As I did have problems with Retrologue displaying 3. party sound sets in a proper way, Steinberg support suggested that an upgrade from my CB 8,5 to 9.0.20 would do the trick. Kind of strange advice but you should listen to support, right? So I took the leap and did. Here is my mail to Steinberg support after the, by Steinberg support, suggested upgrade:
Even though I doubted upgrading to Cubase 9 would solve the Retrologue problem, I took your advice and did the upgrade from 8,5 to 9.0.20. All then hell broke loose.
Cubase 9 blacklisted 140 pluggins. 85 of them were 32 bit so that was kind of expected. But the rest? As an example, all of my iZotope plugs are gone. They are all 64 bit. Further: IC control is gone! No remote that I use a lot. Blaming Apple (like you do on the Forum) makes it even worse. Everything else works on my iPad. The remote for Protools and the remote for Logic. It is Cubase 9 that makes everything stop. And btw; the Retrologue problem still remains.
Upgrading to 9 was a boomer.
Cubase 9 is really a bad product with capital B, due to:
• No 32 bit support (and it only accepts a portion of the 32 Lives converted 32 bit plugs (64 bit simulation). All of which Cubase 8,5 did accepted as 64 bit)
• It blacklists even 64 bit plugs, like all my iZotope pluggs
• Only support for the newest OS’es
• No IC anymore
Retrologue still won’t display 3 party sound sets in a proper way. 3. Party sound sets for Halion6 and Padshops is a cumbersome process that sometimes goes bad and you really have to investigate to find out where the problem is. Installing sound sets in things like Massive, Omnisphere, Zebra and Serum is a breeze. Look at the amount of 3. Party sound sets for the mentioned synths compared to what is available for the Steinberg synths. Why do you think it is so? And which synths do you think will be bought due to the large number of available sound sets? Omnisphere or Halion? Your strategy is soooooooo wrong.
Steinberg has for some months now sent me questioners asking why I dont do the upgrade to 9.
Why do Steinberg ask me if I do not want to upgrade??? The answer is obvious, is it not? With the philosophy behind Cubase 9 you are cutting off a large proportion of the market. That is your choice, not mine. Cubase 9 sucks!
Sorry to hear you’re having issues but Pro 9 is rock solid for me, no issues at all.
The summer sale (40% usually) has been going for several years…as witnessed by the questions on as to when it would come…I used it last year to upgrade to 8.5 and a few years ago too from 6 to 8.
Isotope plugins work fine here. However, my cubase has blacklisted some izotope dll files, but those aren’t the actual plugins. Maybe that’s something you can check…
Bummer that you have problems, everything works fine here, mostly…
On all my pluggs? Would take forever. Rather stay on 8.5. I will however try to find another DAW from a company with another philosophy. A DAW that works on older OS and has 32 bit VST support. 8.5 has that, but I doubt Steinberg will be “my” company in the years to come. Over the years there has been many issues. I have swallowed them all. Now my stomach is full of Steinberg sheit. I don’t like to be filled with sheit.
Well my initial problem was not CB 8.5. It was that 3. party sound sets folders dont get exposed in Retrologue. Steinberg support suggested Cubase 9 to solve the problem. A doubtful suggestion but one I anyhow tried. Then I entered the world of Cubase 9 - and found a system that has left for Mars, while I am back on earth. Both the Retrologue problem and Cubase 9 philosophy suggests that Steinberg would rather sell their own products than making it easy for any 3. party to enter their world. There is nothing wrong in trying to make money. I do however think the Steinberg strategy makes less money for them. And at the same time makes customers suffer. Have you tried to install a 3. party sound set for Padshop, Retrologue or Halion? Compared that to say Omnisphere?
I have a bunch of 3. party pluggs that are great. Many of them rater new. And 64 bit. Cubase 9 blacklists them. How satisfying is that? Due to the mentioned problem with CB 9 I downloaded Studio one for a 30 day trial. I am only two days into that trial so it is a little early, but … It accepts AU and VST pluggs. It accepts 32 bit, 32 bit converted to 64 bit, and 64 bit pluggs. It accepts pluggs that even 8.5 blacklisted and that even Logic 9 blacklisted. It is compatible with operatings systems from the stone age of computers. Yet it is an updated and new system. Appearance wise not that far from Cubase. And it has some great features Cubase dont (Guess it is the other way around too but I haven’t found any so far). It is, to me, fairly costly to switch from Cubase to Studio One, but it cost even more to replace black listed pluggs and further more to need to buy a new computer with the newest OS just to run Cubase 9. Choice is simple really if the 30 day trial continues like it has for two days.
The original problem with Retrologue will however not be solved. But I guess Steinberg support will write me in a year or so apologizing for the delay in answering my support request and tell me all my problems will be gone if I just use a couple hundred dollars to do the upgrade to CB 10.
You can still use a 3rd party bridge to run 32 bit plugins, which will likely work better than the internal Cubase bit bridge. That’s probably part of the reason why they dropped it.
I would check if there’s any updates for the newish plugins that got blacklisted. That’s definitely not normal.
Problem is that it blacklists even 64 bit pluggs. And converted pluggs through 32 Bit Lives. I have jBridge. Not a very good bridge. 32 Bit Lives is a far far better system, but does not help if the converted plugg is blacklisted. I also have Patchwork from BlueCat. That can load the AU version so in theory that should work even if the vst got blacklisted. I did however got fed up with CB 9 and the 140 blacklisted pluggs and will look for a better solution.
According to iZotope support Steinberg introduced (something I cant remember the name of) with Cubase 9 that blacklists a lot of plugs.
I can’t not confirm that Cubase 9 is rock solid to me. Crashes, audio dropouts, crashes because of not blacklisted VSTi, minor bugs (for me Virtual Keyboard doesn’t activates on hot key press), etc. etc.