Posted by: trstack@gmail.com

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As noted in YamahaIdeaScale, the Montage M ESP v2.o does not have full library edit functions. Yes, you can manage data files but you cannot move user performances across user sets. The real benefit of a real library function in ESP would be to easily arrange performance across user banks in the software version and then transfer them to the hardware.

As we've seen, ESP 2.0 doesn't really quite meet the promise of being fully editable yet. It's missing several things I've found, including full liveset editing and split management (except the legacy type found in previous Montage instruments). Smart morph is also yet to be added.

I'm assuming some/all of these will be added in incremental updates.

I'm hoping that when they do subsequent updates, the developers will also take a look at making it a more "class compliant" (so to speak) VST3 instrument. It's the only VST I've installed that Cubase won't recognize. I've never had that problem with any other plugin, VST2 or VST3, on any computer, so clearly the Yamaha devs are doing something incorrectly.

It's all the more ironic given that Yamaha owns Steinberg.

It's not a universal issue, though.  Not sure why there are some having problems.  

Yeah, it's not even universal in my environment. Works on one box, doesn't show up on two others, all of which run Cubase just fine and have displayed all vst2 / vst3 plugins I've installed (for decades, I might add), except for this one plugin. There's a saying I heard as a kid, "Everyone's out of step but Johnny,' that I think applies here.

I've done exhaustive interaction with others, testing, tweaking and trying every possible thing that people can think of to no avail, so I'm at the point where I'm willing to rule out cockpit error. Normally that's my first assumption, but at this point having tried everything there is to try (and also hearing from others who are experiencing this as well), I'm willing to make the rare and bold statement that the mistake is not on my end.

In software development, the heart of debugging is edge cases, to which I've devoted no small amount of my professional career. Clearly there is something in these two Cubase environments that trigger the edge case. Nonetheless, edge case or universal, a bug is still a bug.

Every other vst3 plays nice in all my environments. This one doesn't, and I've ruled out cockpit error. Therefore I'm willing to lay it at the feet of the Yamaha devs.

Clearly there's something every other vst3 developer does correctly that they're getting wrong. There's no shame in breaking out the debugger. And who knows, maybe even talking to their brethren who work for Steinberg, given the parent / child relationship.

I know some Yamaha people interact with this forum, so to them I'll offer this:

I've been paying the bills as a dev on Microsoft tech since 1989. If any of the Yamaha devs would like to take a swing at fixing this bug, I'm happy to provide any testing, diagnostics and information providing from my local environment that would be helpful. I haven't written VSTs (although I spent many years working in C++), but I'm enough of a professional geek to serve as a decent second set of fingers and eyes for them if they can't reproduce this in their own environment. They can pm or email me any time. Always happy to help a fellow dev.

There's no shame in breaking out the debugger.

And most of the software I worked with had configuration settings - and one of those was DEBUG LEVEL. You could set it to things like: NONE, WARNING, ERROR, FATAL. That allowed you to do VERBOSE logging when there was a problem but low level logging in production for normal operations.

I haven't been able to get any feedback from Cubase about whether there is any such configuration setting.

Win 10 - latest/last update

Chrome - latest/last update

Free version of Cubase

Lauching Cubase shows a windw with 'Initializing .. name ..' on the bottom left.

One of the names is the full name of the ESP. But once the app is up and running there is no sign of the ESP anywhere.

They have a program named vstscanner that searches for plugins. In C:\Users\[your windows user name]\AppData\Roaming\Steinberg\Cubase 13_64\Cubase Pro VST3 Cache, there's a file named vst3plugins.xml. In C:\Users\cdd\AppData\Roaming\Steinberg\Cubase 13_64 there's a file named VstPlugInfoV4.xml. Your cubase version in the directory structure may be different, but the path architecture is consistent.

When the scanner runs (doing what is known only to the devs who wrote it), it places entries in the two aforementioned files. Perhaps more, but in my case the laptop where the plugin is visible has entries for ESP in both files. On my desktop, these entries are absent. If you hack vst3plugins.xml and manually create an entry, it will then show up in the plugin list, but the plugin won't function. I tried making the corresponding entry in VstPlugInfoV4 without success, which is not surprising. The cid and other values are determined at runtime by the scanner, and frankly I don't know what I'm doing since I'm not a Steinberg dev. 

In the plugin manager there is a plugin info file you can generate, but it makes no mention of ESP, probably because as far as Cubase is concerned, it simply doesn't exist. At the risk of pointing out the obvious, even if the plugin installs correctly, is clearly visible in the Windows file system and has been activated, if the Cubase scanner doesn't write out the appropriate data in their system files, it doesn't exist.

