VSTi not found in transferred project

[Jeff Snyder]

I rebuilt a second music production machine and all is working fine. The latest version of CbB and all plugins and virtual instruments are installed and available in the plugin manager.  I have cakewalk projects saved to an external drive and after transferring and opening  them on this new machine, the plugins are found but not the virtual instruments  (Addictive drums & keys, Kontakt) except for Cakewalk Studio instruments.  Any ideas why? I can insert any of the missing synths as a new instance without any issues.

[Starship Krupa]

The usual culprit when this is the symptom is that on the older system, the person was using either the 32-bit versions or the VST2 versions of the plug-ins in question. It makes sense that on a newer build, someone might reinstall their plug-ins and go with the latest versions, which may include a VST3 version when the earlier version of the product didn't.

When scanning and displaying plug-ins, Cakewalk by default will show only the VST3 version of a plug-in even when both VST2 and VST3 are available:

Cakewalk indicates whether a plug-in is VST2 or VST3 (or 32-bit) by displaying the names of VST2's, VST3's and 32-bit plug-ins all in different colors. Unfortunately, that is the only way to tell VST2's apart from VST3's aside from checking more deeply in the plug-in's Properties menu.

So check to see whether maybe the earlier build had these instruments only in VST2 form and Cakewalk is now trying to use the VST3 versions. The transition isn't always seamless.

 

[msmcleod]

First of all, check the VST scan paths in preferences on both machines.  It's likely you've added paths ( e.g. C:\Program Files\VSTPlugins or C:\Program Files\Steinberg\VSTPlugins ) on your old machine, and not added them on the new one.  Native Instruments (Kontakt) may have an additional path - it does on my machine.

Secondly, check that all sample libraries are in the same location on both machines, otherwise your Kontakt instruments won't load properly when transferring between machines.

I've used a symlink on all of my machines to my Kontakt libraries, so they're all looking at the same "fake" directory even though the libraries are stored in different actual folders.

[Jeff Snyder]

Thanks for the feedback.  This is my third machine build and first time dealing with this. Maybe I'm not be stating the issue clearly.

The scan paths are correct because the plugin manager found the VSTi and I can install a new midi track using these 'missing'  instruments. It's just when the project loads, CbB pops up a message stating these specific instruments in the project either didn't load or weren't found.

The sample libraries are on 'D' drives on both machines, but the VSTi doesn't get that far. It doesn't load the player/instrument. When I do install a new track using these ' missing instruments, the libraries are all available. No issues there.

My PITA work-around is to just launch the instrument again ( Addictive drums, keys or Kontakt) and then copy and paste the  existing midi track over to the new synth track. Annoying, but it works.

Also what I find interesting is this problem doesn't exist for any of the CbB SIs.

[Jeff Snyder]

I forgot to mention one other item. The ' older'  machine that the projects were originally recorded on, was built in March of this year, so there can't be any legacy old software issues. The installed instruments in question are from NI and IKM.