Help! Lost master section presets for songs

This has happened before and i always let it go, but now after upgrading I cannot load any master section presets previously saved with my songs.

I have located the .vs files in the library/cache/steinberg section, but cannot use the .vs files to reload my plugin settings.

Any help would be greatly appreciated - thanks!

When you say you cannot load any master section presets, I am thinking that you mean that the presets are not where they “should be”.

Try this:

Go to the master section. Select organize Presets. This will open the folder where WL expects the master section presets to be located.

In your case, it will probably be empty.

Separately open the location where you have “found” the presets. Copy all of these.

Paste the copied presets into the “organize presets” folder.

This should work.

At least on a Windoze machine.

Good luck!

Thanks so much Rat, I really appreciate the advice! I copied the .vs files into that folder, which is full of .dat files, and unfortunately the .vs files didn’t do anything.

Hopefully PG sees this and chimes in with the (probably incredibly obvious) fix!

Thanks again.

I cannot load any master section presets previously saved with my songs.

For a montage, the Master Section preset is saved inside the .mon file, not the .vs file (this is for the audio file).

But what is the exact symptom you encounter?

Hi PG,

My problem is with audio files. I save the master section plugins in a companion file but they have somehow become dissociated after the OS upgrade. I have located the .vs files, but cannot figure out how to get them to function to restore my plugins and their respective settings. Any suggestions?

Thanks so much.


Put the .vs files next to their audio files, and they will always be recognized.

Thanks PG.

I put the .vs files in the same folder with the original wav files and i’m still not able to load master section preset. It’s grey’d out. Any other ideas?

I really appreciate your help.

This should be unchecked too.
2015-11-25 14_37_18.png

Unfortunately the option to load the master section is still grey’d out… anything else I could be missing here?

It is not gray if a Master Section preset is really present in the .vs file.
But this is the case only it the Master Section preset was explicitly saved with the dedicated button.
Are you aware of this procedure?

Hi PG - I’m not sure which the “dedicated button” is. However I used the button on the lower right side of the screen underneath the wav file of the song called Load Master Section Preset. It is right next to the button labeled Save Master Button Preset.

Anything further i could try? Thanks!

If you create new preset and save/reload, does it work?
Maybe your old files are damaged.

Yup. New files work fine. How could these original ones have become damaged?

Actually I get the same thing on Windows depending on whether the .vs companion file is saved with the wav (recall greyed out), or companion file saved in appdata cache (recall ok). Not sure what’s going on there, or if I’m doing something wrong.
This is in AudioFile workspace, saving and recalling Master Section presets for a wav file.

But I think it’s more complicated than that. The only way I can reproduce it every time is to set the preference to NOT save in an independent folder (as in PG’s pic). Then make a WAV file, put a plugin in the Master Section, and save the Master Section preset with the WAV file (so both WAV and VS files are in the same folder). Then close and open Wavelab. Open the WAV file, and it’s fine. You can load the preset.
Now change the preference to SAVE in an independent folder. Close and reopen Wavelab and open the WAV file again. The load preset will be greyed out.
I think it might be creating two .vs files.

This is in 8.0.4 anyway.

It seems like the presets would load ok if you set your preferences as in PG’s picture:
“Save view settings in companion file” checked
“Save in an independent folder” unchecked
and then put the “.vs” file that contains the preset in the same folder as the .wav file. If you currently have more than one .vs file (in the cache AND in the folder with the .wav file), the correct “.vs” file would probably be the larger one. If you only have one file (in the cache folder), that would need to be moved to the folder where the .wav file is.

Those are the results I get anyway: It depends how your preferences are currently set (even if you just changed them) that determines where the .vs file will be read from, and written to.

I think it’s great that Wavelab has so many options for setting things up exactly as you want, but in the case of Master Section presets saved with .wav files, I think it gets very problematic.

If you set the following preferences:
“Save view settings in companion file” unchecked
“Save in an independent folder” unchecked
you can try to save a Master Section preset with the .wav file, and Wavelab will indicate it’s saving one, but from what I can tell it’s not saved anywhere, and the load-in will be greyed-out the next time you open the .wav file, with the preset not saved at all.

Also I don’t think it’s wise to save something as important and irreplaceable as a Master Section preset in a .vs file in a folder called “Cache” (the default location) along with other files that aren’t really irreplaceable (like .gpk and normal .vs view files which can be deleted without great impact imo). I usually think of a Cache folder as something I could possibly empty without losing a bunch of work.

I think the options which create the greyed-out condition should be re-considered. I don’t think the preset “.vs” file should be allowed to be saved anywhere but in the folder with the .wav file, because from what I can tell, if someone changes their preferences afterward, it can make the preset not available at all, until moved, or the preference changed back.

Maybe I’ve gotten some of this wrong, but those are the results I got.

@bob99

Thanks for your analysis. There is indeed something to improve here.

Yes. From the day I started using WaveLab there was something about saving and re-loading the master section that I didn’t like. It just seemed too easy to lose a setting or have something go wrong.

I’m thankful for the montage effects section being added because that is just saved as a normal part of the montage as I would have expected. Because of my workflow, whenever I use the global master section, it’s usually just for restoration work or simple plugin processing, and stuff I don’t even bother saving with the audio file.

Would be nice to see some improvements on saving/re-loading the master section for those that rely on it more. +1 on a setting that makes the master section file live right next to the WAV file at all times.

Thank you PG.

And thanks Jperkinski.

That’s very interesting. I actually have the opposite concerns, although I understand where you are coming from.

FWIW, I actually was trained in post to always have a folder within each session folder called “settings” or something similar. This had notes of the setting used for hardware etc. as well as plug in settings.

So, I do use the master section, creating a new folder in the master section for the specific project.

This is then copied and saved to the “settings” folder along with the notes at the end of the session.