New Korg M1 vst3 crashes every project

[TVR PRODUCTIONS]

There was a recent thread about some vsts settings not being saved by cakewalk and the patches would revert back to the default sound every time the project opened. I cannot find it so I am starting a new thread.  I chimed in the original thread about my issue with my Korg M1 vst.  It was suggested that I contact Korg and let them know that something broke when they changed from vst2 to vst3. They sent me a new update. Well, now I cannot open any project I ever made with the Korg M1 (and there are over 20).  Now I am screwed. M1.dll is the new one that Korg overwrote the old one with. Looks like they fixed one thing and FFF'd up another. I would rather deal with forgetting the patch than losing the entire project. Unreal.

 

 

Edited September 8, 2022 by TVR PRODUCTIONS

[tecknot]

Hi TVR PRODUCTIONS,

Can you open related projects in Safe Mode?

Kind regards,

tecknot

[TVR PRODUCTIONS]

Windows safe mode?  Haven’t tried.  But I couldn’t use my system even if it worked..

or is there saucy a thing as Cakewalk safe mode?  I never heard of that.

Edited August 30, 2022 by TVR PRODUCTIONS

[yahho]

Same problem here.

I re-installed M1 ver.2.2.1 (VST2) download from my old KORG USER NET account.

For the time being, it works fine for me.

[Lord Tim]

Yeah, if there's an option to install the VST2 version, I'd do that and then get the dump file to Korg so they can troubleshoot it. It might be worth sending that off to the Bakers too to make sure it's not something on their end as well.

[DeeringAmps]

11 hours ago, TVR PRODUCTIONS said:

is there saucy a thing as Cakewalk safe mode?

Yes, hold the Shift key when you open the project. Cake will let you open only the plugins you want. It can take awhile to go thru the list. Hopefully the offending plug will come early and then you can “Yes to All”

HTH

t

[msmcleod]

@TVR PRODUCTIONS - is it only loading older projects that is the issue, or can you not use the new M1 VSTi at all ?

FWIW v2.3.3.0 is working fine for me in new projects, but I can't find any older projects with M1 that have an issue.

[TVR PRODUCTIONS]

So, I am not the only one who has experienced this?  I will try to download the vst2 for now. I opened a support ticket with korg in the meantime.  Thanks.

[abacab]

KORG M1 Release Notes for Win/Mac:

https://support.korguser.net/hc/en-us/articles/4403869885081-M1

Version 2.3.3
    [PC] After updating to version 2.3.2, Cakewalk by BandLab would not open the project properly and initialize the synthesizer. This has been fixed.

Version 2.3.2
    [PC/Mac] After installing the version 2.3.0 plug-ins, opening a project that was using earlier versions of the plug-ins would cause the project to not recall properly or to   crash. This issue was observed in Cubase, Nuendo and Studio One 5. This problem has been fixed.
    [PC/Mac] Fixed a problem in which vst patch files created with vst2 plug-ins in Cubase could not be loaded correctly in vst3.
    [PC/Mac] Fixed a problem with Digital Performer 11 where it would fail to validate vst3 plug-ins.

 Version 2.3.1
    [PC/Mac] Improved the behavior of the Filter and Envelope graphical editors.

 Version 2.3.0
    [PC/Mac] VST3 format support
    [Mac] Native Apple Silicon support.
    [PC/Mac] Improved stability.

 Version 2.2.1
    [Bugfix] After you insert M1 in Pro Tools,  sometimes you cannot select an input source for the other tracks. This has been fixed.

 Version 2.2.0
    KORG Collection 3 initial version

[TVR PRODUCTIONS]

I have 2.3.3 and I cannot open any project that used my older M1 vst. I can use the M1 in a new project and reopen it but that does not help me at all with the 20 or so older projects  that used the M1 vst2.  And to top it off, the fix that was supposed to keep the M1 settings does not work. I just recorded the  M1 House Piano and when I closed and reopened Cakewalk and the new project, it plays the Universe sound. So, big fail all around regarding the M1 vst.

As for holding the shift key and opening in safe mode, what would that accomplish? I opened, an old project in safe mode,  said NO for all of the M1 instruments and it opened fine. One problem, 80% of my project is missing.  So, unusable. 

Now, I can create new projects and be ok, albeit with all of its settings being lost evert time I reopen.  Or, I can try to get the old vst, but then that will probably break all the new projects. I certainly am not going to keep two versions of the dll and replace each in explorer every time I want to use the m1. I would just uninstall the m1 at that point and never use it again.  Not a great choice. Why do programmers constantly break crap when they attempt to fix things?

update. I completely uninstalled the latest m1 vst.  Installed my original from 2018.  It loads as a stand-alone but now no projects load the m1, so currently, I lost nearly every project I ever made.  Fun times.

 

 

Edited August 31, 2022 by TVR PRODUCTIONS

[John Vere]

Seems to me to be a plug in I would avoid and move on to ones that work. That’s just me. I have a huge collection of plug ins that gave me issues in the excluded folder now. 

[TVR PRODUCTIONS]

I will definitely move on but those sounds are so unique, it would change the feel and sound of all of my songs that I created using the m1.

[John Vere]

I guess that’s why a lot of people freeze stuff. I haven’t been doing that much but your issue is example of a good reason for (me and you) starting a habit of freezing at least the special sounds.
A piano or bass is easy to replace but one little tweak of a big fat poly synth and its all wrong.  

