I just installed the ReaPlugs plugins, from REAPER | ReaPlugs, but after several attempts at a full rescan, and turning Cantabile off and back on again, they still don’t show in the list of plugins when I try to use Add Object. They do load if I browse for them (laboriously, each time with “Browse for plugin”) so it seems they work and could be shown there.
Am I missing something? I’m still using an older build (4062), so is this perhaps a bug that was fixed recently, or is that still normal behaviour?
I did try to add the folder, and I forgot to mention that. Cantabile told me it would be ignored because it’s a sub folder of an existing one. It shows it in the list of folders but unticked. It’s C:\Program Files\VSTPlugIns\ReaPlugs
This is what happens if I try to tick the box then press Okay:
Add Object → Plugin → By Folder, then click on the VstPlugins folder corresponding to that path (out of three shown with that name), it just shows it as empty, with no subfolders to click on, though there actually four sub folders there:
C:\Program Files\VSTPlugIns has sub folders;
CodeKnobs
MeldaProduction
Novation
ReaPlugs
but none of those show in Cantabile via that menu option.
No bug I recall. You could try moving the plugins.json and plugins.cache.json filles and then running a full re-scan, causing Cantabile to rebuild the files from scratch, other that that I don’t have any other ideas, the same procedure for reaplugs install worked fine here so I’m guessing a problem in those 2 files. They are in the folder with the log files.
@dave_dore Thanks, but where should I be looking? I see files called that in C:\Users\andy\AppData\Local\Topten Software\Cantabile 4.0 but I don’t see any log files there. Renaming them from .json to .jsonX doesn’t appear to make Cantabile rebuild the list and it doesn’t create new versions of those files when I start it up.
Thanks, @dave_dore. That did give me an empty list of plugins, so I was able to get it to do a full rescan from scratch. Unfortunately, it still doesn’t show the ReaPlugs ones in the list, but never mind.
I notice I can search for them by typing in rea and they then show up. I guess I’ll just leave it as it is.
@Torsten Yes. I installed both the 32 bit and 64 bit versions of ReaPlugs because I use 32 bit and 64 bit versions of Cantabile, depending on which plugins I want to use. In this case, I’d been using the 64 bit version.
I hadn’t thought to check in the 32 bit version of Cantabile. I see I’d deleted the list of plugins for that, presumably on my first attempt, where I was in the wrong folder to do that for x64. Full rescanning rebuilds the list and this one does show the rea… plugins - so it works as I’d expect in the x86 / 32 bit Cantabile, but not the 64 bit version, though I can put “rea” in the search box at the top and it lists some.
If you’re still having trouble with this, send me a plugin scan log and I’ll check it out…
Start Cantabile
Make sure your plugin path is set as intended. (Tools → Options → Plugin Options)
From the Tools menu, choose the “Scan Plugin Folders (Full)” command and wait for it to finish.
From the Tools menu, choose Open Settings Folder
Close Cantabile
From the folder opened in step 4, send me the files, log.txt, log-previous.txt, settings.json and plugins.json along with a note on where the plugins are installed and I’ll check it out.
Looking at the log, I can’t see any instance where it says it’s scanning the C:\Program Files\VSTPlugIns folder at all - the x64 ReaPlugs are in there, in a subfolder called ReaPlugs.
There’s also a sub folder for codeKnobs (DSI Tetra editor), MeldaProduction (MAnalyzer.dll, MOscillator.dll and MOscilloscope.dll) and Novation (currently empty). Those also aren’t showing in the list for Add Plugin in the x64 version of Cantabile. I can find the TetraProgramEditor by using the search box, but not the MeldaProduction ones.. possibly because they’re in a further subfolder? They’re in:
C:\Program Files\VSTPlugIns\MeldaProduction\Tools
I notice when I find them in the search (but only there) they show as type unknown - this applies to the ReaPlugs and the TetraProgrammingEditor e.g.:
This seems to relate to the problem @Wilx had (Cantabile can’t see reafir-standalone any more.), where the FIR plugin he used was no longer showing up, He concluded that it was specific to Windows 7, which I’m still using, and that Cantabile didn’t have that problem in Windows 10.
So, it seems there may not be a solution for my current setup. I do have a couple of PCs with Win10 on but it annoys me so much I can barely stand to do more than watch YouTube on it. At some point, I may try running Cantabile in WINE or similar, to see how that goes. For now, I’ll just settle for what it still does
It seems the ones I can find with the search box are ones I’ve previously added manually, with Add Object → Plugin → More → Browse for plugin.
I tried doing that with the fir standalone one, then deleted it again and exited without saving. After starting x64 Cantabile again, I was then able to find it with the search box.
C:\Program Files\Native Instruments\VSTPlugins 64 bit
C:\Program Files\VSTPlugIns
[Disabled] C:\Program Files\VSTPlugIns\codeKnobs
[Disabled] C:\Program Files\VSTPlugIns\ReaPlugs
Cantabile is finding the reaplugs first under “C:\Program Files (x86)\VstPlugins” and trying to load those in preference to the ones found in the later paths and they’re failing to load because they’re 32-bit. eg:
00169494 1 [15804:2]: Scanning plugin: C:\Program Files (x86)\VstPlugins\ReaPlugs\reacomp-standalone.dll
00169509 15 ! [15804:0]: Error during plugin scan
System.InvalidOperationException: Unrecognized or unsupported plugin platform (check jBridge is installed)
Try re-ordering your plugin path so C:\Program Files\VSTPlugIns is before C:\Program Files (x86)\VstPlugins
Out of curiosity, would it still do that in the current version? Is that intended behaviour? It would seem to make more sense to just try to load plugins from both folders, regardless of the ordering.
This functionality has changed a couple of times of the years, but not for some time now so the current version probably behaves the same.
Off hand I can’t remember the exact rationale for the behaviour, but I remember making a deliberate decision to only every consider one .dll with a particular name - and for it to be the first found in the path. I think it was related to Windows getting touchy about loading two dlls with the same name from different locations.
I see. Yes, that might be tricky to come up with a consistent way to fix it, if you’re not allowed to have a second go at loading the same dll, from another location, after it fails the first time.
I could probably just drop the Program Files x86 folder for x64 Cantabile and not miss it - and I can’t remember if I added that or it was there already - but there doesn’t seem to be an intuitive way around it, we just have to know what’s going on to know how to fix it. I suppose scanning the x64 Program Files before the other one regardless of position in the list might be cheating too much, and could potentially also be a source of confusion because that would be unexpected, though it probably would make sense to always take the x64 plugin over the x86 one (in x64 Cantabile), if it can’t load both.
Interesting idea. I can’t get it to work though. I put the folders back in the wrong order (x86 first) to try this out but from Browse, all I seem to be able to do is accept the plugin, so it gets added, and from Search, ticking Favourite doesn’t actually seem to add it to the list of favourites.
I’d actually forgotten there was a Favourites list for plugins. I might start using that more. Thanks.
FWIW, I’ve updated to build 4225, the last one before Windows 7 support ended.
