Is "Cronus" - V Vocal plugin no longer supported ?

[noynekker]

Tonight I tried to open a project last saved as a CWP about a year ago . . . it will no longer open properly. Opening the project in safe mode (holding down shift key) eventually exposed the offending plugin as "Cronus" aka V Vocal. Bypassing this plugin lets the project open. This older project apparently still has some remnants of very old Cakewalk within it. So, is V Vocal no longer supported in the newer Cakewalk by Bandlab ? I only offer this as a warning for those opening older projects that have V Vocal plugin loaded.

[Michael Vogel]

V-Vocal needs the full Sonar X1 or X2 program (Not sure which but you don’t need both) installed to work with any later versions including all CbB (Cakewalk by Bandlab).

Best to do the Sonar installation before CbB as if done after CbB, Sonar will overwrite some shared files with earlier versions. 

 

I hadn't used V-Vocal in quite some time and discovered I didn't even have it installed. To make sure that what I'd said above was accurate I decide to re-install V-Vocal and test out the instructions generally given to people.

I selected the Advanced SONAR X2 installation and deselected all but the Program files and let the installer do its thing. On opening CbB and I was able to immediately use V-Vocal and edit audio with it as expected. Surprised I didn't need to reinstall Cakewalk over the top, as I had expected the X2 installation to have overwritten an existing CbB dependent file, so it "seems" all is OK at this stage.  V-Vocal certainly works in the latest version of CbB.

One additional point of note: I have always used Sonar/Cakewalk by Bandlab default paths. I have used Directory Junctions to redirect some default locations off the boot drive to conserve space. 

It would be interesting to know if others were also experiencing problems.

Edited September 26, 2022 by Michael Vogel
Add more info

[noynekker]

45 minutes ago, Michael Vogel said:

V-Vocal needs the full Sonar X1 or X2 program (Not sure which but you don’t need both) installed to work with any later versions including all CbB (Cakewalk by Bandlab).

Best to do the Sonar installation before CbB as if done after CbB, Sonar will overwrite some shared files with earlier versions. 

 

I hadn't used V-Vocal in quite some time and discovered I didn't even have it installed. To make sure that what I'd said above was accurate I decide to re-install V-Vocal and test out the instructions generally given to people.

I selected the Advanced SONAR X2 installation and deselected all but the Program files and let the installer do its thing. On opening CbB and I was able to immediately use V-Vocal and edit audio with it as expected. Surprised I didn't need to reinstall Cakewalk over the top, as I had expected the X2 installation to have overwritten an existing CbB dependent file, so it "seems" all is OK at this stage.  V-Vocal certainly works in the latest version of CbB.

One additional point of note: I have always used Sonar/Cakewalk by Bandlab default paths. I have used Directory Junctions to redirect some default locations off the boot drive to conserve space. 

It would be interesting to know if others were also experiencing problems.

Hi Mike, I go back to all earlier Sonar versions, installed originally from the Sonar 8.5 CD,  updated to Sonar X1 and X2 . . . V Vocal worked a year ago when I last worked on the project, today, not so much . . . I know sometimes old things don't work well with new things, but don't recall anything official from Cakewalk about V Vocal no longer working . . . and yes, I just tested if I start a new instance of V Vocal, it seems to work in my latest Cakewalk by BandLab . . . perhaps it doesn't like my fragmented clips, mixed with other plugs ? I'm attempting a rebuild of the project.

[Michael Vogel]

It’s strange how these anomalies come about. It seems like there’s something else at play other than just the absence or presence of Cronus.dll.

I noticed during the install of X2 that there was an MS library installed perhaps there’s some inter-dependency that is being effected. 
 

As long as you’re able to get it working. Cheers. 

[sping]

I have the 8.5 version of V Vocal installed and  working in CBB (Win7). 

Do you have the 64 bit version of 8.5/X1/X2 installed?

[Michael Vogel]

All 64 bit.
I  had only Sonar Platinum (Splat) (for additional content) installed which doesn’t  include V-Vocal.
I then installed X2 selecting the advanced Installation then deselecting everything except Program Files then completed the installation. 

