Hi everyone, I found similar questions, but I’m not shure if they are the same.
Problem:For several instruments I find duplicate entries when using them (e.g. Padshop, Retrologue, The Grand3, REVerence). Browsing in the Mediabay also shows these entries both in …\AppData\Roaming\VST3 Presets\Steinberg Media Technologies.. and in a symbolic path vstsound:\… which is obviously a .vstsound container. The physical path to Content does show logical folders but does not show any entries inside.
Installation: Windows 11 upgraded from Windows 10, Cubase 8.5, 9, 11, 14, Absolute 6 (upgraded from2, 3).
Obviously, Steinberg changed locations and container contents with newer versions. Testwise I unchecked affected folders in AppData and the respective duplicates were gone.
I also checked if an entry used from the unchecked location will be replaced by its newer duplicate (i.e. the sound is still present). That seemed to work.
However, today I was wondering all duplicates were back again and the folders were checked as before. And the test project misses the sound entry used from AppData.That causes me ask what happens with older projects.
So, is it a good idea to disable old entries anyway or does this affect older projects (=> missing entry)?Is there a kind of cleaning-up function for duplicates anywhere?
And another question - the older Cubase versions asked for missing content, which is a result of moving content with the newer libraries. “Delete” is the solution. But how can I check if specific content is present or not? Neither the Steinberg Library Manager nor the Mediabay shows the content of physical content files (missing relation between entry names and files). If e.g. FCP_SMT_144_GA_Presets.vstsound is missing, is it replaced by FCP_SMT_144_GA_Resources.vstsound or something else? Is there a way to show the content of .vstsound files? I.e., how can I detect missing content at all?
Yes. You can clean-up duplicates with the Library Manager. It will give you a red triangle next to items which have duplicates.
I don’t know. I didn’t figure out an easy way to do that–but I do have Absolute 6 (upgraded from an earlier version) and lots of different Cubase Pro releases. Until I cleaned things up, I had VSTs in multiple locations and I was “missing” some content that I was sure should be present…
I just did a system-wide search for .vstsound and backed-up ALL .vstsound files on my system (from every location), then used Library Manager to remove EVERY VST, and next I chose a folder where I wanted to keep all the VSTs on my system.
I deleted every VST in that target location, updated my Library Manager path to point to the new location, moved all the .vstsound files from my “backup” into the new location, and finally, closed and re-opened Library Manager.
It scanned the location and re-registered all of the VSTs. Once that was done, there were a few duplicates which I was able to see and remove using Library Manager. After all that, I opened Cubase and rescanned plugins and content using Plugin Manager and MediaBay–just to be on the safe side. My “missing content” was no longer missing, and I don’t see any duplicates.
The older duplicates are all .vstpreset files. I opened one of those files with SLM, nothing happened. It looks like SLM ignores this file type. However, I found SLM provides some logging info when ALT clicking to the the upper right “I”. In the log I can see the file name sent to SLM, but no further action.
How did you handle those files?
I don’t have any .vstpreset files on my active system and I haven’t seen any when downloading VSTs/content. I just searched and found 14 in a backup folder from a previous DAW. It looks like all of them are user-created presets that I manually named and saved. If your dupes are the same sizes, it would probably be OK to delete the extras.
In c:\Users\name\AppData\Roaming\VST3 Presets\ I removed Padshop and Retrologue files, it seems all is still working.
In both c:\ProgramData\VST3 Presets\ and c:\Users\All Users\VST3 Presets\ I found doublettes for The Grand (i.e. there were 3 times the same preset) and deleted them.
That seems to be fine. I’m wondering if really older projects still work…
I still have doublettes for Cloner, Distroyer, Expander, Frequency, GEQ-10, GEQ-30, Imager, Magneto, Mi6To2, MixerDelay, ModMachine, MultibandCompressor, MultibandEnvelopeShaper, MultiTap Delay, Quadrafuzz v2, REVelation, REVerence, SoftClipper, StudioChorus, SuperVision, VST Bass Amp.
These are all in unidentifyable containers for me and the Lib Manager does not seem to recognize them. Seems only VSTi’s are recognized.
Some of the 128bit IDs which can be seen in the MediaBay seem to be the same.
Does anyone know how to identify the file corresponding the IDs and their content?
There are indeed some duplicate containers in content which were installed the same day.
E.g. in “HSO_2_Combis” and “Sonic Selection” (both from HALion) I can find
FCP_SMT_079_HSSE_Pro.vstsound
FCP_SMT_081_HSSE_Artist.vstsound
FCP_SMT_083_HSSE_S90.vstsound
FCP_SMT_085_HSSE_SR_OneSoundzSilver.vstsound
FCP_SMT_087_HSSE_VST_Expression.vstsound
FCP_SMT_100_HSSE_Artist_Drum.vstsound