the plugin, then drag your licence file onto it again, or copy the ~/Library/Application Support/snails.fm/ folder across.

How do I update? Download the new build and copy it over the old one in the same folders. Your licence lives in a separate folder, so it isn't touched, and your saved projects open as before. The download page always shows the current version.

How do I uninstall? Delete SFMVoiceTuner.vst3 and SFMVoiceTuner.component from the plugin folders. To remove the licence too, delete ~/Library/Application Support/snails.fm/.