Any tips for upgrading to 4.5 software ( DX - VST) ?!?!

[crazy6]

Just finished a new album and figure this is the best time to get the system cleaned up and up to date !!!! I'm currently running 4.2 (I think?) at the moment ( DXi ) with Sonar 5 and am about to upgrade to Sonar 6 and the UAD software to 4.5 BUT I am worried about all the old projects I want to continue having access to. I know that the lastest UAD software is VST only so I figured I would need to open EVERY plugin and save the settings....maybe even \"print\" the tracks/effect and then upgrade everything, open the projects and go and manually rebuild the effects chains on every individual track.

I wanted to know if anyone has gone through this pain and has tips/tricks to make the whole transition as painless as possible. I have about 30 tracks I need to retain access to and that could take DAYS to sort out

Any help appreciated guys....

 

[secretworld]

Wouldn´t it be possible to just accept you lost the uad plugins on these projects and when you open them again do a mix from a fresh start? Chances are you will do a better job now then you did then. I ofcourse have no idea how complicated your mixes are, so sorry if this is useless.

Another option is to create a dual boot system, with your old sonar and old uad dx and a new partition with the new sonar and uad 4.5. Then when you want to work on an old song you boot the old OS.

 

[crazy6]

not really a useful solution for my scenario. I have quite advaced projects that I want to continue working on and add the new UAD plugs ( space echo for example ). Starting all these mixes from scratch isn't an option, although i have done this in the past for mixes that just were not working so I know it is a valid optin in some cases.

 

[saemskin]

when you upgrade, I doubt the dxi plugs are just going to dissappear.

 

[secretworld]

when you upgrade, I doubt the dxi plugs are just going to dissappear.

Yes they will!!

 

[Dave Bourke]

OK, I don't use Windows so I could be way off base here. But, before you upgrade, is it possible to save all your DXi plug settings as non-DXi presets (VST perhaps) and name each something like Song1Kix, Song1BassDI, Song1Vox. VST presets are never overwritten by a software upgrade.

In other words, each of your settings gets the name of the song it's in and the name of the track. When you're finished, your settings are there in your presets folders.

If this is not possible, you could always do a plug-in window screen grab and name each file as suggested above.

Thirty files might seem a lot. I once had to copy tracks (and track names) and plug-ins out of 1,458 projects into new empty files. When I looked out the window it was summer again...

Kind regards.

 

[Paul Woodlock]

Dual boot your machine and leave 4.2 installed on one boot partition for backwards compatibility ????

 

[Matt Hepworth]

I went through this a while back. 4.0 was the last DX version, I believe, BTW, so you're likely going from 4.0 to 4.5.

You DO have to go to each plug-in and go to the VST style save menu for it. You cannot just type the name of the setting in the usual SONAR save location. It's that load and save thing that's in the plug-in GUI. I loaded the VST version right beneath the DX version and disabled the DX version in the FX bin. I then did a visual comparison to make sure the settings took.

If you do that and end up going back to a project and finding one you missed, you can set a system restore point, then uninstall 4.5 and reinstall 4.0. Open the project and do the steps above for that plug-in you missed and resave. Uninstall 4.0 and reinstall 4.5 (or system restore to 4.5 after the uninstall). It took probably 4 hours or so to transfer everything. I then saved them as the same project name, but with a VST at the end of the name.

Sucks, but it was worth it.

Interesting note:

Watch your meter on your UAD! The VST versions take up just enough more UAD power that certain projects got the \"One or more UAD plug-ins have been disabled.\" error after the switch. I had to use SONAR's freeze function.

Good luck.