[noynekker]

Yes 8.5/X1/X2 are installed, all 64 bit for me as well

 

[Michael Vogel]

3 minutes ago, noynekker said:

Yes 8.5/X1/X2 are installed, all 64 bit for me as well

 

Can I ask why you have those 3 installed? You need at least a full install of any one of the 3 for V-Vocal but for included content and plugins you don’t need a full installation. 
E.g. I have all the plugins and content from Sonar 5 onward (when it went 64 bit) but only the program for X2 and CbB. Oh and I had Platinum installed believing it gave me access to v-vocal but it didn’t. 

[noynekker]

1 minute ago, Michael Vogel said:

Can I ask why you have those 3 installed? You need at least a full install of any one of the 3 for V-Vocal but for included content and plugins you don’t need a full installation. 
E.g. I have all the plugins and content from Sonar 5 onward (when it went 64 bit) but only the program for X2 and CbB. Oh and I had Platinum installed believing it gave me access to v-vocal but it didn’t. 

Hi Mike . . . my main DAW computer is 10+ years old, I probably have Sonar Platinum installed as well, I've just never uninstalled any Cakewalk products.

Just now as a test, I successfully opened the project in question on my newer laptop build . . . and only got a warning about 5 instances of "Cronus" that could not be found, but it opened with no other issues.

[Michael Vogel]

 

51 minutes ago, noynekker said:

Hi Mike . . . my main DAW computer is 10+ years old, I probably have Sonar Platinum installed as well, I've just never uninstalled any Cakewalk products.

Just now as a test, I successfully opened the project in question on my newer laptop build . . . and only got a warning about 5 instances of "Cronus" that could not be found, but it opened with no other issues.

I assume by your comments that you’ve not rendered/processed your  v-vocal Region Fx. Try rendering/processing the v-vocal clips (make duplicates) so that  you don’t need to have the region fx active. It might eliminate the errors. 

[Michael Vogel]

Great. The crowd was heard yelling out in unison. Yay!

[Jonathan Sasor]

There's nothing inherently wrong with having multiple older versions of SONAR installed, so long as the latest version is the last one installed (as there's some shared components and obviously you don't want those overwritten with older versions). We haven't shipped V-Vocal in a long time as that was a Roland product, but assuming it's still stable on your system, we haven't done anything in Cakewalk that would break compatibility. If it's crashing while you're trying to port a project, you might have more success if you try rendering V-Vocal via a 32-bit install of SONAR.

[John Nelson]

V-Vocal was prone to crashing at least once or twice on the best of days.

[noynekker]

4 hours ago, Jonathan Sasor said:

There's nothing inherently wrong with having multiple older versions of SONAR installed, so long as the latest version is the last one installed (as there's some shared components and obviously you don't want those overwritten with older versions). We haven't shipped V-Vocal in a long time as that was a Roland product, but assuming it's still stable on your system, we haven't done anything in Cakewalk that would break compatibility. If it's crashing while you're trying to port a project, you might have more success if you try rendering V-Vocal via a 32-bit install of SONAR.

Thanks for responding Jonathan . . . if I could get the darn project open with those 5 V Vocal clips intact, I would surely render them . . . didn't really remember they were even there still, haven't needed V Vocal for a very long time . . . but, I do have a workaround by opening it on my newer laptop install, then I have to figure out how to purge them from the project, so the project will load on my desktop DAW.

[noynekker]

28 minutes ago, John Nelson said:

V-Vocal was prone to crashing at least once or twice on the best of days.

Yes John, I recall the V Vocal issues, back in the day . . . the workaround was always to only use it on short clips . . . so, that's what this project has, 5 very short clips, let's just blame it on Windows updates.

[Michael Vogel]

12 hours ago, Jonathan Sasor said:

There's nothing inherently wrong with having multiple older versions of SONAR installed, so long as the latest version is the last one installed (as there's some shared components and obviously you don't want those overwritten with older versions). We haven't shipped V-Vocal in a long time as that was a Roland product, but assuming it's still stable on your system, we haven't done anything in Cakewalk that would break compatibility. If it's crashing while you're trying to port a project, you might have more success if you try rendering V-Vocal via a 32-bit install of SONAR.

