I have a number of Linked Racks, each with one VST and a set of Rack States (for the presets, volumes, etc.) - the latter generally corresponds to a specific song, but there are exceptions (I have a few acoustic piano states that I reuse over and over again, adjusting the volume within the song itself).
Recently I updated many of my plug ins to a NEW major version (Arturia Collection upgrade). I don’t necessarily want to have a separate Linked Rack for each of the MAJOR versions, but I also don’t want to throw away years of work and tweaking.
How do most of you handle this? Do you just create a version specific rack?
i noticed that one of the Arturia Plug (Prophet V) ins is acting strangely since I did this (the states are loading, but the sound programs are defaulting to a nearly random program (it isn’t the last program I worked on, but it isn’t the same program either).
Great question, I’ve wondered this too. I think it probably comes down to whether the new plugin version is compatible with the data for the old one, with whatever state management mode you have set in the rack, and this will vary from plugin to plugin.
I know I’ve updated a few plugins that are set to “Whole bank” state behaviour, and the resulting sounds in my states were wrong. So definitely something to do carefully!
I have never encountered (if my memory serves me well) this kind of problem. The closer I got to this was when SurgeXT came out. I decided to create a distinct linked rack for SurgeXT, insead of relying on (possible, I have not checked) data compatibility between the Surge and SurgeXT.
Anyway, if I suspected or found that a major update could bring data incompatibility between versions, I would go for different linked racks, for sure. Then I would check if the developer had provided automatic data conversion between the two versions. For instance, the new version could be able to load the fxp files produced by the old one (also taking care of keeping the sound intact). Then, I would go through the, probably tedious, process of exporting/importing fxp files between the two versions.
It could also depend on the model you chose for Cantabile presets. In “Entire snapshot” model, Cantabile, AFAIU, stores the entire internal configuration of the plugin as one big data chunk. In “Parameter set” model, Cantabile looks for the parameters that the plugin exposes to the host and save their values “one by one” (@brad, correct me if I am wrong!). I guess the parameters are also set one by one when you load a preset into the plugin. Therefore, the new plugin version could be incompatible with the old one if the “Entire snapshot” model is used, but it could still recognize presets saved with the “Parameter set” model.
@brad
I don’t know if this is actually the problem as I haven’t been able to reproduce the issue on demand. It was simply conjecture on my part that it could be an issue with me upgrading a linked rack to use the latest version.
The missing part in Cantabile only refers to when a plugin vendor releases a new version with a new plugin id.
If the plugin is updated and the plugin id remains the same, you can only really have one version installed at a time and Cantabile will use whichever one it found in the last plugin scan.
So… for most plugins, they usually keep the same plugin id, you install the new plugin and the saved songs/racks continue to work as before.
That is typically the case for MOST plugins, but there are some that don’t quite behave nicely. On major version updates, where the new version replaces the old one, I typically test the update installation on one of my live cubes and see if all rack states survive the migration.
If they don’t, I go to my other live cube and (for that specific rack) export the plugin settings for all rack states in the old plugin version - but in that specific plugin’s preset format (if it has one that can be exported). Then I can mostly load these settings back into the new plugin version.
Typically, vendors enable preset file migration between major versions, even if the VST configuration loading gets broken between major versions.
This mechanism can also work across new releases with their own plugin ID (that co-exist within Cantabile), for example different Pianoteq versions, Kontakt versions or FabFilter plugin versions
Typical example is moving from FabFilter Pro-Q 3 to Pro-Q 4 - that is a migration that will require exporting states in version 3 and importing in version 4. Tedious manual work…
I think a Pianoteq version upgrade (6 to 7, 7 to 8) also required me to export and import my personal presets and refresh the respective rack states.
But (in my recollection) something like that has never happened to me during minor version updates (e.g. 7.4.3 to 7.5.2) of plugins. I would expect plugin developers to keep things upward compatible across minor versions.