End User License Agreement and Terms of Use

Version 1.0 — Effective date: 6 October 2026

1. Parties and scope

1.1. This Agreement is a legal agreement between you and Andrea Pollastri (the "Author", "we", "us"), the author and sole owner of Downstage. Contact details are published at https://web.ap.it.

1.2. This Agreement governs (a) the Downstage application for macOS, including its audio engine, user interface, built-in guide, documentation, graphics, icons, sample sessions, updates and any other component supplied by the Author (together, the "Software"), and (b) the website https://downstage.it and every page, file and download served from it (the "Website").

1.3. If you accept this Agreement on behalf of a company or other organisation, you represent that you have the authority to bind it, and "you" refers to that organisation as well.

1.4. You must be of legal age to enter into a binding contract in your country of residence, or use the Software with the consent and under the supervision of a parent or legal guardian who accepts this Agreement on your behalf.

2. Definitions

• "Personal Use" means use by a natural person for private, non-business purposes.
• "Professional Use" means use by you, in your own professional activity as a musician, sound engineer, producer, teacher, studio or venue, including paid sessions and the creation of commercially released recordings, provided that the Software itself is not the object of any sale, license, rental or other transaction.
• "Output" means the audio, recordings, mixes, stems, session files and other material that you create with the Software.
• "Commercial Exploitation of the Software" means any act by which the Software, a copy, a part, an installer, a disk image or a derivative of it is sold, resold, licensed, sublicensed, rented, leased, lent, bundled, distributed, hosted, streamed, offered as a service or otherwise made available to third parties, with or without payment.
• "Third-Party Components" means software owned by third parties and included in the Software under their own licenses (see section 7).

3. License grant

3.1. Subject to your continuing compliance with this Agreement, the Author grants you a personal, worldwide, free of charge, non-exclusive, non-transferable, non-sublicensable, revocable and limited license to:

• (a) download the Software only from the Website or from another distribution channel expressly designated by the Author;
• (b) install and run the Software on computers that you own or control;
• (c) use the Software for Personal Use and Professional Use.

3.2. You may make one backup copy of the installer for archival purposes, provided that it keeps all notices of this Agreement.

3.3. The license is free of charge. This does not make the Software "free software" or "open source": no rights are granted other than those expressly stated in this section 3.

3.4. The Author claims no ownership of your Output. You may use, publish and sell your Output freely, without attribution and without paying any royalty to the Author.

4. Ownership and reservation of rights

4.1. The Software is licensed, not sold. The Author is and remains the exclusive owner of all intellectual property rights in the Software, the Documentation and the Website, including copyright, rights in source and object code, designs, databases, know-how, trade secrets, the names "Downstage" and "DS", logos, icons, graphics, faceplates, texts, translations and screenshots.

4.2. The Software and the Website are protected by Italian Law no. 633 of 22 April 1941 on copyright, by the applicable European Union directives and by international treaties, including the Berne Convention and the WIPO treaties.