Hi Jonathan, it's certainly been a while since we've chatted.

Prior to this occasion of doing a V-Vocal installation I've always followed those same steps as you've highlighted. Interestingly, after having installed Sonar X2, V-Vocal was immediately available and fully operational in CbB without doing a reinstall of the current version. I've not yet found any problems with CbB but am cautiously aware I might have to reinstall it if the X2 installation overwrote a file on which CbB relies.  

[gmp]

I still use V-Vocal very often with CbB. It never crashes, because I disconnect all soft synths first then close and reopen the project by double clicking on the CWP file. I work in short clips and choose "bounce to clip" to render each clip after tuning. It's best not to open a project with un-rendered V-Vocal clips, although sometimes I have done this ok.

[bitflipper]

I no longer have V-Vocal on my computer so I can't test it, but it should still work. 

The most likely reason CW can't load it is that it needs to be re-registered, as it's an ActiveX library. These differ from VSTs in that instead of having the scanner go out and find them, their locations are stored in the system registry. Just like with VST3, this eliminates the need for the DAW to go looking for them. The downside is that if that information in the registry is lost, e.g. after a Windows re-install or switching to another user profile, then YOU have to go and find them and add them back into the registry.

That's actually easy to do. At least, once you've verified where cronus.dll actually is. For example, if its path is c:\program files\cakewalk\shared dxi\cronos.dll what you'd do is open a command prompt and type in the following:

        REGSVR32 C:\Program Files\Cakewalk\Shared Dxi\cronus.dll

That's it. Cronus.dll has code within it that knows how to enter itself into the registry. REGSVR32 simply calls that code and V-Vocal does the rest. It doesn't matter where the DLL is stored, since Cakewalk is looking it up by its CLSID, which never changes.

Note that I don't recall the actual path cronus.dll installs to by default, but I'm sure you can find it.

One caveat: you may have to run regsvr32 as Administrator.

 

[noynekker]

7 hours ago, bitflipper said:

I no longer have V-Vocal on my computer so I can't test it, but it should still work. 

The most likely reason CW can't load it is that it needs to be re-registered, as it's an ActiveX library. These differ from VSTs in that instead of having the scanner go out and find them, their locations are stored in the system registry. Just like with VST3, this eliminates the need for the DAW to go looking for them. The downside is that if that information in the registry is lost, e.g. after a Windows re-install or switching to another user profile, then YOU have to go and find them and add them back into the registry.

That's actually easy to do. At least, once you've verified where cronus.dll actually is. For example, if its path is c:\program files\cakewalk\shared dxi\cronos.dll what you'd do is open a command prompt and type in the following:

        REGSVR32 C:\Program Files\Cakewalk\Shared Dxi\cronus.dll

That's it. Cronus.dll has code within it that knows how to enter itself into the registry. REGSVR32 simply calls that code and V-Vocal does the rest. It doesn't matter where the DLL is stored, since Cakewalk is looking it up by its CLSID, which never changes.

Note that I don't recall the actual path cronus.dll installs to by default, but I'm sure you can find it.

One caveat: you may have to run regsvr32 as Administrator.

 

@@bitflipper . . . thanks for your reply and info, but the REGSVR32 on an elevated command prompt didn't work, just got an error message . . . but, I forgot about DX Audio plugins, and when I looked in Cakewalk Plugin Manager, "Cronus" was in fact an excluded plugin (thanks for that)

. . . so I toggled it to be included, but still the project crashes on open (insert arggh emoji)

Anyways, by loading in safe mode, and excluding all instances of Cronus, I got the old project open, then I changed all the VVocal clips to Melodyne clips, and the project opens nicely . . . so, I'm off to make some music.

 

[bitflipper]

What was the error code regsvr32 displayed? 

Assuming that you still care about getting VV going. Melodyne is, of course, far superior.

Although one caveat applies to both of them: don't save a project mid-edit.