Something is happening where ESP is not playing nice with the scanner in some environments. This is the edge case bug. Since every vst3 plugin I've ever owned gets scanned, recognized and displayed in Cubase, my conclusion is that the bug is in ESP, although there could be corresponding edge case bugs in the scanner.

If anyone knows how to get a verbose log out of the scanner to diagnose why ESP is failing, I'd love to have a look at it.

Inspired by Toby's comments, I just posted on the Cubase forum asking if anyone knows of where the scanner log is (if one is generated), and if it's possible to manually fire it up in "verbose" mode.

If I get a hit on any of that I'll analyze the logs to see what it's complaining about.

I was looking at the files under program files for the ESP plugin, and noticed a license file. From that I deduced that they used JUCE for development of the vst. Further Googling brought me to a link from September about version changes in JUCE breaking vst3 plugins and causing them not to load in certain instances. While it wasn't the exact problem I'm experiencing, I thought it worth noting.

If Yamaha devs come across this, or perhaps the Yamaha people here can forward to them, it seems at least reasonable to consider a JUCE related issue being involved in this. Should that be the case, perhaps rebuilding the plugin with a later version might address the edge case problems.

https://forum.juce.com/t/juce-v7-0-7-win-10-vst3-refuses-to-load-including-juce-gain-demo-vst3-plugin/57794

Working from a tip by Chris I cleared out the event viewer logs on Win 10 and launched the free Cubase version

1. status line shows it initializing the ESP plug in

2. the plug-in never shows up in the Cubase app

3. the event viewer application log shows two errors

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Faulting application name: Cubase LE AI Elements 13.exe, version: 13.0.41.256, time stamp: 0x66605b11
Faulting module name: Expanded Softsynth Plugin for MONTAGE M.vst3, version: 0.0.0.0, time stamp: 0x65a87a37
Exception code: 0xc000001d
Fault offset: 0x00000000003da7d2
Faulting process id: 0x46b4
Faulting application start time: 0x01dad3d4724a4083
Faulting application path: C:\Program Files\Steinberg\Cubase LE AI Elements 13\Cubase LE AI Elements 13.exe
Faulting module path: C:\Program Files\Steinberg\Cubase LE AI Elements 13\VST3\Yamaha\Expanded Softsynth Plugin for MONTAGE M.vst3\Contents\x86_64-win\Expanded Softsynth Plugin for MONTAGE M.vst3
Report Id: a92539fb-bed4-4be8-b385-c9e5ba3f7161
Faulting package full name:
Faulting package-relative application ID:

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Note the 'Faulting module path' above -> it is the actual .vst3 file in the x86-win folder of the installation. So the plug-in IS being found;

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Windows cannot access the file for one of the following reasons: there is a problem with the network connection, the disk that the file is stored on, or the storage drivers installed on this computer; or the disk is missing. Windows closed the program Cubase LE AI Elements 13 because of this error.

Program: Cubase LE AI Elements 13
File:

The error value is listed in the Additional Data section.
User Action
1. Open the file again. This situation might be a temporary problem that corrects itself when the program runs again.
2. If the file still cannot be accessed and
- It is on the network, your network administrator should verify that there is not a problem with the network and that the server can be contacted.
- It is on a removable disk, for example, a floppy disk or CD-ROM, verify that the disk is fully inserted into the computer.
3. Check and repair the file system by running CHKDSK. To run CHKDSK, click Start, click Run, type CMD, and then click OK. At the command prompt, type CHKDSK /F, and then press ENTER.
4. If the problem persists, restore the file from a backup copy.
5. Determine whether other files on the same disk can be opened. If not, the disk might be damaged. If it is a hard disk, contact your administrator or computer hardware vendor for further assistance.

Additional Data
Error value: 00000000
Disk type: 0

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It says it can't access that .vst3 file. The permissions are 'Full Control' for everyone and for all users in the list.

I even enabled the Super Root account but got the same errors. So it is either a permissions error or something in the .vst3 file itself. Not sure how it can be a permissions error if Super Root is the user.

Not sure where to go from here.

