Questions
- Jana Audio, general: trial, licence, activation, computers, updates, refunds, 64-bit, how we build, privacy, support.
- Jana 965: price, formats, system requirements, latency, buffer sizes, cards, and the modelling.
Another question? hello@janaaudio.com.
The Jana 965, our first plugin, is announced and not yet released, so nothing can be downloaded or bought today. The answers below describe how things will work from release.
Jana Audio, general
Can I try a plugin before I buy it?
Yes, for as long as you like. The trial is the whole plugin: every control and every printed value, with no time limit and nothing switched off. The first one, the Jana 965, arrives at release, on the download page.
Then what does buying it change?
Your settings come back. Without a licence, a session you reopen opens at its defaults, with a short notice saying why, and presets and saved defaults do not save. Within a session everything works.
Buy it, and every session you saved during the trial opens exactly as you left it, because the plugin always writes its settings into your session. The licence never changes the sound: nothing you hear or read depends on it.
Can I get a refund?
Not for a change of mind, because you can try the whole plugin for as long as you like before you pay. We refund an accidental duplicate purchase, and a fault is ours to fix. The refund policy has the details.
What kind of licence is it?
A licence that does not expire, with no subscription. It is for one person, on the computers that person uses, and commercial work is included. The terms have it in full.
How do I activate a plugin? Does it need to be online?
Activation is automatic. Press Buy in the plugin and pay in your browser, and the licence arrives by itself. On another computer, press Activate and sign in once, or Check purchases after buying on another computer.
It does not need to stay online. Starting the plugin never touches the network, and the licence is checked on your own computer, with no expiry and no periodic check. The plugin goes online only when you press Buy, Activate, Check purchases or Deactivate.
For a computer that is never online, drag the licence file from your purchase email onto the panel. It works offline.
On how many computers can I use it?
Automatic activation covers up to five computers per account. To move to another, deactivate a computer yourself: in the plugin, or from your account page if the computer is gone. The licence file from your purchase email works on any computer you use, online or not.
Are updates free?
Yes, for life: every update to a plugin you own and to every card you own, on every platform we release it for, for as long as we make it. An update is a download from the download page, installed over the one before. Our plugins never check for updates on their own.
Do your plugins process in 64-bit?
Yes, inside. Every filter, coefficient and model in our plugins runs in 64-bit (double-precision) floating point, so rounding never builds up inside the plugin. Audio enters and leaves as 32-bit floating point, the format hosts pass to plugins. A 32-bit float sample carries about 24 bits of precision, so that step stays far below any noise floor.
Are your plugins vibe-coded?
No, though AI does write our code. Vibe-coding means shipping what seems to work. We ship what has been measured.
- Every model begins with a circuit and is measured against it.
- Every release must match the one before bit for bit wherever nothing was meant to change.
- Every release is audited separately before anyone can download it.
- The limits we find are printed on the product's page.
Who types the code matters less every year. The ideas, the methods and the toolchain are ours, and one person decides what ships.
You do not have to take our word for it. The trial is the whole plugin with no time limit, so put it on an analyser.
What do your plugins and this site collect?
This website runs no scripts and sets no cookies, and nothing on it is loaded from anyone else's server. A plugin goes online only when you press Buy, Activate, Check purchases or Deactivate, and sends only what that action needs; starting it never touches the network. Our licence server never receives your audio, your settings or sessions, which hosts or plugins you use, or how you use the plugin. The privacy notice says what buying and activation keep, and the legal page covers this site.
How do I get help?
Write to hello@janaaudio.com. Support, fixes and updates come from us, and a person in Kuwait answers, so allow for the time difference.
Jana 965
When is the Jana 965 released?
The release date is to be announced. Until then nothing can be downloaded or bought. The installers and the trial will be on the download page from the day it is released.
What does the Jana 965 cost?
The prices are on the Jana 965 page. The 965 comes with both stock cards, and everyone pays the same price at the same time.
Which formats and systems does it run on?
Planned for version 1.0, and not final until it is released. macOS: VST3, AU and AAX. Windows: VST3 and AAX. One installer per system puts every format in place.
On Windows it is a 64-bit plugin for Intel and AMD processors. Windows on Arm is not supported at this release.
In Pro Tools it is a real-time AAX plugin. It is not offered for AudioSuite.
What are the system requirements?
A Mac with Apple silicon or Intel, which play the same audio bit for bit, or a 64-bit Windows PC, and a host that loads one of the formats above. Sample rates from 44.1 to 192 kHz, mono and stereo. The minimum system versions will be on the download page at release.
Does it add latency?
No. The 965 has zero latency on every card, at every sample rate and in every format. It uses no oversampling, no lookahead and no linear-phase filtering, so it adds no delay to the track it sits on.
