Dorico 3.5 Missing VST Plugins in Play mode

I appreciate the new Allowed vs. Blocked VST plugins which I assume is taking the place of the whitelist. The problem I have is that some VST plugins appear in the Allowed list but do not appear in the pull down list of instruments in Play mode. I contacted support and they suggested removing and then adding them back to the list but that didn’t help. One example of a missing VST plugin is the Kontakt player. I would greatly appreciate any suggestions.

Tracy

Can you try clicking the ‘Clear Audio Engine Cache’ button at the bottom of the VST Plug-ins page of Preferences, then restart Dorico? If you still fid that your plug-ins are getting blocked, please do HelP > Create Diagnostic Report, which will create a zip fle on your desktop called Dorico Diagnostics.zip, and then attach that to a reply here so we can take a closer look.

Kontakt and Kontakt player should be allowed by default. If it’s not showing up in the list and you’re on Windows then it’s most likely because you need to add Kontakt’s default installation path of C:\Program Files\Native Instruments\VSTPlugins 64 bit

Thanks, but I tried both suggestions with no luck.

I’m attaching the diagnostic report.

Thanks in advance.
Dorico Diagnostics.zip (551 KB)

Kontakt has become blacklisted on your system somehow. Click the ‘Reset Audio Engine Cache’ button at the bottom of the VST Plug-ins page of Preferences and restart Dorico. Hopefully that will be sufficient.

Unfortunately that didn’t help. Why would Dorico blacklist Kontakt player but it works fine in Cubase?

Thanks again.

Tracy

To be honest, we don’t know at this stage, we are also totally puzzled. Investigating into your problem, I found that I now have the same problem with another plug-in, namely NotePerformer. All of a sudden it gets blacklisted with me, and nothing so far that I could do to persuade Dorico to let me use it again. I’m investigating further now but can’t say anything so far. I have a little bit the suspicion that a recent Windows update has to do with it, because it used to worked beautifully on my machine until not too long ago.

Could this be a VST2 issue?
Persuading NI to make VST3 plugins has been failed for years, but I wonder whether Arne Wallander is glad to make VST3 version of NotePerformer.

Hi Tracy, I assume you had before Dorico 3.0 installed and that Kontakt was working with it, right? If that is the case, then please try following:

  • Stop Dorico

  • Go to C:\Users<yourname>\AppData\Roaming\Steinberg\Dorico 3.5 AudioEngine_64 and delete the files
    Vst2xPlugin Blacklist Dorico 3.5 AudioEngine.xml
    Vst2xPlugin Infos Dorico 3.5 AudioEngine.xml

  • Go to C:\Users<yourname>\AppData\Roaming\Steinberg\VSTAudioEngine3_64 and copy the file
    Vst2xPlugin Infos VSTAudioEngine3.xml

  • Go back to C:\Users<yourname>\AppData\Roaming\Steinberg\Dorico 3.5 AudioEngine_64 and paste the file

  • Rename the just pasted file to Vst2xPlugin Infos Dorico 3.5 AudioEngine.xml

  • Start Dorico and see if it recognizes Kontakt again.

Thanks for all of you time and trouble but that didn’t work either.

Each time Dorico runs it writes the file “Vst2xPlugin Blacklist Dorico 3.5 AudioEngine” anew and it containes Kontakt.dll and one other plugin which it evidently doesn’t like.

Tracy

Hm, that described procedure did the job for me, but unfortunately not for you.
Could you please zip up the folder C:\Users<yourname>\AppData\Roaming\Steinberg\VSTAudioEngine3_64 and post here? Thanks

when I had this issue relatively early on, I experimented with various things including probably all of Ulf’s suggestions above. Ironically, what actually fixed it for me in the end was simply going into the VST Plug-ins page in preferences and moving the VST (Noteperformer in my case like with most others) from the blocked to the allowed side. I’ve never had an issue since. But you’re saying that Kontakt doesn’t appear at all in either list? Kontakt 16 is the one which should be there. Have you checked to find where the Kontakt plug-ins is/are actually located – very likely in several places but the location in which Dorico is looking should be listed in VST2 plug-in paths (although on my system, two of the five locations don’t actually exist!).

The four core diagnostic files for someone upgrading from 3 to 3.5 are indeed
Vst2xPlugin Blacklist Dorico 3.5 AudioEngine.xml
Vst2xPlugin Infos Dorico 3.5 AudioEngine.xml
and the same again from the VSTAudioEngine3_64 folder as above. There’s usually something in there which is obviously wrong. I’m sure Ulf or someone else will get to the bottom of this for you.

Hi Ulf,

I’m glad, that I’ve found this thread, because I, too have the same problem like Tracy (at least it seems to me). I followed Your above instructions to delete and c/p the xml-files, but after starting Dorico it edits the previously manually cleared xml-files and entries noteperformer in the file “Vst2xPlugin Blacklist Dorico 3.5 AudioEngine.xml”. (For me it’s noteperformer, not kontakt). In the Dorico-GUI noteperformer does neither appear in the “allowed” nor in the “blocked” list. As an effect, in Play-Mode there is no entry for the noteperformer plugin in the “VST Instrumente”-List. HSSE with HSO works fine.
Tracy did not post her Zip-File of her folder yet, as you asked:
C:\Users<yourname>\AppData\Roaming\Steinberg\VSTAudioEngine3_64
So here’s mine and the “Dorico Diagnostics.zip”

What could be wrong?
Thanks in advance!

