Noel Borthwick

The Cakewalk Core plugins will work in any host including CbB as long as you have an active BandLab membership and sign in to activate via the plugins. However, while Sonar can seamlessly migrate the Cakewalk Core Plugins suite from the old legacy Sonitus plugins at project load time the automatic migration will not work in prior Cakewalk hosts or other hosts. In CbB or SONAR Platinum you must disable the VST Migration settings before loading old projects containing Sonitus plugins, since it may lead to errors on loading these projects otherwise and cause plugin settings to be lost. To disable automatic migration turn off "Replace if possible on Project Load".

Hi @matt, Aha I see what happened here. Backwards migration is indeed working fine in Sonar. The issue here is that CbB doesn't have the code needed to handle backwards compatibility with DX and therefore when it detects the new plugins it replaces the old plugins with the new ones, but since the migration from DX to VST is not implemented in CbB, that part fails and it throws this error. I do not get any hang in CbB just this message. Most likely what is happening is that you get a bunch of these messages that are behind the application window and it makes it look like it's hung. Please check. The message is basically telling you that a plugin was replaced but the state couldn't be transferred. This logic is built into all Cakewalk applications from 2015 or so. The resolution to this is to turn off automatic replacement in Cbb here. PS: this is a classic example of why we cannot support old products in the field that are not updated anymore. Thanks for reporting this. We'll update the release notes for the plugins to tell people using CbB to disable automatic replacement.

See this reply.

We can consider it but why not use standard parameter learn in the host application? That's the more modern way to do it.

We're already on it and it will be released soon.

This is bizarre. Did you install the latest sonar update successfully? If you disable the automatic VST3 migration this will prevent auto loading the new plugins. You can change this in Preferences > VST Settings > VST3 Migration and uncheck "Replace if Possible on Project Load" Which version of windows are you running? Can you manually load these plugins? I suspect your problem is related to something else since nobody has reported this issue in months of testing. In any case if you can't resolve it send me a pm and we can do some further troubleshooting. PS: installing the new plugins has no bearing on the old dx plugins. They can coexist and will not affect other apps.

There is something messed up in your installation if you don't have common files/vst3 in your default vst scan path unless you manually removed it. Every clean installation of sonar includes that path because it is the standard vst3 location across it should never be removed. This is why it didn't work for you. All that is required is to install the latest version of sonar and then the core plugins add on without running through all the hoops you did

@Robert Glaser @Jon Paul Sapsford The hotfix is live now. Please try it and see if it fixed your issue. 31.08.0.035

We've got to the root cause of the PRV pane issue. We'll issue a hotfix soon today to address that issue. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Are you using a custom workspace? Set your workspace to None and retry.

@Robert Glaser I can't see why it would happen with new projects as well as old ones. Something is messed up with your view states. You may need to make a video showing exactly what you are doing. Try these troubleshooting steps first: 1. Set your Workspace to None. File - New. Add MIDI track and open PRV. Do you see the keyboard? If that doesnt work, try setting the workspace to Basic and retry. 2. Close Sonar first and go into regedit and find this key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Cakewalk Music Software\Cakewalk\Sonar\View Data Then rename it to View Data2 or something different. Now restart Sonar and try it again.

What are you having to reset? We're not aware of any change that mandates resetting layout. Which version did you upgrade from?

Im not sure why it took 45 mins to get working. If you are running Sonar with BandLab membership installing the addon takes seconds. Then once it scans the plugins are available. Opening a plugin automatically activates it. I've tested this on a clean system and the whole process took less than a minute. Can you provide more detail into what was unfriendly?

Or upgrade to Sonar Free for zero cost.

@Mark Morgon-Shaw can you send me a project that has this issue? Also if you resize the PRV and resave the project does it work on next open?

There is no upgrade offer for a different product that was from a different company. An annual license for Sonar is super cheap and there are often promos that drop it even further. We did offer promo's to Cbb users at one point.

We havent had the bandwidth to look at video recently. Ffmpeg is an option but it's a huge amount of work to integrate. We can take a look at your issue at some point.

Does this happen on a new project or only a specific project?

This is unrelated to Sonar. I have an Apollo twin X USB here with no such issues. Compare your audio settings carefully. What is the exact drop out message you get - there will be a dropout code listed. Use that to troubleshoot your issue. Note that this thread is to discuss issues specific the this update not general issues.

From the release notes Availability The Core suite (VST3 macOS/Windows) is currently available as add-ons, which you can access from the Updates page of the Start Screen, or via Cakewalk Product Center. These plugins are exclusive to BandLab Membership and can be activated within Next and Sonar, or self-authenticate for use in other DAWs. PS: Only users with an active BandLab membership will see this add on since its exclusively a premium feature.

He had an expired beta build that was sent to him for testing that's all. No issue here.

We're pleased to introduce early access to Cakewalk Core Plugins, a powerful suite of nine essential track effects designed for high quality and low CPU consumption. Please use this topic to post feedback specific to the Cakewalk Core Plugins version 1.0.0.111 release. Release-specific feedback is valuable to us, and consolidating it in a single topic is extremely helpful. We request that discussion in this thread be restricted to issues directly concerning this release, to make it easier for us to assist users. For other topics, kindly use the feature request section or create new posts. Off topic messages will be deleted. Thanks in advance!

Sonar 2025.08 Update 2 build 31.08.0.033 has been released. This is an exciting release that coincides with the release of our Cakewalk Core Plugins, a powerful suite of nine essential track effects. You can read more about the plugins and download them if you have BandLab membership. This update has deep integration with these plugins and several performance optimizations that you can read about in the links above. To post feedback on the Core Plugins use this thread.

Im sorry but your project file is corrupted. It fails and throws that system error when trying to read a clip description which ends up being reported as 414 Mb in length 😛 The file contains garbage from that point on so it wont load. Does it still open in 8.5? It seems unlikely.

No that will not help. You have to capture a "hang dump" from task manager. See the post that Mark linked to. There are hundreds of things that can cause any given symptom for a hang so without a dump file we have no way of identifying the cause - which could very well be a side effect of one of the plugins in the project. There is a new release of Sonar coming out today so try that and see if it changes anything. There are lots of changes to app startup and some for loading projects so that could change the behavior you are seeing. If not capture a dump file and send it to us. Thats the only way. There is no option to continue using Cbb as has been mentioned. There are hundreds of thousands of users using Sonar without problems so if you have an environmental specific issue work with support and we can try and get a resolution.