Native Instruments Komplete Control Blacklisted

I recently purchased Cubase 9.5 Pro, and I am in learning mode. Sadly, Cubase blacklisted a number of 64-bit VST 2 plugins. Surprisingly, NI Komplete Kontrol is one of those plugins. When I reactivated this plugin, Cubase 9.5 Pro crashed and since then was never able to relaunch. I receive the following error dialog box:

Cubase quit unexpectedly.

Click Reopen to open the application again. Click Report to see more detailed information and send a report to Apple.

Ignore / Report… / Reopen

I made several attempts, trying all the options, but Cubase will no longer run. I rebooted by system but still no luck.

My system:

MacBook Pro (Retina, Mid 2012)
2.7 GHz Intel Core i7
16 GB 1600 MHz DDR3
OS X 10.13.3 (High Sierra)

I get it that Cubase blacklists 32-bit plugins and what may be considered ‘questionable’ plugins, but Native Instrument plugins? Come on, Steinberg. In fact, Cubase seems to be quite picky about its plugins. In fact, I could not even find Steinberg’s own Retrologue in its VST Instruments list. Not sure if it’s blacklisted, but it would be comical if it is. Unfortunately, I cannot check its blacklisted status, since Cubase WILL NOT LOAD ANY LONGER.

Really. I dropped a nice chunk of change on Cubase 9.5 Pro. In fact, recently I decided to take a dive into all things Steinberg, at least on the software side. I purchased both Cubase 9.5 Pro and Absolute 3, and I have (well, at least until most recently) my eyes on Nuendo. I value ‘time’ as the most precious commodity, and when my workflow gets disturbed by software, it forces me to re-evaluate my software choices. I am certainly willing to get around Cubase’s blacklisting of 32-bit plugins and ‘questionable’ plugins by using a rewire slave that handles them without issue. Yes, I continue to use another DAW with which I, thus far, have no serious issues running EVERY plugin that I thrown at it.

Steinberg is being overly protective with its Cubase blacklisting strategy, and this will drive away customers - myself included. Don’t get me wrong. I am EXTREMELY IMPRESSED with Cubase, and I spent quite a bit of time researching my purchasing decision. I took the same steps in researching my purchasing decision for my first DAW, which I still faithfully use. I chose Cubase in addition to my first DAW, because its feature set complemented my other DAW’s feature set. With both these DAWs, I was confident that I would be able to cover all my capability and workflow requirements.

Alas, Steinberg’s Cubase, with its over-restrictive blacklist feature, is making it impossible to stay loyal.

Given I am new Cubase user, I’ll assume that my novice status prevents me from seeing an obvious fix to this problem. I would appreciate feedback from Steinberg and the Steinberg community at large. Barring a complete reinstall, how can I quickly and effectively resolve this problem? For instance, is there an XML configuration that I can hand-jam to get me back on track?

I really do not want to reset and purchase yet another DAW…

Thank you in advance for your help in this matter.

UPDATE…

Here is a screen capture of the error message that I receive when attempting to run Cubase 9.5 Pro:
Cubase_Lockup.png
I found this on Steinberg’s site: https://www.steinberg.net/nc/en/support/knowledgebase_new/show_details/kb_show/safe-start-mode-resetting-the-cubase-preferences.html. As guided by the instructions, I first opted to disable program preferences. When that did not work, I selected the delete program preferences option. Unfortunately, that did not work either. In both cases I wound up with the same error message show in the screen capture attached to this post.

While I wait for Steinberg’s reply, are there any other reasonable troubleshooting steps I can take?

Thank you.

By the way, I ran Activity Monitor after receiving the error message shown in the screen capture. However, the Cubase main process apparently terminates prior to this message’s appearance.

Are you using the latest version of Komplete Kontrol and other NI plugins? Cubase’s plugin scanner/blacklist isn’t that sensitive, it only blacklists plugins that seriously misbehave during scan, or redundant VST2 versions of the plugins.

If updating the plugin using Native Access doesn’t work, you’ll probably have move the plugin file to another folder. This is a strange issue though, I don’t think anyone else reported having issues with NI’s plugins recently.

