Maschine crashed – now only VST3/AU available, VST2 missing

Hey everyone,

Earlier today Maschine 3 crashed on me, and ever since then my VST2 plugins are unavailable. When I go to load instruments/effects, I only see VST3’s and AU’s. The older VST2 versions that I was previously using are now missing.

I haven’t changed any preferences or moved plugin folders, so I’m not sure what triggered this. I’ve tried rescanning and restarting, but it doesn’t bring the VST2’s back consistently.

Has anyone else run into this? Is there a fix for getting Maschine to recognize VST2’s again, or is this some kind of new limitation?

Any advice would be appreciated.

— Mason

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Comments

Vocalpoint

Native Instruments hasn’t shipped VST2 for a long time now.

You sure they are missing?

mason drielling

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/241818#Comment_241818

I was using Absynth presets earlier today. This is a huge blow for me. Not sure what happened.

Vocalpoint

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/241819#Comment_241819

Absynth "presets" do not mean VST2…

I still do think on your Mac - VST 2 is possible at all…

mason drielling

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/241821#Comment_241821

I understand. These .nabs presets opened up Absynth in either a vst2 format. Now I just get an error message when I try to open Absynth either with the presets or inside of a project that recently used Absynth. Also I can no longer navigate to the VST drop down menu and open up Absynth directly on a track in maschine.

Screenshot 2025-09-22 at 10.36.05 AM.png

Here are presets that come with Absynth which I was modifying. You can see they are sorted by date modified, and the dates they'd been modified are well past the date the information in your screenshot was posted.

Here is a Maschine project I started 2025-8-29 that used Absynth inside of maschine. Now when I try to open it, I get this error message in the screenshot below.

Screenshot 2025-09-22 at 10.41.23 AM.png

Here is proof that this project was made on the day I said it was made below.

Screenshot 2025-09-22 at 10.42.17 AM.png

Im not sure why Maschine suddenly lost the capability to open VST's but again, this is a huge blow for me because I've been using Absynth since I started making beats in maschine in 2015. Why was I able to open VST's for the last couple months? What changed? And why?

mason drielling

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/241821#Comment_241821

I hear you, but when adding a plugin in maschine I had the option to use a vst3, an AU or a VST (for the past couple months). All of a sudden yesterday VST was gone. I didnt switch computers, I didnt update anything. Maschine just crashed while I was using it, I opened it back up and it rescanned plugins during startup and it suddenly lost VST-opening-capabilities

Screenshot 2025-09-22 at 10.52.18 AM.png

Vocalpoint

Not a Maschine user (Or a Mac User) so I do not have any idea why a crash would change anything.

But I do know that VST2 was retired on Mac long ago. So unless you have been running Rosetta this whole time - not sure how you managed to get any VST2 action working at all.

But I have to ask - how do you know you did not update anything? Is there anything from Apple that is on by default? Did you go into Native Access at all?

This is most likely one for support.

Maciej Repetowski

VST2 has been dead on Mac for a long time now and there is no return to it. Make sure that there was no incremental update of Mac OS triggered and that you don't have Automatic Updates switched to ON by default.

mason drielling

never mind its back

JesterMgee

To cut through all the noise…. For future, just run your software in Rosetta Mode as native mode will not allow VST2 to work. Downside is it runs in an emulation layer so is much less efficient.

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