Thorsten (user: “Fitsch”)
Dorico Diagnostics.zip (697 KB)
Dorico 3.5 AudioEngine_64.zip (656 KB)

Hi Thorsten, I don’t know, yet, what is wrong there. I’m currently on vacation, but I will focus on this issue as soon as I return to work (July 27th). So please be a bit patient, I’m sure we will sort this sooner or later.

Hello Ulf,

thank you for this immediate answer! ( Boah, ich brech’ mir mit dem Englisch hier noch einen ab: ich wünsche Ihnen einen wunderschönen, erholsamen Urlaub. Möglichst völlig ohne irgendwelche XML-Dateien oder dll’s :slight_smile: )

I don’t know, if this could help analyzing what’s going on: after my last posting here, I entered the directory/path to the 32-Bit-Noteperformer-Plugin in the Dorico-GUI and restarted Dorico. Then the plugin “noteperformer32” appears in the “blocked” list in the GUI. I could move this “noteperformer32”-Entry into the “allowed”-List. After restarting the computer, it still appeares in this allowed-list, but I still cannot chose any noteperformer in the Play-Mode-VST-Instruments-List.
I can’t force the “noteperformer64.dll” to appear in one of the “blocked” or “allowed”-Lists via this way.
The version of this noteperformer-plugins (as shown via the properties of “noteperformer32.dll” and “noteperformer64.dll”) is 3.3.1.18 - downloaded it today.

Best

Thorsten (user: “Fitsch”)

Hi Thorsten,
vielen Dank, geht nicht ganz ohne XLMs und DLLs, aber ich mache das auch gerne fuer unsere Kunden.

And no, Dorico is 64bit only, so 32bit plug-ins won’t work at all. The fault must be on our side, somewhere in the vstscanner, but I will find out.

Dear Ulf,

I’ve got a little guilty conscience (schlechtes Gewissen) to poste again. It’s just because I’ve got time now - but I’m really fine, if you will answer or analyze it further when your vacation is over! If anyone ever will use the german saying “Servicewüste”, then I will disagree and answer: Steinberg and the Steinbergian’s perform an exceptional, extraordinarily support - have a look at them, this is the definition of service!

So here’s a screenshot that might give additional information. The errorlevel of the vst2scan is “0”. I’m just a little confused by the but I don’t think, Dorico get’s confused by this tag-value and adds it to the black-list because of this!?

Best

Thorsten

Thorsten, thanks for your kind words.

That’s what confuses me as well - not the vendor version - but the fact that the output of the vstscanner looks perfectly normal. With that errorlevel and output the plug-in should normally not land on the blacklist, but still it does. So I have to find out what exactly is going on there.

Tracy does not respond anymore, so Thorsten, could you please zip up the folder C:\Users<yourname>\AppData\Roaming\Steinberg\VSTAudioEngine3_64 and post here. Please have a close look at the path, it is the folder of the previous Dorico 3.0 audio engine. Thanks

did you definitely replace the contents of the blacklisted file clearly shown in your attachment with a clean one like the attached? If you replace the file as in Ulf’s suggestion instead of editing it, then you must rename it as well to Vst2xPlugin Infos Dorico 3.5 AudioEngine.xml. If that’s all correct, then it does no harm to looks at the Preferences–>VST PLug-ins list. If NotePerformer is listed on the right hand side then move it to allowed.

Your Noteperformer version seems the same as mine and not an earlier one which has caused many of these issues.
Vst2xPlugin Blacklist VSTAudioEngine3.zip (343 Bytes)

Hello Ulf, hello dko22,

here’s the zipped Folder:
C:\Users<yourname>\AppData\Roaming\Steinberg\VSTAudioEngine3_64

After starting Dorico I go to Preferences->VST-Plugins and clear the audio-engine-cash. This makes Dorico deleting most of the files in the folder:
C:\Users<yourname>\AppData\Roaming\Steinberg\Dorico 3.5 AudioEngine_64
Then I start Dorico again.
During the start the files in this folder are recreated. The two files in this folder:
Vst2xPlugin Blacklist Dorico 3.5 AudioEngine.xml
Vst2xPlugin Infos Dorico 3.5 AudioEngine.xml
contain now entries for noteperformer64.
But in Preferences->VST-Plugins noteperformer is neither in the “blocked” nor the “allowed”-List.
Noteperformer is available as Playback-Template.
But the noteperformer-plugin does not show properly in the list in Play-Mode “VST-Instruments”, there it is “02 - !! Not…erformer !!” resp. “—”.
No sound.

Then I exactly follow the steps in the above post of Ulf’s “Fri Jul 10, 2020 10:07 am”. Yes, this steps lead to an XML-File “Vst2xPlugin Infos Dorico 3.5 AudioEngine.xml”, which is not empty, but has an empty content; a valid XML-Structure, containing no information.

Then I Start Dorico.
The File “Vst2xPlugin Infos Dorico 3.5 AudioEngine.xml” gets altered during this startup. Now the XML-Structure contains the information about noteperformer64.dll, as given in my post “Fri Jul 17, 2020 6:00 pm”.

But in Preferences->VST-Plugins noteperformer is neither in the “blocked” nor the “allowed”-List.
Noteperformer is available as Playback-Template.
But the noteperformer-plugin does not show properly in the list in Play-Mode “VST-Instruments”, there it is “02 - !! Not…erformer !!” resp. “—”.
No sound.

Thanks a lot for Your help and support in advance!

Thorsten
VSTAudioEngine3_64.zip (505 KB)