4.3. All rights not expressly granted to you in this Agreement are reserved by the Author.

5. Restrictions

5.1. Except as expressly permitted in section 3, you shall not, and shall not allow or help anyone else to:

• (a) copy, reproduce or duplicate the Software, in whole or in part;
• (b) modify, adapt, translate, alter, patch, correct, create derivative works of, or merge the Software or any part of it into other software;
• (c) decompile, disassemble, reverse engineer or otherwise attempt to derive the source code, algorithms, signal-processing models, structure or organisation of the Software, except only to the extent that such activity is expressly permitted by mandatory law notwithstanding this restriction (such as articles 64-ter and 64-quater of Italian Law no. 633/1941 and Directive 2009/24/EC), and then only under the conditions and within the limits set by that law;
• (d) distribute, redistribute, publish, upload, mirror, share or otherwise make the Software, its installer or its disk image available to the public or to third parties, including through websites, file-sharing services, cloud storage links, peer-to-peer networks, app stores, package managers or physical media;
• (e) carry out any Commercial Exploitation of the Software, including selling, reselling, renting, leasing, lending, sublicensing, assigning or transferring it;
• (f) bundle the Software with hardware, software, sample libraries, courses, publications or other products or services, or offer the Software or its functions as a hosted, remote or online service;
• (g) remove, alter or obscure any copyright notice, trademark, credit, license text or other notice of the Author or of third parties;
• (h) extract, copy or reuse the Software's signal-processing models, presets, graphics, faceplates, sounds, texts or documentation in other works or products, or use the Software, its Output produced for that purpose, its graphics or its documentation to develop a competing product or to train, test or improve machine-learning or artificial-intelligence models;
• (i) circumvent, disable or interfere with any technical or security measure of the Software or the Website;
• (j) use the names "Downstage" or "DS", the Author's logos or any confusingly similar sign in product names, domain names, apps, social accounts or in any way that suggests affiliation with or endorsement by the Author;
• (k) use the Software in breach of any law or regulation, or to infringe the rights of third parties;
• (l) use robots, scrapers or other automated means to access, copy or mass-download the Website or its files, or place an unreasonable load on it.

5.2. Any use of the Software that is not expressly permitted by this Agreement is prohibited and constitutes both a breach of this Agreement and an infringement of the Author's rights.

5.3. Any permission beyond this Agreement (for example to distribute, bundle or resell the Software) requires a separate written agreement signed by the Author.

6. Third-party names, trademarks and models

6.1. The Software includes processors, amplifiers, effects and controls designed to evoke the general character of well-known historic equipment. Names such as Marshall, JCM900, Vox, AC30, Fender, Twin Reverb, Roland, Jazz Chorus, JC-120, Space Echo, Dimension D, Boss, Orange, Rockerverb, Brunetti, Ampeg, SVT, Ashdown, Markbass, Leslie, Lexicon, Yamaha, SPX, Universal Audio, Urei, Teletronix, 1176, LA-2A, Fairchild, Empirical Labs, Distressor, API, Solid State Logic, SSL, Manley, Pultec, Neve, Studer, Valhalla, Avid, Pro Tools and any other product or company names mentioned in the Software, the Documentation or the Website are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.

6.2. These names are used only in a descriptive and nominative way, to indicate the type of sound or the historic equipment that inspired a model. Their use does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship, endorsement, license or approval by their owners, and the Author claims no right over them.

6.3. The models in the Software are independent software simulations created by the Author. They are not reproductions of the original products, they do not contain their circuits, firmware, code, samples or impulse responses, and no statement is made that they sound identical or equivalent to the originals. Any comparison is approximate and subjective.

6.4. The Author may rename, change or remove any reference to third-party names or any model at any time, including at the request of a rights holder, without notice and without liability.

6.5. Apple, Mac and macOS are trademarks of Apple Inc. Electron is a trademark of the OpenJS Foundation. All other trademarks belong to their respective owners.

7. Third-party components and demo content

7.1. The Software includes Third-Party Components, such as Electron, Chromium and Node.js and their dependencies, and the LAME MP3 encoder (lamejs, under the GNU Lesser General Public License), which are licensed under their own open-source licenses. Copies of those licenses are included in the application bundle.

7.2. Those licenses alone govern the respective Third-Party Components. Nothing in this Agreement limits the rights you have under them for those components, and nothing in them grants you any right over the Author's own code, graphics or documentation.

7.3. The Software includes a demo session (the "Demo Content"): an instrumental song created by the Author with Claude, an AI model by Anthropic, with the Author's mix settings.

7.4. The Demo Content is part of the Software and is licensed to you under this Agreement; the Author retains all rights in it.

7.5. You may use the Demo Content privately, to learn and evaluate the Software: open it, take it apart, edit and remix it within the Software. You may not extract (other than within the session folder the Software creates), publish, broadcast, stream, distribute, sell or use for any commercial or promotional purpose the Demo Content or any mix, stem or other work made from it without the Author's written permission.

7.6. The Demo Content is provided "as is", on the same terms as the Software (sections 10 and 11).

8. Your content and your responsibility

8.1. You are solely responsible for the material you import, record, process, store, publish or distribute with the Software, and for holding every right, license and consent needed for it, including copyright, related rights of performers and producers, and the privacy and image rights of the people you record.

