When I transfer these to my new laptop, what happens if things (e.g., a plugin) aren’t in the location that the item expects? Will it give me an error message and ask for the location of the missing item? I’m trying to set things up on the new computer to match the file structure of the old computer, but I’m sure there will be at least a few unanticipated snafu’s.
Hi @LeesKeys
For plugins - it doesn’t matter where they’re installed so long as they’re available when the plugin scan runs. Cantabile will match them by their unique VST id rather than by their location.
For everything else, so long as they’re in the same relative location Cantabile should locate them just fine.
Brad
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So, fast forwarding 7 years and a pandemic…
I bought a new laptop for music use in late 2024, and I’m still wresting with getting everything over to the new laptop.
I’m using a lot of plugins, and a lot of “Custom” programs, and it appears I have to export the custom programs from the plugins over to the new computer (e.g., it seems that Catabile doesn’t encapsulate all the data within the actual song file).
I’ve tried to keep everything relative to each other on both computers, so I don’t think that’s the issue here.
Is that correct?
In the same vein (vane?), should I use the Export Preset functionality that’s in Cantabile, or Export through the actual plug in. Two screen shots below to help understand where the two options are.
Is the Cantabile export some kind of sysex like function?
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Hi @PatAzzMusic,
AFAIK, if you use the “Entire plugin snapshot” model, the snapshots should be saved into the Song (or Rack) file. If you use states, this adds another level of complexity, since you can tell Cantabile if snapshots should be saved for each state or not. What’s saved into a state depends on the “State behaviour” flags.
Gabriel
Edit: In the past, when transferring data from one PC to another, I have used both methods: saving the presets using the internal vst format (usually into a .fxp file) or saving an entire bank in Cantabile format. Now I mostly rely on the snapshot banks being saved within the Song or Rack, and usually it works, so that I have just to copy the Songs/Rack from one PC to another. When there is a major update of a VST, so that Cantabile considers the two versions as different VSTs, I use the internal plugin preset system to load old presets into the new version of the plugin. I also create different linked racks for the two versions.
Edit2: This could be overkill but…I seem to remember that once I succesfully fooled Cantabile into thinking that an old snapshot bank was actually made for the new version of the plugin. It involved editing the json file of the bank and changing the VST ID with the new VST ID…luckly enough, the internal data format of the plugin was the same for the two versions.
Hi, I’m not sure why you’re having this issue. I move set lists and songs between my DAW PC and GIG PC all the time. May be it is the way you have the songs set up, and adjusting those one your source computer is the thing to do.
Thank you for the detail…
(Like many I bet), I started using Cantabile with a time crunch, and while I’ve learned a lot, I haven’t learned everything. I often wondered what some of these models meant, and now I have a better idea. I’ll have to experiment a bit, but this is giving me a much better grounding on how C4 works, and maybe it will tell me how to fix some of the issues I’m having aside from the migration issues.
I’ll take a closer look at things and report back.
I recently did the same and transferred my primary gig rig to a new one and a backup, so transferring to 2 new PCs. As you mentioned, try to have the file structure exactly the same. I had no issues when doing that.
As far as using Cantabile’s Export Program function, that works on almost all my plugins. IIRC, S-Gear (amp modeler) or maybe it was Overloud TH-U didn’t work that way, so I simply save within the plug itself.
Not sure if it’s too late for you, but I put Cantabile’s folder (Racks, songs, setlists) in one “Transfer” folder. That Transfer folder also holds all my VSTs, any backing tracks or audio files, IRs, etc. (but not samples, which are in another “Samples” parent folder on a SSD external drive). Basically anything that evolves and changes as we do more songs or I make changes. So when transferring to my Backup I just grab that one folder and copy it over. Makes things a little easier. Best of luck, stick with it, you’ll get there!
Tom
When you say you have your VSTs in a folder for transfer, does that include everything?
Just a word of caution, that I started off doing that, but then would run into strange problems, as quite often the DLL in your VST2 folder is not the only thing needed for the VST to run and it is often referring (via registry keys, for example) to the main install location of the plugin where you will find all sorts of things like resource files for the user interface, etc.
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True, but my file structure and names are exactly the same on both. Haven’t had any issues over several years.
When adding a new plug like that I don’t just copy it to the other machine. I install it on both PCs using the default resource install locations, i.e. Program Files, but the dll goes to my dedicated folder. Some plugs have a folder with the dll inside plus others… usually vst3, and I’ve successfully just put that entire folder in the folder.
FWIW when vst3 came out I was having some issues (which turned out to be unrelated) , but I left them in Common Files. So I do have to copy over that folder also…not a big deal.
Tom
Pitching in on this from a couple of years of live experience with two synced live PCs and a studio PC running Cantabile:
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I keep my Cantabile stuff in a sync’d folder on Dropbox. “Cantabile Stuff” meaning Songs, Setlists, Racks, and Patches/Banks
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What I DON’T sync is the local config files in the Cantabile configuration folder (%appdata%/Topten Software/…). Especially the plugins.json etc files need to correctly reflect the state of the local plugin installation; syncing them across PCs is a recipe for disaster…
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I keep my Background Rack in my sync’ed Racks folder, not in the configuration folder. That way all my fancy background rack fiddling gets replicated across all my installations
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there is no automatic way of keeping plugin installations in sync that really works in practice. Especially: don’t just sync your VstPlugins folder (or C:\program files\Common\VST3) across PCs - most plugins have some local installation part outside these plugins folders, and there is quite a bit of cross-dependency between the stuff inside the VST plugin folders and the rest. This can completely mess up your installation! So I do full “traditional” installations on all my individual machines. I have built a little tool “Plugin Version Checker” that gives me a comparison of the versions of my plugins on my PCs (based on the Cantabile plugins.json), so I can see easily which PC is out of date regarding plugin updates…
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To have identical plugin paths on all systems, I keep my VST2 plugins in the same folder on all my machines (C:\VstPlugins); VST3 plugins are installed to a standard folder anyhow. Some plugin makers don’t respect my standard VST2 folder, e.g. KORG, Roland - they seem to insist on C:\Program Files\VstPlugins, which is a nuisance, but at least this is the same on all PCs, so no confusion regarding plugin paths between my systems…
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Important: I stay away from plugin-specific preset schemes - most of them have their presets stored somewhere in the file system, which means any time I build my preset on one of my machines, I’d need to replicate it to all my others - not going there! So I use Cantabile’s “Entire bank” state behavior or “Plugin Snapshots” preset mechanisms (and sometimes I simply store individual plugin parameters with a rack state) - these keep all the preset data within my racks or songs. Makes it very easy to keep everything in sync. I stay away from all plugins that won’t work with these plugin mechanisms. So far, all my setups replicate flawlessly
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there may be some plugin parameters that aren’t really saved with the plugin state, e.g. the MIDI configuration of TH-U or some of the global settings in VB-3. These, I’ve learned to set to my standard when installing these plugins and leave them alone afterwards…
Hope this helps!
Cheers,
Torsten
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