Posted by: Toby

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Working from a tip by Chris I cleared out the event viewer logs on Win 10 and launched the free Cubase version

1. status line shows it initializing the ESP plug in

2. the plug-in never shows up in the Cubase app

3. the event viewer application log shows two errors

-----

Faulting application name: Cubase LE AI Elements 13.exe, version: 13.0.41.256, time stamp: 0x66605b11
Faulting module name: Expanded Softsynth Plugin for MONTAGE M.vst3, version: 0.0.0.0, time stamp: 0x65a87a37
Exception code: 0xc000001d
Fault offset: 0x00000000003da7d2
Faulting process id: 0x46b4
Faulting application start time: 0x01dad3d4724a4083
Faulting application path: C:\Program Files\Steinberg\Cubase LE AI Elements 13\Cubase LE AI Elements 13.exe
Faulting module path: C:\Program Files\Steinberg\Cubase LE AI Elements 13\VST3\Yamaha\Expanded Softsynth Plugin for MONTAGE M.vst3\Contents\x86_64-win\Expanded Softsynth Plugin for MONTAGE M.vst3
Report Id: a92539fb-bed4-4be8-b385-c9e5ba3f7161
Faulting package full name:
Faulting package-relative application ID:

-----

Note the 'Faulting module path' above -> it is the actual .vst3 file in the x86-win folder of the installation. So the plug-in IS being found;

-----

Windows cannot access the file for one of the following reasons: there is a problem with the network connection, the disk that the file is stored on, or the storage drivers installed on this computer; or the disk is missing. Windows closed the program Cubase LE AI Elements 13 because of this error.

Program: Cubase LE AI Elements 13
File:

The error value is listed in the Additional Data section.
User Action
1. Open the file again. This situation might be a temporary problem that corrects itself when the program runs again.
2. If the file still cannot be accessed and
- It is on the network, your network administrator should verify that there is not a problem with the network and that the server can be contacted.
- It is on a removable disk, for example, a floppy disk or CD-ROM, verify that the disk is fully inserted into the computer.
3. Check and repair the file system by running CHKDSK. To run CHKDSK, click Start, click Run, type CMD, and then click OK. At the command prompt, type CHKDSK /F, and then press ENTER.
4. If the problem persists, restore the file from a backup copy.
5. Determine whether other files on the same disk can be opened. If not, the disk might be damaged. If it is a hard disk, contact your administrator or computer hardware vendor for further assistance.

Additional Data
Error value: 00000000
Disk type: 0

-----

It says it can't access that .vst3 file. The permissions are 'Full Control' for everyone and for all users in the list.

I even enabled the Super Root account but got the same errors. So it is either a permissions error or something in the .vst3 file itself. Not sure how it can be a permissions error if Super Root is the user.

Not sure where to go from here.

 

 

Sorry to ask the obvious but you HAVE sent this to Yamaha tech support, right? 

Also, I've mentioned in another topic that I couldn't get the ESP to accept a valid user library backup made by an M7 in one of my two laptops running identical Cubase, Windows 11 environments. It turned out to be a Windows file system protection error that wasn't obvious and didn't get resolved until I forceably copied over the ESP data directory from the working laptop. Still scratching my head on that one because I've been working on Windows as a career since the 90s (retired now).

Sorry to ask the obvious but you HAVE sent this to Yamaha tech support, right?

. . .

I've been working on Windows as a career since the 90s (retired now).

 

Pretty good advice coming from such a 'youngster' - LOL!

I started on the 4004 and was simply awed when the 8008 came out.

Yes - the FIRST place I submit an issue is the manufacturer. For two really simple reasons:

1. they know their product better than anyone else

2. they can't possibly help you if they don't know you have a problem

Sure - they don't always respond but the user has to do their part by giving them ALL of the info they have. Then, while I wait/hope for a response, I ask friends or on a forum.

Mine has all the earmarks of a privilege issue but the fact that I get a message saying Windows can't access the file when I am connected as Super Root is odd.

These days you can't discount a network issue if the plug-in is acting like ET and 'trying to phone home' to the mothership out on the internet somewhere.

Every user I have been connected as, including Super Root of course, can copy, move or delete the .vst3 file so I'm not even sure what "can't access the file" even means in this case.

Posted by: Toby

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Sorry to ask the obvious but you HAVE sent this to Yamaha tech support, right?

. . .

I've been working on Windows as a career since the 90s (retired now).

 

Pretty good advice coming from such a 'youngster' - LOL!

I started on the 4004 and was simply awed when the 8008 came out.

Yes - the FIRST place I submit an issue is the manufacturer. For two really simple reasons:

1. they know their product better than anyone else

2. they can't possibly help you if they don't know you have a problem

Sure - they don't always respond but the user has to do their part by giving them ALL of the info they have. Then, while I wait/hope for a response, I ask friends or on a forum.

Mine has all the earmarks of a privilege issue but the fact that I get a message saying Windows can't access the file when I am connected as Super Root is odd.

These days you can't discount a network issue if the plug-in is acting like ET and 'trying to phone home' to the mothership out on the internet somewhere.

Every user I have been connected as, including Super Root of course, can copy, move or delete the .vst3 file so I'm not even sure what "can't access the file" even means in this case.

While you can never outguess Yamaha, I suspect we'll see another update to the ESP sooner rather than later.