Mercury supports all major formats: , Audio Units , DX (DirectX) , and RTAS (the legacy Real-Time AudioSuite format for older Pro Tools systems). Version numbers like v1.01 refer to early builds — modern Mercury is far more advanced.

“Air” is a marketing-friendly shorthand many producers use to describe high-frequency enhancement or a sheen added to a mix or vocal. Waves plugins that deliver “air” commonly include:

The phrase refers to a legendary historical release in the digital audio world. Specifically, it was a massive collection of Waves audio plugins cracked and released by the warez group AiR (Agency of Infrared) as a "Happy New Year" gift to the production community around 2007 . The Story of the Release

If you’ve spent any time in audio production forums, you’ve likely come across search strings like “Waves Mercury complete VST DX RTAS v1.01 happy new yearair extra quality” . At first glance, it looks like a software update or a special edition. In reality, it’s a common pattern used by pirate sites to distribute cracked versions of Waves’ flagship plugin bundle.

Many older "prosumer" studios still run Windows XP or Windows 7 on 32-bit machines. Modern Waves plugins are 64-bit only, making these v1.01 releases some of the last compatible versions for vintage hardware.