My old studio computer was winding down, so I bought a new one and upgraded from Cubase 7 to 11 in the process. I also installed all the old 3rd part VSTs as well. So far, this has gone smooth enough. Cubase is running, the VSTs are running and trials in new projects work just fine.
The only problem I’m experiencing is that Cubase cannot find prior versions of plug-ins when I open older projects. IK Multimedia’s T-Racks, for example, has upgraded and the new versions don’t have the same name as before. Even though the new version is functionally the same (same capabilities, same presets, almost identical interface, etc.), as far as Cubase is concerned, the replacement plug-ins might as well not have been installed. I can open up the new VST, of course, but it doesn’t do much good without a record of what the prior plug-in was doing.
Here’s my question: Is there a way to tell Cubase that it will find what was “T-Racks 5” in the old project as “T-Racks 6” now? And since the plug-ins are essentially the same, will doing so maintain that information and not make tweaking an old project such a daunting task?
No there is no way to tell Cubase wherever you used to use A, use B now
In the Plug-In Manager add additional paths to wherever the old plugs were kept and you should in general be able to load them if they are 64-bit. However, Cubase 11 may or may not decide to Blacklist some of them. If it does, those just won’t work in 11. If that happens there are a couple of things you might do.
After the Track loads manually swap in the new version.
Open the Project in Cubase 7 (you can go back and forth between 7 & 11 fine) and render the FX or VSTi into an Audio Track (this is kinda the universal solution for archive/obsolescence issues).
FYI you can even have both Cubase 7 & 11 open at the same time. Of course they can’t both have the same Project open - but you could use Save As… to create a 2nd version and open each in 7 or 11.
One of the reasons I upgraded to 11 is because Cubase 7 would not install on Windows 10, so I’m not sure how I can run C7 now.
The old computer is still alive, so I could feasibly open C7 on the other computer, make a note of what the VST is doing and recreate it in C11 on the other computer.
The problem here is that the C11 license on the dongle no longer opens C7 on the prior computer. Is it easy enough to swap licenses? Or perhaps get a second dongle to hold the old C7 license?
Your license should let you run C7 fine. When you buy a license to run C11 that is good for every earlier version. So something is messed up if you can’t run C7 - what messages does it give.
I have versions back to 7.5 installed on my PC and I just launched it fine (can’t vouch for 7.0) on Windows 10. What message does the C7 installer give you when it fails?
What is the OS on the old computer? I wonder if you can install C11 on it. Suspect it will check for Windows 10 and not allow it (if it will let you, only install the program and not the content to save time). Another potential path might be to install a version of Cubase like C9 that will run on both WIndows 7 and 10.
If you do have to do it by brute force, you can use the WIndows Snipping Tool to save time capturing settings.
The old computer is XP, installing anything new there is pretty much off the table.
I was on the phone with tech support very early on and they told me it wasn’t possible to install Cubase 7 in Win10. They were the ones who told me I had to upgrade to keep using the software. C7 isn’t available in the downloader, fwiw, and the computer couldn’t make heads or tails of the old installation disks.
The error message I get when I try to open C7 on the old computer is the same one I got whenever I’d forget to have the dongle inserted, that it couldn’t find the license. I suppose it’s possible to “activate” the license somehow (IIRC, that’s one of the options when that message pops up). Maybe I jumped the gun in assuming that the error message was a dead end?
Still the dongle should allow you to use Cubase 11 and every earlier version. I’m guessing that the eLicense Control Center software on the XP system is too old to understand the newer Cubase versions and you can’t update to the latest version of the eLicense on XP. What version of eLicense are you running on XP? The latest version is 6.12.6.1281.
You could also install the older versions of the plugins on the new computer. It is not possible with all plugins, some are just too old, but for example IK Multimedia, Native Instruments and other vendors have older releases available to download.
When I migrated from Win7 to Win10 three years ago, I installed every Kontakt version from 3 to 5 (2 sadlydidn’t work any more) , T-Racks 4 and 5, and several other older plugins, just to be able to load old projects.
This is actually not a Cubase problem, because if vendors release a new version, they assign the plugin a new plugin id. This plugin id (an internal identifier) is what Cubase uses to differentiate plugins, not names.
And even if the new version look similar, they are not necessarily session-compatible with the old data.
To be somewhat future-proof, your best bet is to save a preset of each plugin you use in a session, at least the important ones like instruments. And you need to do it with the plugin-internal preset management system, not the cubase one. If you transfer those presets to the new computer with new plugin versions, you might actually load them in the newer version (not guaranteed, though, and finding the location of the presets is another task…)
It is one of the burdens of modern music producing - software obsolescence. There is no easy way out.
Looking at the Download Assistant the oldest version shown is 9.5 which presumably means it works under Win10. Using it as a ‘bridge’ for old Projects might work. So install Cubase 9.5. Then like @fese suggests install your old plugs on the Win10 PC. But make sure to put them all in a Folder just for those older plug-ins. Then configure C9.5 so that the plug-in paths point to the Folder for the old plugs & make sure NONE of them point to your current plug-ins. Now, with some luck, you can open the old Projects in 9.5 with the old plugs.
Why should that be neccessary? If they’re different plugin version, that is have a different plugin id (like the mentioned T-Racks), you can absoluteley install them in the same folders, no problem. If you’re done migrating, you can uninstall them, if you like.
Thank you so much guys. It sounds like getting T-Racks 5 is my best option. I found a trial version, but I’ve yet to come across the full product. I have an email out to IK Multimedia to see if they can help.
I must say that it kinda sucks that I might have lost functional access to dozens of old projects (some of which I made the migration specifically to be able to tweak without stuttering), but I learned a lot from the inquiry.
Well, apart from that with e.g. VST3 plugins, there is only one standard directory, usually all plugins that have a different plugin id also do have different file names, to avoid exactly that problem, and to make clear it is a different version. Never encountered a plugin that did otherwise. It’d be a serious oversight from the developer.
Thanks everyone. I was able to find the old version of T-Racks in my IK Multimedia profile and downloaded it. Unfortunately, despite the installation seemingly going through without a hitch, Cubase still can’t load it. So I guess I reached the end of my rope with this one and just have to learn to live with older projects that will never get to the point I’d like to move them to. It’s just not worth the hours it would take to figure out and redo all the EQ and compression just to gain up the bass by half a db. Ironically, projects that were more problematic and further from the finish line are fine because I was going to have to redo a lot of stuff anyway.
Fwiw, the older T-Racks plug in had a distinct name so there was no problem running them simultaneously.
