Strange path issues with some u-he plugins and Sonar X1

[whyterabbyt]

Im having a lot of strangeness with some of the u-he plugins at the moment, particularly Uhbik and MFM2.
As far as I can tell neither Filterscape nor ACE have similar problems. Im currently not sure if Zebra does.

This is happening on WinXP Sp3, 32bit.

Basically I think its something to do with the filepath to the plugin. Sonar lets you have multiple 'root' plugin folders, and Ive always reorganised my .dl files into a hierarchy based on type.

My main 'root' for Sonar is

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P:\Audio\VSTPlugins\Main\

and under that I have

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P:\Audio\VSTPlugins\Main\Effects
P:\Audio\VSTPlugins\Main\Synths
P:\Audio\VSTPlugins\Main\Tools

etc

Now, if I install Uhbik into the top level at

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P:\Audio\VSTPlugins\Main\Effects\u-he

then everything works fine.

If I try and move them into my 'proper' file hierarchy, things start to get a bit strange...

for example these initial tries fail:

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P:\Audio\VSTPlugins\Main\Effects\Delays\MFM2.dll
P:\Audio\VSTPlugins\Main\Effects\Delays\uhbik-d.dll

but these worked:

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P:\Audio\VSTPlugins\Main\FX\Delays\MFM2.dll
P:\Audio\VSTPlugins\Main\FX\Delays\uhbik-d.dll

these also worked:

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P:\Audio\VSTPlugins\Main\Effects\Delays\12345\MFM2.dll
P:\Audio\VSTPlugins\Main\Effects\Delays\12345\uhbik-d.dll

and these worked too:

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P:\Audio\VSTPlugins\Main\Effects\Delays\01234567890\MFM2.dll
P:\Audio\VSTPlugins\Main\Effects\Delays\01234567890\12345\MFM2.dll
P:\Audio\VSTPlugins\Main\Effects\Delays\01234567890\01\MFM2.dll

Finally

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P:\Audio\VSTPlugins\Main\Effects\D\01\MFM2.dll
P:\Audio\VSTPlugins\Main\Effects\De\01\MFM2.dll
P:\Audio\VSTPlugins\Main\Effects\Delay012\01\MFM2.dll
P:\Audio\VSTPlugins\Main\Effects\Delay012345\01\MFM2.dll
P:\Audio\VSTPlugins\Main\Effects\Delays1234567890\01\MFM2.dll

all worked but not

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P:\Audio\VSTPlugins\Main\Effects\Del\01\MFM2.dll
P:\Audio\VSTPlugins\Main\Effects\Dela\01\MFM2.dll
P:\Audio\VSTPlugins\Main\Effects\Delay\01\MFM2.dll
P:\Audio\VSTPlugins\Main\Effects\Delay0\01\MFM2.dll
P:\Audio\VSTPlugins\Main\Effects\Delay01\01\MFM2.dll

or

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P:\Audio\VSTPlugins\Main\Effects\Delay0\0\MFM2.dll
P:\Audio\VSTPlugins\Main\Effects\Delay0\01\MFM2.dll
P:\Audio\VSTPlugins\Main\Effects\Delay0\012\MFM2.dll

on the other hand all of the following

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P:\Audio\VSTPlugins\Main\Effects\Delay0\0123\MFM2.dll
P:\Audio\VSTPlugins\Main\Effects\Delay01\012\MFM2.dll
P:\Audio\VSTPlugins\Main\Effects\Delay012\01\MFM2.dll

do. so the path length being 'right' seems to be a part of it. furthermore, incrasing the path length, all of

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P:\Audio\VSTPlugins\Main\Effects\1\MFM2.dll
P:\Audio\VSTPlugins\Main\Effects\12\MFM2.dll
P:\Audio\VSTPlugins\Main\Effects\123\MFM2.dll
P:\Audio\VSTPlugins\Main\Effects\1234\MFM2.dll
P:\Audio\VSTPlugins\Main\Effects\12345\MFM2.dll

work but

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P:\Audio\VSTPlugins\Main\Effects\123456\MFM2.dll
P:\Audio\VSTPlugins\Main\Effects\1234567\MFM2.dll
P:\Audio\VSTPlugins\Main\Effects\12345678\MFM2.dll

dont. On the other hand, much longer paths like

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P:\Audio\VSTPlugins\Main\12345678901234567890\MFM2.dll

do.

There's some kind of char-alignment thing going on I think (chars compressed into a 64-bit word) but it also seems to be dependent on the path length and depth, which is throwing me a bit.

Anyway, Ive been at this for hours, and Im kind of getting nowhere closer, so I thought you might want to know what Im seeing and some of the permutations Ive managed to establish so far...

My brain is fried now, though.

[Urs]

My brain is fried too. Will check this out shortly. I'm quite baffled already tho... can't figure this out right away...

[whyterabbyt]

yeah, sorry its a bit of a bombardment of different cases, but it was the best i could do to try and start to pinpoint it in some way.... took me a a couple of hours of installation, reinstallation and shuffling stuff around just to identify the fact that it was the path that seemed to be the problem, and that it wasnt actually particularly 'linear' in nature.

[Gonga]

Keep in mind it may be a SONAR X1 issue. I have the latest updates installed and I think it's the buggiest version of SONAR ever, and that includes Pro Audio going back even farther...I do like the new design and workflow, but...

[whyterabbyt]

Keep in mind it may be a SONAR X1 issue.

well, Ive just tried installing the newest ACE installer, v1.1. Over the past two days, ACE has been one of the u-he plugins that worked fine, no matter whereabouts Ive moved it.

So I install V1.1 into the same location as it was in ie

P:\Audio\VSTPlugins\Main\Synths\_Modular\ACE.dll

and... boom, opening it in Sonar X1 crashes the host. If I put the old version back again in the same place... everything's hunk-dory again.

So wherever it is, its being triggered by something that's changed with more recent versions of some of these plugins.

And as I (think I) said, Filterscape is fine no matter where it is too.

Actually whilst starting this, Ive just checked something else. I'd also installed the latest versions of Zebra, and both it and Zebralette both seem to work fine from their old location ie also

P:\Audio\VSTPlugins\Main\Synths\_Modular\

although they're not initially properly detected as instrument plugins. And Zebrify seems to run okay from the same location, but Zrev crashes Sonar. Feck, this is just a bit weird.)

[Urs]

Weird.