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What causes Cakewalk to double-count each new VST3 plugin?


chris.r

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I'm dropping a single VST3 plugin file into the default VST3 folder then Cakewalk scans and reports 2 new plugins added. Adding VST2 plugins works as normal. I have only default paths, nothing added there, no 32-bit folder as well. Anybody had that issue before?

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If I install both, VST2 and 3, I get 3 new plugins reported by the scanner. If I only install VST2 then it does say 1 new plugin. Only when I install VST3 it tells me 2 new plugins (or 3 if I do both versions), even if I manually drop just a single file into the folder. That tells me the issue is only with VST3 for some reason. It just started yesterday, for years it was all ok.

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Thanks for help everyone. No, I only have the two default scan paths, one for VST2 and one for VST3 folder, both left untouched.

I can do manually place a simple single-file *.vst3 plugin in the VST3 folder, no wrapper, nothing special just any simple plugin, and Cakewalk sees 2 plugins added. That only shows how bizarre things turned here with the scanner. Thankfully I can use the plugins without problem.

One thing I noticed is that after updating a bunch of Plugin-Alliance and AAS plugins the scanner suddenly performed a full scan out of itself without me asking for it. Today I have found out that for some reason (or maybe it was me paying not enough attention) the AAS installer had changed the VST2 folder path during the update and I ended up with having two sets of AAS plugins, one in the main Vstplugins folder and another in an 'Applied Acoustics Systems' subfolder, will have to clean that up now. But, I've also checked and it didn't double the VST3 versions.

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Right-clicking on a plugin in the browser will give the option to put the plugin to a certain category/categorys. I have some that i marked for two or three categorys and they show up at every category they've been added to. Default should be no category selected and it goes to "uncategorized".

Does the double plugin show in the filemanager where you start a manual scan?

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On 1/13/2021 at 9:38 AM, Michael Vogel said:

As an example, Waves install a mono version and a separate stereo version of plugins that have a Mono and Stereo operation, resulting in 2 plugins when you'd think that there'd be just the one as most other vendors do. Could it be something like that.

You often have three: Mono, Mono to Stereo and Stereo for every plugin.

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7 hours ago, Kurre said:

I've read somewhere that sometimes one can rename the extension "vst3" to "dll" and use it as a Vst 2.

Have not tried it myself but shouldn't hurt to try. Either it work or it doesn't.

A vst3 plugin is actually a DLL, but renaming it to .dll won't change the fact it's a vst3 plugin.

It might fool some DAW's into thinking it's a VST2, but I doubt it'll work - the API's are very different (unless the developer for some reason decided to support both API's in the same plugin... if that is even possible) and there's a high probability it'll just cause your DAW to crash when you try to use it.

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3 hours ago, msmcleod said:

A vst3 plugin is actually a DLL, but renaming it to .dll won't change the fact it's a vst3 plugin.

It might fool some DAW's into thinking it's a VST2, but I doubt it'll work - the API's are very different (unless the developer for some reason decided to support both API's in the same plugin... if that is even possible) and there's a high probability it'll just cause your DAW to crash when you try to use it.

Aha, that rings a bell. I think it was a plugin developer i got it from. Because he suggested to do that if there was problem with the vst3. He then obviously had made it with two api's.

Ok, good to know. One thing less to test. I had probably done a test myself if it weren't for this new info. The developer never explained the double api thing.

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So exploring things further I narrowed down the issue is only with the vst scanner, both the browser and the plugin manager are counting plugins correctly. Some plugins, like the AAS Session series, are reported as 1 plugin but most that I have tried are counted twice by the scanner.

Let's take a single plugin TAL Reverb 4, you can download the zip file here https://tal-software.com/products/tal-reverb-4 and just unzip the vst3 file from it and manually drop it in your VST3 folder (mine is standard Progam Files\Common Files\VST3). Before I did my plugin count was:

  • vst scanner: 385 plugins found
  • browser: 208 plugins
  • plugin manager: (VST3) registered plugins 139

after I dropped TAL Reverb:

  • scanner: 387 plugins found (1 new, 0 removed...)
  • browser: 209 plugins
  • plugin manager: (VST3) registered plugins 140

If I remove the plugin, scanner says:

  • 385 plugins found (0 new, 1 removed)

The blue toast notification after the scan was the only thing I paid attention after adding or removing any plugins, this way I have found out this behavior. Like I said, luckily there are no other issues with using my plugins only the amount displayed could be very misleading. Any technical explanation due to API etc doesn't make it, I'd like to see that I'm adding 1 plugin when I'm adding one plugin.

Edited by chris.r
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  • 1 month later...

To follow up, I just had a Cakewalk crash when trying to load Waves EchoSphere.

632580223_EchoSpherefatalerror.png.21ada6eda2aaa322fdd8ea8f8ef8b4a2.png

Upon the next Cakewalk launch vst scanner told me I have one (1) plugin less than I had before crash. The EchoSphere is still there and working fine. Go figure out. ?

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On 1/14/2021 at 12:56 AM, Kurre said:

Default should be no category selected and it goes to "uncategorized".

Actually, I believe that the VST spec allows developers to declare the category, which a host can query. Cakewalk is the only program I've seen that bothers to query and sort accordingly.

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On 1/13/2021 at 1:38 PM, Michael Vogel said:

As an example, Waves install a mono version and a separate stereo version of plugins that have a Mono and Stereo operation, resulting in 2 plugins when you'd think that there'd be just the one as most other vendors do. Could it be something like that.

The same happens to me with Waves Tune. I have 4 plugins.

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