[2.1.31] Reproducible Crash - Solved, user error, no VST Live problem

Had a crash in my main project today and tried to find the root cause:

  • I have the VST2 and VST3 versions of U-He’s Repro 5 installed
  • In VST Live I use the VST2 version to be able to use MIDI program changes (not supported by U-He for VST3), so I can wirk with a single Repro 5 instance across songs
  • When I create an empty project, add a VST2 instance of Repro 5 and then click on the button to open the plugin UI, VST Live crashes
  • Don’t know when this got broken, but it must have worked at some point in the past as I created and edited the sounds for my live set within VST Live
  • No recent updates of Repro 5

Crash report attached.

Thanks,
Christian

Crash Report.zip (33.7 KB)

Just did a quick check, latest version of Repro 5 is installed. Unfortunately I cannot test this in Cubase 14 for comparison, as the native version only supports VST3 plugins.

Hi! It tricked me…, you might check this too: there is a Allow VST2 plugins tick on the bottom of C14 plugin-manager. Then my VST2’s become visible too (but I’m still on Intel-x64…)

Unfortunately, this is not available for the “native” Arm-based version of Cubase 14.

… thank you for the Crash Log. You are running VST Live 2.1.30. I’ve tried VST Live 2.1.31 (Mac, Arm64) and “Repro 5” (VST2) version 1.1.3. No problem. I can open the the Editor of the Plug-In.

Can you try 2.1.31? And make sure you are running 1.1.3 for Repro 5?

See you,
Michael.

Hello Michael,

the crash report in my first posting shows “Version: 2.1.31.269 (2.1.31.269)”, why are you assuming I am running 2.1.30?

I am already running 2.1.31, updated on Monday morning (before my finding).

The Repro 5 version is 1.1.3 since released by U-He.

Just to make sure there are no side-effects from my 25+ song default project I normally load at start (which I closed to start with an empty project for reproducible testing), I configured VST Live not to load a default project, closed it, opened it and started from scratch with an empty project.

Same behavior: added a layer to the empty song, replaced the default HALion Sonic in the layer by Repro 5 (VST2 Version), clicked on the keyboard icon to open the UI → instant crash

This is the log from this “full clean” start without a previous project loaded:
Crash Log.zip (21.1 KB)

Cheers,
Christian

Hi,

I guess that was my mistake. Sorry.

Yes, this one is pointing to 2.1.31. And it’s crashing directly in Repro-5.

This one is really weird ??

That’s what I am reading from your Crash Log

     0x33f360000 -        0x33fa23fff com.u-he.Repro-5.vst (V1.1.2) <d38bab2a-da98-37f5-9a51-b553e8dbbe4e> /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/VST Legacy/Repro-5.vst/Contents/MacOS/Repro-5\

com.u-he.Repro-5.vst (V1.1.2) → Here VST Live is working with that one, version 1.1.2. And your picture is telling me 1.1.3 with a working editor?

Have you seen this?
/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/VST Legacy/Repro-5.vst

VST Legacy? Have you moved files around? I would expect that the Plug-In is located at
/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/VST/u-he/Repro-5.vst

Maybe you have 1.1.2 and 1.1.3 installed? Before you are moving or deleting files. Can you please locate the following folder?
/Users/YourUserName/Library/Application Support/Steinberg/VST Live

Please zip it and drop it here. Thank you,
Michael.

your picture is telling me 1.1.3 with a working editor?

The “1.1.3” screenshot was of course from the VST 3 version, as I cannot open the VST 2 UI at the moment.

Have you moved files around

I was not aware of moving plugins around manually (but see below :flushed:), but there is indeed a “VST Legacy” folder in the “Plug-ins” folder. This contains Repro-1, Repro-5 and Blue3 (from GG Audio). The timestamp of the Repro-5.vst is relatively old (August 2021) and when I look into the info.plist in the package, this shows 1.1.2 for the “CFBundleShortVersionString” XML element.

The “normal” VST folder does contain Repro-1 and 5 in the “u-he” subfolder, these files have the same more recent timestamp (November 2024) as the VST3 version.

Please zip it and drop it here

VST Live.zip (23.0 KB)

After saving the zip file, I moved the Repro-1/5.vst files from the suspicious VST Legacy folder temporarily to my desktop, started VST Live and noticed (to my surprise) that Repro-5 was now missing completely, was expecting it to be picked up from the proper VST folder … checked the preferences and saw that the VST 2 plugin path was pointing to the “VST Legacy” folder …

And then I remembered :person_facepalming: - I had created the VST Legacy folder myself as Blue3/Repro5 were the only plugins where I still needed the VST2 version (for MIDI program changes) and I did not want to have the plugin selection cluttered with loads of VST2 plugins I do not need. So the U-He update installed the correct version, but did of course not catch the moved file. Copied the updated files from the VST to the VST Legacy folder and everything started to work as expected.

So the problem was completely of my own doing - thanks a lot for troubleshooting, you were very helpful.

Best regards,
Christian