Updating a massive template project...may require some external file-editing

I recently decided to give my whole DAW and instrument set an update. Upgraded to Cubase 10, and decided to spring for the EastWest PLAY 6 engine. So far, so good…

I realized that the older version of PLAY I was using for my projects was the VST2 version, and going forward, I’d like to switch over to the VST3 one. I COULD go into all of my template files, and load the new version of PLAY in place of the existing one…problem is, my orchestra template has 254 instances of Old PLAY loaded as instrument tracks. It wasn’t fun to make the first time, and I CERTAINLY DON’T want to make it again. Unfortunately, I can’t just delete the VST2 plugin and tell Cubase “Load VST3 Play,” I think this will require some editing of the .cpr file itself.

What I found so far is that there’s a field for each instrument track called “Original Plugin Name”. Old projects and templates use “play_vst_x64”, along with what I THINK are specific characters used for locating the directory of said plugin (Based on the fact that the string of NULL, BS, DEL and etc characters is different depending on the VST the track uses). The VST3 version is simply called “Play”. It’d be great if I could do a Find&Replace of “play_vst_x64” with “Play”, but I need those special characters too. If I copy the entire string for ‘Original Plugin Name’, the pasted version doesn’t contain the specific characters needed: it’ll replace [NULL] with a space, which makes finding and replacing the entire content in a field a no-go.

There’s also the TEENSY issue that saving a .cpr file inside Notepad++ invalidates the file. Do I have no other avenue than to undergo the 20+ hour process of replacing every single VST instrument? (It’s not just replacing each instance, but also loading multiple instrument patches in each and every channel, and getting them right for the expression maps x_x).

Was this issue ever resolved?

I’m on Cubase 10, also using EW Play and I want to go from “play_x64_vst” to “Play.vst” in my template as well. In my case it’s because play_x64_vst isn’t functioning correctly, actually.

What IS the difference between the two btw? Is it just vst2 vs. vst3? I have no idea why i settled for the play_x64_vst in the first place…

Have you tried deleting the VST2 plug from your VST folder and see if Cubase loads the VST3 automatically?

I’ve never tried it, but it would be a very quick test and you might get lucky…