What buffer size should I use?
Whatever you normally use. One exception: at 96 kHz with 32-sample buffers, automating many controls at once can run out of time in a buffer, so use 64 samples or more at that rate. The Jana 965 page lists the limits we state.
What is a card?
A card is a whole equaliser: its circuit, its controls and its printed scales. The 965 is the frame the cards sit in, with four seats and one card in circuit at a time. It comes with two: the 965A, our own design, and the J15 card for Jana 965. Each has its own page.
Each card keeps its own settings. Switch cards and the 965 keeps the settings of the card you left and brings back the settings of the card you open. Nothing is carried across, because a knob on one card does not mean the same thing on another.
Do I download cards separately?
No. Every card ships inside the plugin, and buying a card adds it to your licence. A card takes effect together with a 965 licence: bought on its own, it stays in trial until the 965 is yours. A new card, when there is one, arrives with an ordinary update.
Are all cards circuit models?
Both cards that come with the 965 are. The 965A and the J15 are each one circuit, solved part by part. A card can be one of two kinds, and each card's page says which:
- A circuit model is one specific circuit, our own or one from a published schematic, solved part by part: each part is in the model with its value and its tolerance.
- A first-principles design is built by us from the mathematics of how a kind of circuit behaves, rather than from one unit's parts list.
We measure both kinds on the plugin before they ship, and we state the limits of both.
What is a first-principles design, and why would I want one?
A circuit model gives you one circuit as it is: its ranges, its interactions and its quirks, because they are all in the parts. That is what you want when the circuit itself is the point.
A first-principles design starts one step further back, at the mathematics that makes a kind of circuit behave the way it does. We work that out ourselves and build the card from it. It is not tied to one unit's parts, so its controls and ranges are ours to choose, and it can go where no single drawing went.
Neither is a lesser version of the other. One is a portrait of a circuit; the other is a new design that follows the same rules. Both are measured before they ship, and both have their limits stated on their own pages.
What's the point of a circuit model if you don't model non-linearities?
On an equaliser like the Jana 965, most of what makes it sound like itself is linear: the shape of its curves, and how those curves move when you turn the knobs. That is exactly the part a generic equaliser gets wrong, and it is the part a circuit model gets right by construction.
The shape is the circuit. Every one of these is a question the circuit answers, not a setting someone chose:
- How wide is a bell at a small boost, and how wide at a large one?
- Is a cut the mirror of the boost, or something else?
- Do the bands simply add, or do they share an amplifier and pull on one another?
- Does turning the frequency knob nudge the level?
- How far does a shelf overshoot beside its slope?
- How does each pot's law run along its travel?
- How far is one unit from the next?
None of that is distortion. It follows from the circuit's topology and its part values, and a model derived from the circuit has it because the circuit has it. On the 965A, for example, a bell is broad for a small move and focused for a large one, and a cut is the exact mirror of the boost — both because of how the circuit is built. The J15 card for Jana 965 answers differently, because its circuit is different:
- Its five bands are summed in parallel, so where two bands overlap they interact rather than simply adding.
- Boost and cut are not mirror images on its dial: at the same turn, the cut side reads −11 where the boost side reads +7.
- Pulled to shelf, its outer bands reach past the range printed on the dial.
The circuit is clean where it works. An op-amp equaliser of this kind is designed to be very clean at the levels it is used at. What people call colour mostly lives elsewhere in a chain: in preamps, in transformers, and in levels pushed hard. Adding saturation to the equaliser would be modelling something the circuit barely does.
Staying linear buys guarantees. Non-linearity done properly needs oversampling, and oversampling costs latency, or aliasing, or some of both. Because each of the 965's stock cards is a linear circuit model:
- It has zero latency.
- It makes no new frequencies, so it has nothing to alias.
- Its circuit is checked for stability across dense grids of its settings, as part of the design rather than after it.
- Its tolerance is modelled part by part: every resistor, capacitor and pot section carries its own rated tolerance, so unit-to-unit variation comes from the parts list rather than from a wobble added to the curve.
Where non-linearity earns its place, we say so. The 965 has one non-linear stage: a soft clipper on the output, for catching stray peaks. It is out unless you put it in, its ceiling is on a fader, and its curve is fitted to a measured one. It runs at the host rate, with no latency and no oversampling.
It is a deliberate digital shape, and we do not pass it off as the circuit's own clipping. We simulated the kind of clamp an output stage would really use: it had no ceiling, and it clipped one side harder than the other, which is the opposite of transparent. If a circuit's own non-linearity turns out to be audible, we will measure it and model what we measured, rather than add a generic warmth.
In one line: we model what these circuits actually do — the shapes, how the controls interact, and how one unit differs from the next. We won't sell saturation the circuit doesn't have.