I don’t have Komplete Kontrol installed, but maybe configuring it in standalone mode could help.

Thanks for the reply, Romantique Tp.

Are you using the latest version of Komplete Kontrol and other NI plugins? Cubase’s plugin scanner/blacklist isn’t that sensitive, it only blacklists plugins that seriously misbehave during scan, or redundant VST2 versions of the plugins.

If updating the plugin using Native Access doesn’t work, you’ll probably have move the plugin file to another folder. This is a strange issue though, I don’t think anyone else reported having issues with NI’s plugins recently.

Yes, I have all the latest versions installed. Since I use NI’s Native Access to run updates, as I understand, Native Access takes care of everything other the hood. I do not see any redundant versions.

I am not stating my issue is exclusively a Komplete Kontrol or NI plugin problem in general. Thus far, I was only able to observe Cubase continually crashing after I ‘reactivated’ Komplete Kontrol from the VST Plugin Manager. This is the first blocked plugin that I reactivated. Cubase also blocked a number of my other 64-bit mainstream plugins. Unfortunately, I was unable to manually catalog all the blocked plugins, because Cubase refuses to run any longer. For example, I think I saw one or more of my Tone2 plugins blocked.

I am highly disappointed by Cubase’s total crash on account of what I would classify to be an innocuous alteration. Yes, I recognize Steinberg warns that reactivating blacklisted VST plugins may create some Cubase stability issues, but I hardly expected Cubase to collapse at the sight of a reactivated maintstream VST plugin.

You know, I took a gamble buying Cubase, considering the fact I read more than one review complaining about its stability running atop OS X. Now I’m being to think I made a bad bet. Again, sad, since Cubase has an outstanding feature set - impressive, had it not failed so miserably. I’d like to think that Steinberg’s business model includes taking consumer feedback seriously, and I hope Steinberg strives to correct this problem at the soonest.

I hate shopping around; I remain a loyal customer where loyalty is warranted. However, if I’m force to take the monetary loss, both in purchasing Cubase and in spending time and money to begin the arduous process of learning it, I will do so and give my business to a competitor. It’s really that simple. There are other DAWs available for which I can make an informed purchasing decision that meets my needs, but I’d rather see Steinberg demonstrate resolve in supporting its consumer base by aggressively and quickly fixing issues like mine.

Like I said, this isn’t normal behavior. Try contacting Support through your MySteinberg. This is a really busy month for Steinberg so they might not be able to reply immediately, but they usually do a good job at helping people having issues like this. I suspected that it will simply involve moving a few plugins around though.

Try contacting Support through your MySteinberg.

Done. Thanks for your feedback.

I submitted a Steinberg support ticket on April 06, 2018, and received a reply on April 08, 2018, stating Steinberg is “experiencing unusually high email support volume.”

In the interim I am dead in the water with Cubase 9.5 Pro and trying to resolve this problem. Unfortunately, everything I was able to find thus far describes potential fixes that require Cubase to be running. Is there a configuration file that I can tweak minimally to get Cubase to run? Also, I have to believe there is at least one configuration file that can be manipulated to manage blacklisted VST plugins. I doubt the Cubase ‘Sentinel’ hard-codes Cubase plugin manager settings into the Cubase codebase. Software engineering best practices frown upon the hard-coding approach.

Someone please point me in the right direction. I can’t sit on my hands waiting for Steinberg to respond.

Thank you.

The blacklist file is called Vst2xPlugin Blacklist Cubase.xml . It can be found in your preferences folder. This article explains how to get to that folder:

Deleting all .XML files in this folder starting with “Vst”, along with the “Cubase Pro VST3 Cache” folder, should force Cubase to rescan all VST plugins.

As a last resort, you could delete everything in this folder. This will reset Cubase to factory default settings.

Thanks Romantique Tp; removing the XML files with filenames beginning in ‘Vst’ and removing the Cubase Pro VST3 Cache folder resolved the problem of Cubase not starting. Now, I’ll have to try again, reactivating my blacklisted 64-bit VST plugins one-by-one.