# Great on Mac, DOA on PC
**URL:** https://forums.stillwellaudio.com/t/great-on-mac-doa-on-pc/361
**Category:** Stillwell Audio Plugs
**Created:** [December 29, 2008, 11:32pm UTC](https://forums.stillwellaudio.com/t/great-on-mac-doa-on-pc/361 "2008-12-29T23:32:58Z")
**Posts on this page:** 6
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Protoman](https://forums.stillwellaudio.com/u/Protoman)
#### Post date: [December 29, 2008, 11:32pm UTC](https://forums.stillwellaudio.com/t/great-on-mac-doa-on-pc/361/1 "2008-12-29T23:32:58Z")
First of all, where have these been all my life! Just purchased (all format) licenses for Rocket and Vibe-EQ.
I have many “high-dollar” plugins and these are among, if not the best.
All is well with both plugins on the G5 (DP5), but I use a slave PC (Win XP svc pack2) running various virtual instruments. (using Brainspawn Forte as host)
Vibe-EQ is fine on the PC but Rocket shows up on Forte’s “Bad” dll list. (Forte rarely has this plugin problem)
I tried re-downloading and re-installing but get the same.
Any ideas?
Thanks, Protoman
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### Author:  [@scott](https://forums.stillwellaudio.com/u/scott)
#### Post date: [December 30, 2008, 12:45am UTC](https://forums.stillwellaudio.com/t/great-on-mac-doa-on-pc/361/2 "2008-12-30T00:45:25Z")
Probably because Rocket allows sidechain, which means that it has 4 inputs. I’m not sure that Forte allows that. I’ll point schwa at this thread…I think he’s worked with the Forte devs a while back; he may have more insight on the matter.
Scott
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### Author:  [@scott](https://forums.stillwellaudio.com/u/scott)
#### Post date: [December 30, 2008, 12:46am UTC](https://forums.stillwellaudio.com/t/great-on-mac-doa-on-pc/361/3 "2008-12-30T00:46:43Z")
Oh…what version of Forte’, by the way?
Scott
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### Author:  [@Protoman](https://forums.stillwellaudio.com/u/Protoman)
#### Post date: [December 30, 2008, 2:48am UTC](https://forums.stillwellaudio.com/t/great-on-mac-doa-on-pc/361/4 "2008-12-30T02:48:11Z")
Latest Version, 1.6
Thanks!
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### Author:  [@schwa](https://forums.stillwellaudio.com/u/schwa)
#### Post date: [December 30, 2008, 4:42am UTC](https://forums.stillwellaudio.com/t/great-on-mac-doa-on-pc/361/5 "2008-12-30T04:42:18Z")
Hi, sorry for the trouble. Here’s what I think is the case:
Forte doesn’t support sidechainable plugins (plugins with more than 2 channels of input). (Some hosts do, some hosts don’t.)
A VST plugin announces the number of input channels when it introduces itself to the host, then the host identifies itself to the plugin, then the plugin is allowed to change its number of input channels. We have some special-case code in all of our plugins that listens for a host that’s known not to support sidechains, and rearranges its IO configuration to expose only 2 channels of input.
This works for all the cases we know of, except Forte. Either Forte bails out when it sees 4 inputs and never gets around to identifying itself to the plugin, or Forte writes down the input count when it first looks at the plugin and never checks to see if it changed.
Short version, we don’t think Forte will load any of our sidechainable plugins (Rocket, Major Tom, Oligarc). The only workaround we can think of is to make special non-sidechainable versions of these plugins.
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### Author:  [@Protoman](https://forums.stillwellaudio.com/u/Protoman)
#### Post date: [December 30, 2008, 11:06pm UTC](https://forums.stillwellaudio.com/t/great-on-mac-doa-on-pc/361/6 "2008-12-30T23:06:50Z")
OK, thanks guys. I used to be a beta-tester for Brainspawn so I’ll see what they say.