Dorico 3 Elements doesn't recognize Kontakt 5 or 6

Coming back to what I just wrote before, can you please check in C:\Program Files\Steinberg, is there really only one folder VSTPlugins or is there a second one Vstplugins? Normally Windows would treat both names same but maybe that’s different on your machine…

I tried removing the C:\Program Files\Steinberg\VSTPlugins\Native Instruments from the VST2 search path and restarting Dorico. No luck with that, unfortunately. Also, there is only a single VSTPlugins folder present.

As mentioned in an earlier post, the weird thing is that Cubase 10.5 actually also blacklists Kontakt 6 (Kontakt.dll), but here adding it to the whitelist solves the issue. This does nothing for Dorico, unfortunately.

I will need to discuss this tomorrow with the guy who wrote the vstscanner. And will also get a trial installation of Kontakt 6 and see how that behaves with me. I’ll be back…

I have not experienced a difficulty using Kontakt 6; I did note that the new version merely appears as “Kontakt” without a number (and thus overwrote the subsequently superfluous Kontakt Player) which may cause some confusion.

[Attachment deleted by the admin because it showed the serial number of Kontakt]

I’ve not had a chance to talk to Mr Vstscanner as he is not in today, but I just installed Kontakt 6 Player to my laptop and had no issue at all with getting it going. Just installed via Native Access, then set the path to Kontakt and it was immediately recognized by both, Dorico and Cubase.

Jesper, what exact version of Dorico and Cubase do you have?

Found on the Native website following page: https://support.native-instruments.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/360006981157-Cubase-elements-10-Blacklists-Kontakt-and-Komplete-Kontrol-en-us-
What if you follow those instructions, do you at least get it to work with Cubase again?

In the user whitelist, just put the name of the VST (+ carriage returrn) withtout the path. It work !
Ex : Komplete Kontrol

I’m on Mac OS.
MacOs : Mojave 10.14.6

Dorico Pro 3 : 3.0.10.1051 (Oct 7 2019)
VSTAudioEngine3 : 3.0.10.132

Komplete 12
Komplete Kontrol : 2.2.1
Kontakt : 6.2.1
Kontakt 5 : 5.8.1
ScreenShotDorico.png

As mentioned earlier, I have already tried adding Kontakt to the whitelist - both via the text file and directly by copying information from the blacklist XML to the whitelist XML. No luck with that, unfortunately. As mentioned earlier, it does help in Cubase, where Kontakt is also blacklisted otherwise. Same procedure just seems to do nothing at all in Dorico, which is strange

Thing is, getting Kontakt to work in Cubase is not an issue for me, it is explicitly in Dorico that it does not seem to want to work. Odd.

But also in Cubase, Kontakt shall normally not get blacklisted. Neither should there be the need to explicitly whitelist it.
And once you have it properly working in Cubase, then it should be also no issue in Dorico.

That’s why we ask you to follow the instructions as given by the Native Instruments support, though it might be tedious to do so.

Also Mr Vstscanner thinks that your Kontakt installation is corrupted in some way.
And it is not a general problem, as you heard, there are so many other people with Kontakt installations without any issue.

Sorry, I did not mean to come across as annoyed, just wanted to clarify earlier steps. Written language is such an inadequate form of communication, even with the addition of emojis. :smiley:

I had some projects I needed to finalize first so, but I have now tried following the steps in the page you listed above (adding the step of also clearing the relevant folders in the VSTAudioEngine3_64 folder). Unfortunately, that did not help, Kontakt.dll remains blacklisted (and ‘un-whitelistable’) in Dorico, while whitelistning it in Cubase works in that application.

Thanks for all the help with this. I realize it is not a widespread, general problem. Not sure what is going on with my setup. I have no issues with Kontakt in any other applications (save for Cubase blacklisting it, where using the ‘Reactivate’ option alleviates the issue).

Well, in the new year we can have a look at “reactivating” plug-ins in Dorico. In theory it should be the same as in Cubase since Dorico’s audio engine is derived from Cubase, but we never had a particular focus on that feature, so might be that it is just easy. However, since we are all away from office you have to be patient. Happy holidays.

Workaround for MAC Users:

I solved the blacklisting of kontakt by disabling the System Integrity Protection

“System Integrity Protection (SIP) is a security feature of macOS originally introduced in OS X El Capitan designed to make it even more difficult for malware to access important system files, keeping them safe from unwanted modifications. In the early days of SIP, some developers ran into problems when the system would keep core functionality of their apps from working properly because those apps made changes to the way the operating system worked by editing the system files that SIP was now in place to protect.”

Keeping that in mind, do it at your own risk

Here’s how:

Click the Apple symbol in the Menu bar.
Click Restart…
Hold down Command-R to reboot into Recovery Mode.
Click Utilities.
Select Terminal.
Type csrutil disable.
Press Return or Enter on your keyboard.
Click the Apple symbol in the Menu bar.
Click Restart…

If you later want to start using SIP once again (and you really should), then follow these steps again, except this time you’ll enter csrutil enable in the Terminal instead.

p.s.
Make sure you’ve got rid of the “Vst2xPlugin Blacklist VSTAudioEngine3” file first

From Steinberg’s point of view, we strongly discourage people from going that path.
We recommend to push the plug-in vendors to solve the problem on the plug-in side.
Also the plug-ins need to be properly prepared for Apple’s System Integrity Protection, not only the DAWs.

Update:
I deleted the VSTAudioEngine 3 folder.
Doing so, my vst2xplugin blacklist as well as the vst2 whitelist have been deleted too…so there is nothing in there right now.

When I restarted Dorico, I found Kontakt 5 16out.vst available in the Vst instrument list in play mode, but when I try to load it, Dorico Freezes and I have to force quit…

by the way in my VST2 folder I have also Kontakt 5.vst and Kontakt 5 8out.vst…but they do not appear in the vst instrument list in Dorico…

I’ve enabled the System Integrity Protection back again, and Kontakt doesn’t get blacklisted anymore…

New Update:
I deleted again the VSTAudioEngine 3 folder after having enabled the System Integrity Protection…and I’m back to the starting point… Kontakt have been blacklisted again

HI everyone. On Windows here and having these same problems. I think I’ve tried every thing listed here (including deleting the files and running the scanner directly) and had no luck in getting Kontakt 5 off the blacklist. Amusingly I have had Kontakt working before in my ideal setup via Bidule but since Dorico 3 this has 80% of the time crashed every project reopened with it due to the issues in Steinberg Forums

Can probably hop around this by using Bidule and a loop back midi port but it’s all a bit silly for something that should just work!

Any new revelations on how to fix this? Any diagnostics I can help with?

The first thing to do is to provide the Dorico Diagnostics.zip file produced by doing Help > Create Diagnostic Report. The zip file will be saved to your desktop.

I had the same problem and deleted the black list file first and after that, reinstalled the full dorico3.1 program. After that kontakt showed up.

Thanks Daniel. Always impressed with how quick you and your team are to respond to things. I’ve got a diagnostics report zip and pinged you a link in a private message.