u/diemenschmachine

I'm a solo developer with a registered company in Sweden, getting ready to release my first commercial plugin, a CS-80 emulation for VST3/AU/standalone on macOS, Windows and Linux.

The DSP was the fun part. Windows code signing has been considerably less fun.

My unsigned Inno Setup installer gets the SmartScreen "Windows protected your PC" warning, and Edge also warns about the download. I decided to try Azure Artifact Signing (formerly Trusted Signing) because it's about $10/month and available to EU companies.

Organization validation fails after the biometric verification with a message asking me to provide additional documents from the past 12 months, such as registration certificates or tax records.

I have the documents but I just can't upload them!

According to Microsoft's docs, the upload option is supposed to appear when validation reaches Action Required. Mine never reaches that state. It goes straight to Failed, and there is no upload button anywhere. I tried creating a second validation request and got the same result: it fails immediately after the biometric verification.

The support route hasn't helped either. I keep getting sent through an AI troubleshooter, and with the free support plan I can't find a way to open an actual ticket.

It is so frustrating because I have a current company registration certificate and the latest annual financial statement ready to send. There just doesn't seem to be any way to send them. And no way to open a support ticket, even though the microsoft community posts saying they should provide free support for artefact signing issues.

For anyone who's released Windows plugins recently:

1. Has anyone hit "Failed, documents required" without getting an upload option? How did you get past it? Paid Azure support, Microsoft Q&A, something else?
2. If you use a traditional certificate instead, which CA do you use? Certum's OV cloud signing with SimplySign looks like one of the cheaper options. I'd be particularly interested in something that doesn't cost an arm and a leg, I just want to ship this now but I don't have the hundreds of eurodollars to spend for code signing (Apple is an additional $100 on top of the ~$200 for Certum).
3. Does anyone just distribute unsigned VST3s as a ZIP? As I understand it, hosts can load unsigned plugin DLLs and SmartScreen mainly matters for executables. Has Smart App Control on Windows 11 caused actual support problems for anyone doing this? This is a viable option in case it works, but it means windows users won't get the standalone version of the synth.

I also have no money to pay for expensive certificates due to not being able to find actual software engineering contracts during this economic downturn and AI slop takeover, so I've pretty much been working full time on this project the past year without any income at all.

Is there a solution for this that doesn't require me to a) pay a lot of money, and b) not have to spend several working days skirmishing with Microsoft?

If some microsoft person happens to see this, can you please PLEASE send me a DM?

I am a software contractor but haven’t had a contract since October due to the economy and I guess AI takeover, and now money is starting to run out completely.

I decided to finish a soft synth I’ve been working on a few years back and it’s starting to be ready for release.

This is not my first audio DsP project but it is the first one to try and sell.

I’ve found some places where you can sell online and get an API for licensing, like Gum Road. But I am sure there must be thousands of options to go about this where one or two are the ones that will actually make money.

I don’t have the time, money, or motivation to self publish and market this myself.

So what are the best options?

Thank you

I guess this is only tangential to DSP, it’s more on the business side of things anyway.

I am a software contractor but haven’t had a contract since October due to the economy and I guess AI takeover, and now money is starting to run out completely.

I decided to finish a soft synth I’ve been working on a few years back and it’s starting to be ready for release.

This is not my first audio DsP project but it is the first one to try and sell.

I’ve found some places where you can sell online and get an API for licensing, like Gum Road. But I am sure there must be thousands of options to go about this where one or two are the ones that will actually make money.

I don’t have the time, money, or motivation to self publish and market this myself.

So what are the best options?

A completely different thing I want to check with people who do this for a living. I’ve measured aliasing by generating different frequencies with my(polybleped) oscillators, then cut out the fundamental frequencies and measured the dBRMS at different oversampling ratios. But I’m not sure what’s an acceptable level for the higher keys to be considered pro level aliasing. So if someone has some insight here I would be happy to receive some advice too. At note C8 I’m only reaching about -30dB using 2x oversampling, at 4x -50dB and 8x -70dB, so I have to make a judgement call here. But it’s 16 voices and analog modelled oscillators so it’s quite expensive to run even with SIMD and -ffast-math.

Thank you

I've just bought space age after a couple of playthrough and I'm currently researching the spaceport. What should be the modus operandi expanding into space?

This is incredibly frustrating and expensive for me. I have my camera mounted in the same spot with manual focus when I'm working. I turn it off constantly and pull the USB disk during longer sessions where I don't expect to record anything, because otherwise it for some reason drains the battery if I simply turn it off.

Every time I do this I need to refocus. Sometimes I forget and the footage is ruined with no way to reshoot. This is becoming the bane of my existence.

Is there some way to fix this?

Hey!

I've been trying to upgrade from Sonoma for a while now. No luck, I'm getting "failed to personalise" errors. I've downloaded the installer and ran it manually, no luck.

I've booted into rescue mode and tried reinstalling Sonoma and I'm getting the exact same problem there.

The logs are extremely spammy, but complain about some missing /var/mobile directory (from the top of my head).

Is there some repair procedure? Some way to get more information of what is wrong?

God I miss Linux.