Edited September 2, 2022 by Cactus Music

[scook]

2 hours ago, Cactus Music said:

I guess that’s why a lot of people freeze stuff. I haven’t been doing that much but your issue is example of a good reason for (me and you) starting a habit of freezing at least the special sounds.

This or bounce+archive (+disconnect for synth) to ensure access to the audio

and

save custom presets by project or take note of factory presets used in the project notes

and

when possible, save installers. KORG leaves installers on disk after install so, they make it easy to backup installers.

 

KORG is new to VST3 and they have struggled with their first attempts. Might be best to use the VST2 plug-ins for a while longer at least until their VST3 release notes are clear of showstoppers such as lack of persistent presets.

[TVR PRODUCTIONS]

I have never frozen a track. How would that prevent the crash I am getting now just for having the m1 as a vst in the project?

[Lord Tim]

It wouldn't help it now, unfortunately, but the idea is if you freeze off a track when you're done working with the synth playing live, it'll basically turn that into a plain audio track and disconnect the synth entirely, so if you'd done that back when your M1 was working, the projects would open and play fine... until you unfroze the track and the M1 came back online. Not a solution but at least it lets you work with your old projects until Korg sorts itself out.

Bob has the best advice, I think. It's a pain but it'll get you back on track at least, and hopefully won't tie you to older versions forever.

[TVR PRODUCTIONS]

22 hours ago, Bob Greene said:

TVR Productions,

     I had the same problem, as the M1 is one of my favorite softsynth plugs. The way I stopped this problem:

I went to my PLUGINS Cakewalk folder, cut the Korg folder and placed it outside anywhere Cakewalk would NOT look for plugins. I then restarted Cakewalk and let it tell me that the M1 plugin was not available and ok'd it. Once the project opened,  I opened another instance of the M1. , then I took all the MIDI data that had been written for the M1 and put it in the new M1 folder and latched it to the new M1. Then I deleted the old M1 instance. I closed the project and Cakewalk all the way out. Then I replaced the Korg folder back into the plugins folder of cakewalk. I then fired Cakewalk and the projects in question and they now worked fine with all my presets that I had saved beforehand. I re-added M1 on several projects, as I use it a lot, before I put the Korg folder back into the plugins cakewalk folder. So, if you have several projects with the M1 , make sure you fix everyone of them before replacing the plugins back in, as I did.  Otherwise, you will be repeating these steps needlessly multiple times... lol .   If this for some reason doesn't work for you, please let me know. I will try to help you as much as I can.

 

Thanks Bob. I am a bit confused.  I moved the m1 folder so it is not where it should be. I opened a project that used the old M1. I got the errors and I clicked ok all the way though. I am not sure what you mean when you say to take all the midi data from the old m1 and throw it into the new M1 folder.  What folder are you referring to? I work in IT and can figure out anything but I am not sure what you mean here.  Do you mean I need to insert another M1 instrument track.  What would happen if I copy and paste the entire midi track from the old track to the new. Save and re-open?  

 

[abacab]

23 hours ago, Bob Greene said:

Once the project opened,  I opened another instance of the M1. , then I took all the MIDI data that had been written for the M1 and put it in the new M1 folder and latched it to the new M1.

Not quite following this. What are the actual steps involved here?

[Lord Tim]

What he means is this:

While Cakewalk is closed, either take the M1 VST .vst3 or .dll file out of its respective folder (or just uninstall the current version temporarily).

Start Cakewalk, and do a plugin scan if you haven't got it set to auto.

Load the crashing project, it'll complain that the synth is missing at this point but should still load. (If it still crashes, you may need to open it in Safe Mode by holding down SHIFT while loading the project and saying no to M1).

Make a new MIDI track and call it something like M1 MIDI Temp (or anything you like, really). Copy all of the MIDI from the original M1 MIDI track to this new track.

Delete the original M1 tracks (Synth track and MIDI track). This should remove M1 entirely from the project.

Save the crashing project (I'd suggest doing it under a new name so you still have the original), repeat for each project that's doing this.

Close Cakewalk.

Put those files back in to where you moved them from in the first step, or reinstall M1 if you chose to do that instead.

Open Cakewalk, do a plugin scan if you haven't got it set to auto, then load one of the re-saved projects you did just before. It shouldn't crash since you took out any reference to M1.

Load in a new instance of M1, choose your patch, etc and copy the MIDI from that temp track you made into the new MIDI track that feeds the M1.

The idea of this is that if it's only crashing on projects that were created with older versions of M1 but projects that used the new version are fine, this should theoretically work correctly once you save it.

It is a real pain, and won't get your patches or any custom stuff back at all, but should solve the issue going forward with any future new version. And then you can choose if you want to freeze off tracks, etc after that. Not an ideal situation, so hopefully Korg comes to the party with a fix.

Edited September 4, 2022 by Lord Tim

[TVR PRODUCTIONS]

That was pretty much what I said in my post other than copying the folder to the newer project. But if you are saying that the midi notes will return but not the patches, that won’t really work for me.  There are over 1000 patches and I really cannot begin searching all of them to figure out what I chose three years ago.  That is one hairy workaround.  Wouldn’t be so bad if I had one or two projects but it’s probably more than twenty.  Thanks for the suggestion.  Too bad the m1 plug-in just cannot work like it is supposed to.  
 

on a side not, is freezing a track essentially the same as exporting a track to a wave audio file?  Just wondering.  I never freeze midi tracks because there are times I want to manipulate some notes at the very end, right before mixing.