8.2. The Software processes audio locally on your computer. It does not send your recordings, sessions or other content to the Author.

8.3. You are solely responsible for backing up your sessions, recordings and data. Recording, editing and mixing software can lose or damage data; keep independent backups at all times.

9. Health, safety and equipment

9.1. Audio software can produce very high sound levels, sudden peaks, feedback and self-oscillation, for example with high gain, delay feedback or echo intensity settings. You must keep monitoring levels safe, lower the volume before playback, and protect your hearing and that of others. The Author is not responsible for hearing damage or for damage to loudspeakers, headphones, amplifiers, audio interfaces or other equipment.

9.2. The Software is not designed, tested or certified for safety-critical, medical, emergency, broadcasting-critical or other uses in which a failure could cause death, injury, environmental damage or significant property damage, and it must not be used for them. Use in live performance or in time-critical sessions is at your own risk: test your setup beforehand.

10. Disclaimer of warranties

10.1. To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, the Software and the Website are provided "as is" and "as available", with all faults and without warranty of any kind, whether express, implied or statutory, including any warranty of merchantability, satisfactory quality, fitness for a particular purpose, accuracy, non-infringement, quiet enjoyment, compatibility with any hardware, operating system or audio interface, absence of latency, dropouts or artefacts, uninterrupted or error-free operation, preservation of data, or accuracy of any emulation or model.

10.2. No advice or information, oral or written, given by the Author creates any warranty.

10.3. The Software is supplied free of charge and without requiring you to provide personal data. To the extent permitted by law, the rules on the conformity of digital content supplied against a price or personal data (such as Directive (EU) 2019/770 and the corresponding provisions of the Italian Consumer Code) therefore do not apply.

10.4. The Software may be distributed without Apple notarization. You are responsible for verifying the integrity of the download (for example against the SHA-256 checksum published on the Website) and for your decision to install and run it.

11. Limitation of liability

11.1. To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, in no event shall the Author be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary or punitive damages, or for any loss of data, recordings, sessions, audio, work, profits, revenue, business, contracts, goodwill or opportunities, any damage to hardware or equipment, any hearing damage, any business interruption or any cost of substitute goods or services, arising out of or in connection with the Software, the Website, the Output or this Agreement, whatever the cause and under any theory of liability, whether contract, tort (including negligence), strict liability or otherwise, even if the Author has been advised of the possibility of such damages.

11.2. To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, the total aggregate liability of the Author arising out of or in connection with the Software, the Website and this Agreement shall not exceed ten euro (EUR 10).

11.3. Nothing in this Agreement excludes or limits any liability that cannot be excluded or limited under applicable law, including liability for wilful misconduct or gross negligence under article 1229 of the Italian Civil Code, liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, and liability under mandatory product-liability or consumer-protection rules. In those cases the Author's liability is limited to the minimum extent permitted by law.

11.4. You acknowledge that the Software is provided free of charge and that the disclaimers and limitations in sections 10 and 11 are an essential basis of this Agreement, without which the Author would not make the Software available.

12. Indemnification

To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, you agree to indemnify, defend and hold harmless the Author from and against any claim, demand, action, damage, liability, loss, cost and expense (including reasonable legal fees) brought by third parties or incurred by the Author and arising out of or in connection with (a) your use of the Software or the Website, (b) your Output and any material you process or distribute, (c) your breach of this Agreement, or (d) your violation of any law or of any right of a third party.

13. Updates, support and availability

13.1. The Author has no obligation to provide support, maintenance, updates, upgrades, bug fixes, new features or compatibility with future versions of macOS or of any hardware.

13.2. The Author may change, suspend or discontinue the Software, any feature or model, the Website or the distribution of the Software at any time, without notice and without liability.

13.3. Updates and new versions are governed by this Agreement, or by the version of it published with them, unless they come with separate terms.

