Blacklisted Plugins - What's up?

Cubase
47

Hi all, Vito from the Soundtoys Support team here. I did some testing to try to figure out an easy workaround for this problem. I can’t pinpoint an exact cause of the issue, but it does appear to be primarily dependent on the version of PACE / iLok you have installed.

It seems as though plugins that use iLok will get blacklisted when scanned in Cubase 10 if you have the latest iLok version 5.1.0 installed. They did not appear to get blacklisted when scanned while the previous iLok version 5.0.3 was installed.

As others have mentioned here, PACE is aware of this problem and has announced that this will be fixed in the next iLok update for version 5.1.1 which they’re trying to get out as soon as possible.

The Soundtoys installers ship with an iLok installer, and it’s usually not the latest version (since PACE issues updates more frequently). This is actually pretty helpful to us now, so here’s the new workaround I suggest:

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  1. Reset Cubase 10’s blacklist so that it rescans all plugins again. This can be done by navigating to "C:\Users<username>\AppData\Roaming\Steinberg\Cubase 10_64" and then deleting the “Vst2xPlugin Blacklist Cubase.xml” file.
  • You can skip this step if you prefer to reactivate the plugins one-by-one in the VST Plug-In Manager.

  1. Uninstall PACE / iLok. Open the start menu and search for “Add or remove programs” and open up that application. Then search for “PACE License Support” and remove it.

  2. Reinstall the latest Soundtoys package, and choose to install PACE / iLok at the end.


    Now, you should have the latest version of Soundtoys and the previous version of PACE (version 5.0.3) installed, and the plugins should be successfully scanned when you open up Cubase. If you chose not to delete the blacklist file, then you should be able to reactivate them manually in the VST Plug-In Manager. This should also apply to other non-Soundtoys plugins with the same issue. Just make sure you do NOT update the iLok version until 5.1.1 is released.

I hope this information helps! Please let us know if you have any problems with this workaround.