the way NI handles older versions of software is just awful

What makes this all the more infuriating - that fact that Guitar Rig 6 has a different "ID" than GR5 - is that if you open up a session wth GR5 instances, you can copy and paste the patch from GR5 to GR6. (Similar thing from Kontakt 5 to K7) I haven't verified this will work from old GI to GR7 yet… But if I'm correct, the data is the same, at least backwards compatible. What NI has done therefore is just willful abandonment of old software and not caring enough about people who have been using their product for over 20 years. If you just produce a song put it on social media and forget about it I guess it doesn't matter. But those working in film/tv/advertising are constantly going back to old sessions and recycling. I'd wager about 25% of my work is reworking songs from my library. I've considered getting an intern to open up every old session and resave with the latest NI before GR5 dies all together.

@morganvisconti

"But those working in film/tv/advertising are constantly going back to old sessions and recycling. I'd wager about 25% of my work is reworking songs from my library. I've considered getting an intern to open up every old session and resave with the latest NI before GR5 dies all together"

You need to read my post from Page 1 on how Studio One manages this - the fix is on Presonus - not on NI in that case.

Another angle that needs some thought is that some users may NOT want GR7 to suddenly just "take over" a GR5 instance that was embedded in an old song from years ago. I know I wouldn't.

For me - and really anyone else who uses any plugin and expects a session from 5 years ago to open without incident - all I can say is document and have all those tools from 5 years ago at the ready OR get in the habit of printing all stems at session completion so you can reassemble without those tools at some point in the near (or distant) future.

This issue will never resolve itself - by itself. It will take a concerted effort between plugin vendors and DAW makers to work out some sort of smoother migration or graduation system that works.

VP

If by "Printing", @Vocalpoint and @Simchris both mean "freezing", "bouncing", or "rendering to audio" any of those old tracks in question, then I would agree; freezing is the best thing to do.

And maybe do all of your freezing of tracks right around the time you mix or master the song. Or later, whenever you decide to archive them or break them into stems before making archival backups of them. No matter how sophisticated we think we will become, audio is still audio. There will be SOME codec somewhere that can read it, even 50 years from now. Okay, maybe 25 years from now, lol.

Heh... yeah, I'm old, we still say printing from the tape days. "Printing to tape." Freezing, rendering to audio files, etc. would be correct terminology.

Yeah... I still say that more often than not. That must confuse the heck outta newbies. Wait, you use dryer sheets to save your mix ????

It's the DAW that is doing this - not any plugin manufacturer. And Waves is not exactly a good example as they almost NEVER update their plugins to a new major version - takes years in some cases.

I use Studio One here and it has no idea that Kontakt 6 and Kontakt 7 "could" be the same plugin in a song. It errors out everytime it encounters an older version of a plugin in a song - even if the new version is right there - ready to go.

VP

Again - Waves is poor example since it's not really possible to run two "versions" of the same plugin. With Waves you are either running V13 or v14 (most current) but not both.

Whereas in the case of a vendor like Izotope - with the possibility of multiple versions of the same plugin - (Say Ozone 9, 10 and 11) - I have had numerous hassles in the past with a Studio One track recorded two years ago with Ozone 9 in a project then I open it (with Ozone 11 installed) and the song balks at me to find the plugin.

Studio One identifies all it's VST plugins by a unique ID and does not care one bit about versioning. Until Presonus figures this out and devises a way to allow me to assign a specific plugin ID to a specific "latest" version of an "Ozone" (so the DAW know to substitute on the fly - my workflow is consistently ruined as soon as I install a "new" version of an existing plugin.

Other DAWs out there (Cubase and Logic come to mind) have already figured this out for their users. But for the rest of us - it's a waiting game. And certainly has nothing to do with NI or any other vendor.

I also think another key point that many are missing on this - is the HUGE assumptions that a "newer" version of an older plugin (like say Ozone 11 auto-replacing Ozone 9) is a good thing OR even remotely close to a seamless thing.

In many cases - newer versions of older tech have a completely different processing methods, different system hooks, different presets, or maybe completely different everything (like VST2 to VST3) in extreme cases.

Doing an on-the-fly "auto-replace" in these cases may end being way more hassle than it's worth.

VP

Bang on.

It does continue to boggle my mind that a lot of users continue to think that just because a plugin moves rolls from Version X to Version Y - that the newer version will behave identically to the older.

It almost seems that because it's just "software" - there must be some built in expectation that rearward compatibility is 100% guaranteed.

That is rarely the end result.

VP