14. Term and termination

14.1. This Agreement is effective from the moment you first download, install or use the Software or use the Website, and remains in force until terminated.

14.2. Your license terminates automatically and without notice if you breach any provision of this Agreement. The Author may also terminate or revoke the license at any time, by notice to you or by publishing a notice on the Website.

14.3. Upon termination you must immediately stop using the Software and delete all copies in your possession or control. Termination does not affect your rights in Output created before termination.

14.4. Sections 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14, 15, 17.1, 18, 19 and 20 survive any termination.

15. Remedies

You acknowledge that any breach of sections 4 or 5 may cause the Author irreparable harm for which damages would not be an adequate remedy. In addition to any other remedy, the Author may seek injunctive and interim relief from any competent court, as well as damages and every remedy provided by Italian Law no. 633/1941, including its civil and criminal provisions.

16. Export control and sanctions

You shall comply with all applicable export-control and sanctions laws. You represent that you are not located in a country subject to a comprehensive embargo and that you are not listed on any sanctions list that would prohibit making the Software available to you.

17. Website terms

17.1. All content of the Website, including texts, graphics, logos, screenshots, videos, layout and code, is owned by the Author. You may view it and print it for your personal information only. Any other reproduction, adaptation or reuse requires the Author's prior written permission.

17.2. The Website may contain links to third-party websites. The Author does not control them and is not responsible for their content, availability or practices.

17.3. The Website is provided "as is" and may be unavailable, incomplete or changed at any time.

17.4. The processing of personal data related to the Website is described in the Privacy Notice published on the Website.

18. Feedback

If you send suggestions, ideas or other feedback about the Software or the Website, you grant the Author a free, perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide and unrestricted right to use them for any purpose, without any obligation or compensation to you.

19. Governing law and jurisdiction

19.1. This Agreement and any dispute or claim arising out of or in connection with it are governed by the laws of Italy, excluding its conflict-of-laws rules and the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods.

19.2. The courts of the place where the Author has his residence in Italy have exclusive jurisdiction, except where mandatory rules protecting consumers give you the right to sue or to be sued in the courts of your place of residence, in which case those rules prevail.

19.3. If you are a consumer resident in the European Union, you also keep the protection of the mandatory provisions of the law of your country of residence that cannot be derogated from by agreement.

20. General provisions

20.1. Entire agreement. This Agreement, together with the Privacy Notice, is the entire agreement between you and the Author regarding the Software and the Website and supersedes any prior understanding.

20.2. Severability. If any provision is held invalid or unenforceable, it shall be limited or replaced by a valid provision as close as possible to its purpose, and the remaining provisions remain in full force.

20.3. No waiver. Failure or delay by the Author in enforcing any provision is not a waiver of it.

20.4. Assignment. You may not assign or transfer this Agreement or any right under it. The Author may assign this Agreement freely.

20.5. Changes. The Author may update this Agreement. The version in force when you download a version of the Software applies to that version; the updated Agreement published on the Website applies to later downloads, versions and use of the Website, from its effective date.

20.6. Language. This Agreement is drafted in English. Any translation is provided for convenience only; in case of conflict the English version prevails, to the extent permitted by law.

20.7. Force majeure. The Author is not liable for any failure or delay caused by events beyond his reasonable control.

20.8. Relationship. Nothing in this Agreement creates any partnership, agency, employment or joint venture between you and the Author.

21. Specific approval of clauses

Where Italian law applies, and to the extent required by articles 1341 and 1342 of the Italian Civil Code, by accepting this Agreement you specifically approve the following clauses: 3 (limited, revocable and free license), 5 (restrictions), 6.4 (changes to names and models), 10 (disclaimer of warranties), 11 (limitation of liability), 12 (indemnification), 13 (no support; changes and discontinuation), 14 (termination and revocation), 15 (remedies), 19 (governing law and jurisdiction) and 20.4–20.5 (assignment and changes to this Agreement).

22. Contact

Questions about this Agreement can be sent to the Author through the contact details published at https://web.ap.it.

Downstage — Copyright © 2026 Andrea Pollastri. All rights reserved.