I do know pretty precisely what I did, but im a bit reluctant to go into trying to reproduce it (would mean I’d have to uninstall big plugin bundles, install an old version, then update them again…):
I ran my plugin version checker both on my live cube and my studio PC
found some discrepancies, so updated the relevant plugin bundles to their newest versions
main differences were in the IK multimedia plugin suite, Arturia suite, and the Melda productions stuff
Used Arturia Software Center, IK Product Manager, and Melda “complete” installer to update to most recent versions
After installations and “quick scanning” of plugins, my Live Cube plugins.json contained duplicates of the Melda and the Arturia VST3 plugins - interestingly, no duplicates of the IK plugins.
a “full scan” resolved the duplications - logical, since the full scan completely rebuilds the plugins.json
So I’ve had a closer look at this and made a bunch of changes:
Fixed duplicate VST 3 entries. I think it was related to having multiple old entries in the plugin.cache.json file from an old build and the new build just copying them over when it should’ve been picking the appropriate one.
The version number for VST 2 plugins will now use the value returned through the SDK API (effGetVenderVersion) in preference to the version number in the module version info.
Updated the way VST 2 plugin versions are displayed to match Cubase. This really weird heuristic is described here and is a side effect of the VST spec never actually declaring the format of these version numbers - so it guesses how to display them.
The version number for VST 3 plugins wasn’t working at all. It now gets it from the VST 3 SDK PClassInfo2.version and falls back to the module version if zero.
Updated version check on loading fxb/p files for VST 2 plugins to fix the issue mentioned in the linked Juce forum so that it now checks the plugin has a higher or equal version (rather than equal only version).
Cleaned up some of the info stored in the plugin.json file - specifically I’ve removed VST2 specific properties and moved them to the generic “caps” field.
Removed the ability for Cantabile to open and upgrade old Cantabile V2 session and set list files (since it depended on those removed properties and shouldn’t really be needed any longer).
Once the new build is Available now in 3677 - you’ll need to run a full scan for the changes to take effect.
Wow - great stuff! Now only a hand-full of plugins in my installation is missing a version number. All others are now super-easy to check by version; makes my life sooo much easier!
@brad - looks like something got broken in the new build (3677). The B3-X VST3 plug-in comes up “Failed”. Doing a full scan for plugins and restarting Cantabile didn’t help. Reverting to 3674 makes everything ok again.
Yup - it looks like something is really broken - I get funky crashes when trying to insert a plugin - Cantabile crashes while I type the name. After a re-start, suddenly I don’t see VST3 plugins anymore - but tons of “shell” plugins. Deleting plugins.json and plugin-cache.json gets me to see my VST3 plugs again, but the crashes still happen, and everything starts over again…
looks like 3677 is a bit too experimental - going back to 3676 for the time being…
3rd that. Scan results in empty “All Plugins” but “Effects” list and “Instrument” list are populated. In addition, some plug-ins are missing. Waves plug-in are nowhere to be found.
I looks like the VST scan also lost the licenses for Waves plugins. I was able to recover them, but you can only do that once per year. (Actually, there’s only one I use live.) Right now, I only have circumstantial evidence.
