First time poster, hope this is allowed.

This is almost something normal/expected - my FabFilter Pro-Q 4 just "realized" it was not a legit copy and stopped working. Would've just sucked it up and reinstalled, but the way this happened was kind of insane. Instead of simply bypassing itself, it decided to completely ear-rape me with the loudest white noise known to man. This is the first time I've ever seen a software attempt to "punish" a user suspected of piracy. The worst part - my Pro-Q 4 is completely legitimate and paid for.

Anyways, has this happened to anyone else recently? (I'm on Mac btw) And is this a normal thing?

 

Last edited by a moderator: Mar 11, 2025

Are you sure it was Pro-Q4 and not another plugin that did it? If your Pro-Q4 is legit, why are you worried about MORiA releasing a patch? I don't fully get it.

Back in the day I had a fairly expensive sound card from Asus (one of their high end models) and it did have a bug on Windows 10 that did the exact same, but even louder since it would push the volume to the absolute max it could output. It was seriously scary and the card got sent back the next day. It doesn't seem like Fabfilter would do the same.

 

Hey thanks for responding

I apologize for the miscommunication, I'm not familiar with the customs in this particular forum.
What I meant was, my copy of Pro-Q 4 is definitely super duper legitimate. So yeah, I was wondering if anyone else who has not installed the most recent MORiA FabFilter bundle has had this happen.

And to your other question, the sound card thing was actually my first theory as well, but I've isolated the cause to Pro-Q 4 in the processing chain. It also opened a Chrome window that gave me a moralistic warning about piracy - "oops! it looks like your copy of Pro-Q 4 is pirated or infected! here's where you can purchase our plugins"
I expect this type of behaviour from Adobe, but not FabFilter. Feels very intrusive. A little bit hilarious, but mostly intrusive.

 

Contact the manufacturer FabFilter.

Questions and technical support
For sales-related questions and technical support, you can always contact FabFilter directly at [email protected].

 

It's fine to say that it's pirated, the only thing you can't do is linking to releases. It can get confusing because there are people (like me) who both buys and pirate plugins.

To answer your question, it seems that MORiA missed a timebomb, I've seen some people complaining about the same thing happening to them. On Windows, there are no hosts to block, so it seems the timebomb is mitigated from inside the plugin itself. Maybe try blocking Fabfilter's entire website in your hosts file and see if it fixes the timebomb. You can also try using a software similar to Wireshark to see if the plugin is calling any sites and then block them as well. Sometimes, that's the fix, but other times the timebombs check within the code itself for modification, and in that case, there's nothing really that can be done by the user.

 

you should use Lulu free firewall or Little Snitch to block them. If you look on Sister Site, you can get Radio Silence and it will also let you block plugins from having network access. Block Fabfilter's domain in hosts file. in terminal run: sudo nano /etc/hosts/, add it as 0.0.0.0 www.fabfilter.com and fabfilter.com, control+o to writeout the file.

Their anti-warez "white noise" you experienced used to be a BEEP. But if I remember correctly, it was not in Pro-Q3. It was in Pro-L, just in case you had hoped the limiter would deal with the BEEP!. Real funny.

Try using the HCiso version of Pro-Q3, or the entire bundle if you are having a problem using Moria's release.