Cubase 10.5.11 Blacklisted / Crash plug-ins on macOS // FAQ [UPDATED]

Hi all,

We are investigating the blacklist issues with 3rd party VST plug-ins with high priority. Here are some answers to the most frequently asked questions:

Why is your Cubase 10.5.11 crashing on start up?

Cubase is crashing because of unstable VST 2 plug-ins.

By deleting the “Vst2xPlugin Blacklist Cubase.xml”, the “Vst2xPlugin Whiteliste Cubase.xml” and “Vst2xPlugin Infos Cubase.xml” in your preferences folder a new plug-in scan is forced on start up and unstable plug-ins are moved to the blacklist.

The next update Cubase 10.5.12 will have an automatic plug-in scan on start up.

Why are some of my plug-ins now on the blacklist that haven’t been backlisted before?

After February 2020 all notarized applications have to activate the “Hardened Runtime”. Plug-ins that don’t meet the requirements of Apple’s new security system, seem to be unstable and are moved to the blacklist.

That is why plug-ins that haven’t been blacklisted on Cubase 10.5.0 are now blacklisted.

Here are some more official details on the Hardened Runtime:
https://developer.apple.com/documentation/security/hardened_runtime

Some users reported in the forum that the problem is solved by de-activating the System Integrity Protection of macOS. We are strongly advising against deactivating the SIP since this will lower the security of your system.

What is Steinberg doing to improve the situation?

Unfortunately, we are currently able to reproduce the instability on our systems in the headquarter with illegal cracked plug-ins only. If you are using illegal cracked plug-ins they will be banned by Hardened Runtime on macOS and we are not able to make them available in Cubase.

We have installed all the legal versions of the plug-ins that are reported to crash Cubase, but none of them are being blacklisted on different machines and systems. If you are having issue with legal plug-ins we need more information about your systems and plug-ins that cause the crash.

Please contact us via info [at] steinberg dot de and add „BLACKLIST” to the subject.

This is what we are asking for:

It would help us a lot if you could send us the crash logs. You find the crash logs here:

  1. In macOS, start the “Console” app
  2. Left side, navigate to “User Reports” (macOS Mojave 10.14) / “Crash Reports” (macOS Catalina 10.15)
  3. Look for reports created by either “vstscanner” or “vst2xscanner”
  4. Check the date, its only interesting to check for these entries within February, resp. this week
  5. Right click on one of them, select “Reveal in Finder”
  6. Then grab the relevant log files (according to date, etc.) and add them as an attachment to the email.

Could you provide a system report or a system information file please?

Could you create a screenshot of the blacklist entries found in Studio → VST Plug-in Manager → Blacklist?

Have all affected plug-ins been updated to their latest available versions? If so, which versions are these exactly?

Which VST2 plug-in paths are set in the VST plug-in manager (click the gear wheel icon at the bottom)

Could you send us the compressed Cubase preferences folder with the email?

What is Steinberg doing in regards to the performance problems on Windows and macOS?

We are currently preparing the next Cubase 10.5.12 update for both Mac and Windows that will be available in the this week. The update will address the performance spike/peak issue that has been reported in the forums.



Thank you for your understanding and please excuse the inconvenience.

Best regards,
Matthias

[quote=“musicproducerunik”]

Hi,

There is no Cubase crashlog since it is the VST Scanner that is crashing. Could you please have a look at the Console as I mentioned above?

Thanks!

SIP enabled, wish me luck

Honestly dude, back up your machine and update to Mojave. As resistant as I was to do this, I found that moving from High Sierra to Mojave, along with ‘allowing apps from anywhere’ and disabling SIP ironed out a bunch of issues.

For all VST plugins that didnt work on my macbook pro (the new 16 inch) is used the xattr command in Terminal:

xattr -d com.apple.quarantine

after the “/” drag your plugin that doesnt work from finder into Terminal, to get the complete adres.

So for me it was:

xattr -d com.apple.quarantine /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/VST/Ozone\ 8.vst

In my case i had to do everything from Izotope, Vengeance and some freeware like FreeClip (get it if you never heard of that last one).
After that i could re-activate the plugins in CB :stuck_out_tongue:
Works perfect until now.

Hi all,

I have updated my post above. We have been able to reproduce the blacklist/crash issue with illegal cracked version of the plug-ins. We cannot reproduce it with the legal versions of the plug-ins.

If you are having issues with legal plug-ins, please sent us the crash reports as mentioned above.

If your problems are caused by illegal cracked plug-ins, there isn’t anything that we can do. These plug-ins are blacklisted by Apple due to an invalid code signature caused by the crack.

Just tried this but it doesn’t seem to work. Any other ideas?
EDIT: never mind, it works.

yeap … as i said from the beginning :frowning:

I assume this was supposed to read “available in the download assistant this week” ?

what happened ?

We are currently running the last installer tests to prepare the release of the 10.5.12 update on Thursday.

thanks for the update

Naughty Naughty!

All you people complaining about black listed plugins - Shame on you! :laughing:

Ah, the 21 post troll…

:smiley:

I tried to email you the 2 plugins that I remembered have been blacklisted. Unfortunately Gmail doesn’t let me send them for some reason.

Anyway, the 2 plugins were:

Korg Legacy
Eventide Harmonizer (only the single version. The dual works)

Maybe speak to them and maybe they can help out.

10.0.6 must not be far off as well?

Something for devs.
I have a system with plugins from some vendors. The usual. NI, Waves, Eventide, IK. And softube.
I have used FET Compressor 2.4.83. It has OpenGL support. Softube has released 2.4.93 without OpenGL, assume for fixing catalina support. (They have not fixed the Right-click hang nor VST3 basic functions) I have also other plugins from Softube that I did not update. They are all 2.4.83 versions. And after that update Cubase 10.5.12 was giving me beach-ball, and I noticed that in OSX Activity Monitor cubase was classified as “Not responding”. This is BUG. The application should respond to system messages. The plugin loading should not be done in the event processing thread. And still 10.0.50 loads at least 10 times as fast as 10.5.12.

I have same problem, I’m running cubase pro 10.5 trial and last year I purchased fab-filter legally, and other of my plugins are free one like dsk,xfer-ott but why these plugins not show in my daw.

Can somebody tell me how to obtain 10.5 copy please
What I can download from the website is 10.5.12
I want to roll back to 10.5 which is stable for me
Thanks