Any way to replace old plug-in versions?

[Sosser]

Hi! I have just reinstalled Windows and, after many years of collecting different versions of plug-ins in one Windows installation, I am reinstalling everything. Now, for instance, if I open a project that uses Kontakt 6, it won't work with Kontakt 7, which is the current version and the only one I have installed right now.

I know that this is probably by design, but is there absolutely no way in Cakewalk to replace the instance of Kontakt 6 for one of Kontakt 7 while preserving the data? They are very likely compatible with each other and that'll save me from going through the hoops of installing all old plugins again to open older projects.

Thanks!

[Patrick Wichrowski]

25 minutes ago, Sosser said:

save me from going through the hoops of installing all old plugins again to open older projects

Old projects = old plugins

If these old projects are important, you will install the old plugins.

[A Tolerable Quietude]

As someone who recently upgraded to a new computer myself, I found this pretty annoying as well.  It seems like some plugins couldhandle a version change gracefully, and the project settings would still load in the new version of the plugin.  For others, even minor bug-fixing updates would make the plugin present itself to Cakewalk as an entirely new thing.  It's made me very hesitant to ever update plugins!

If possible, I'd suggest saving all of your original installation files and/or .vst3s or .dlls, so you can swap in the old one where necessary.

[Bruno de Souza Lino]

5 hours ago, Sosser said:

I know that this is probably by design, but is there absolutely no way in Cakewalk to replace the instance of Kontakt 6 for one of Kontakt 7 while preserving the data? They are very likely compatible with each other and that'll save me from going through the hoops of installing all old plugins again to open older projects.

AFAIK, no DAW can do that. Once you replace the plugin, you replace everything. There's no way for the DAW to know which plugins you're gonna use nor how to map old data to a new interface which may not even be compatible. As much as that's only one version increase of the same plugin, these are two completely different things for CbB.

[msmcleod]

As long as the plugin ID is the same, Cakewalk will automatically use the updated version.  Most plugin manufacturers keep the same plugin ID when they release new versions.

Kontakt is a different matter however, and arguably for good reason.  Unlike most plugins, Kontakt is more of a host for 3rd party libraries most of which rely on Kontakt's scripting language to facilitate their functionality.

Take this hypothetical example:  Say you have a library that used the scripting language in Kontakt 3.  The scripting language doesn't do what the developer needs, so the library developer uses some workaround to get around the issue.  However this workaround relies on a bug which is fixed in Kontakt 4... now, the library no longer works in Kontakt 4. 

Given that the vast majority of film/tv/media composers rely on Kontakt for their work, they can't be put in the position where a library they rely on no longer works when they upgrade to the latest Kontakt.  Given there are literally 100's (if not 1000's) of 3rd party libraries, there is no way for Native Instruments to test them all with their latest release.

So instead Native Instruments release the new Kontakt as a new plugin with a different plugin ID.  This allows multiple versions of Kontakt to be installed - so if you've got a library that only works in a particular version of Kontakt, as long as you have that version installed it'll keep on working with that version. 

 

[Bruno de Souza Lino]

The only libraries NI updates constantly to be compatible with their latest versions are their own and that's already at least 100 of them.