# Plugin Alliance - Cubase/Kontakt Bug [SOLVED]



## Tanuj Tiku (Oct 31, 2016)

A few months ago, I was having a nightmare with my computer. I had to re-install everything 5 times from scratch, changed motherboards, hard drives and even fixed the problem by moving back to my older motherboard. That was on Windows 7.

I have just bought a new computer with brand new components, running Windows 10 and Kontakt (latest update)

And I have just run into the exact same problem.

_*Kontakt: A sample has disappeared. Please make sure all external hard drives are connected. *_

I am not using any external drives and all the drives are working fine. To my knowledge, all samples and there and sometimes they keep working despite this message. Though, I did get a few blanks on round robins but then it works other times too.

I am really frustrated to see this exact same problem re-surface. I have tried everything under the sun. And the thing is, my older rig no longer has this problem and we did nothing special to fix the problem. In the end, we just gave up as it was working fine on the older motherboard (short version). Although, the second motherboard was exactly the same model, we concluded that that particular board has some manufacturing problem - only explanation. I had my DAW builder with me for hours and days on that.

Now, the same problem shows up on a new computer.

It starts somewhere in the middle suddenly and then keeps getting worse and happens every 5-10 minutes which is where I have reached. Cubase will drop all audio. I can do everything inside, it will respond but the audio including the CPU meter will freeze. And if open Kontakt, I get the message you can see in the included picture.

But, no drives are unplugged and every sample is very much there.

At this point, the only explanation is that one of my Kontakt libraries has had its database corrupt. But, if that was the case, then my old rig would have the same problem. Except, that it does not, not exactly.

I still get this message once in a while, like once a month on my old rig but there is no problem and it just works. But here, like before, the audio will stop no matter what I do.

_The only thing common in both systems are the samples and the SanDisk SSD Extreme PRO (1TB). _

What in the hell could it be?


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## Levitanus (Oct 31, 2016)

afraid it if problem with hard drives. Just reanimated my crushed HDD to download from it the libraries to the new one. And some are corrupted forewer. The most pity - Galaxy Steinway, it's my working horse...
May be here some sort of this problem.
And may be you should make batch-resave with looking for missing samples. There isn't any database inside nki. Zones are connected with their samples untill you remove zones manually from mapping editor


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## Kony (Oct 31, 2016)

It sounds like it is time based and could be something completely unrelated to DAW software. Have you checked power save settings, anti-virus software settings etc. I had a similar problem about a year ago where my PC would blue screen sometimes at 20 minutes. After reinstalling and trying lots of maintenance stuff, I realised that the anti-virus was starting at the 20 minute mark (if it thought the PC was in idle mode) and was sometimes causing a crash. Your problem might not be related to any of this but it can't hurt to check this side of things


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## Tanuj Tiku (Nov 1, 2016)

Good news!

After much testing and messing around, I have found the problem and fixed it! 

It turns out that some how, weirdly, some computers will experience problems with Cubase and Kontakt if there are any Plugin Alliance Plugins installed. 

Once I removed these plugins totally, all problems went away. But it is not enough to not use them in the project. Cubase should not even see them so you have to remove them from your VST folder. I found only 1 similar case on Gearslutz. 

I am not able to understand how a plug in could cause Kontakt to think that a sample was missing and for Cubase to cut off audio completely at the same time. It makes no sense yet Plugin Alliance is the problem. 

So if anyone experiences this problem, the only way to solve it is to remove Plugin alliance from your system.


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## Tanuj Tiku (Nov 1, 2016)

*Further note: Plugin Alliance have acknowledged this bug to me personally.* They are working on it and meanwhile, they have given me links to older installers which should help. 

This has caused me a lot of pain, confusion and money. It is now at the top of my list of most deadly mysteries of audio software. 

But I am happy to report that the problem has been identified. I am changing the thread title so others can find it easily in the future.


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## Sekkle (Nov 5, 2016)

I'm really sorry to hear this, your experience sounds really bad. I had the same problem with Plugin Alliance plugins. It cost me a several days. Cubase crashing, audio not playing back, a complete nightmare that very nearly cost me a job.
After searching the net for answers I found that I wasn't alone and that the problem hasn't been resolved for more than 2 years.
I have since uninstalled all Plugin Alliance plugins and will never use anything from them again.
Before they take customers money they really should warn them if they are using win7/cubase of this problem especially since it hasn't been resolved in such a long time and they are fully aware of it.


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## tokatila (Feb 6, 2017)

Thanks a lot Tanuj, I only had to bang my head against the wall for 2 days with the sample disappearing message. Also had some random crashing with both Kontakt (5.6.5) and Cubase (9.0.10). It seems that all my problem were solved by eliminating Plugin Alliance plugins from the project&VST directories. Cheers!


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## Blakus (Oct 22, 2017)

I can confirm that this is still an issue with the latest version of Cubase, Kontakt and Plugin Alliance plugins, on Windows 10. The "sample has disappeared" Kontakt error has been plaguing me for quite a while, I was scared my hard drives were dying or something. As reported here, I needed to fully remove these plugins from the VST folders to solve the problem. I'm extremely thankful for this post, as I never would have found this to be the problem; however, I'm also annoyed that all of my PA plugs are useless until this is resolved. Considering how long this bug has seemingly been around, I'm not getting my hopes up...


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## Stevie (Oct 22, 2017)

Absolutely, nothing has changed. It's really a pity. I own quite a few plugins that I can't use at all at the moment. And I'm very reluctant to buy new stuff from PA. Although, I suspect, this issue has to be solved with Steinberg. But still...


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## oboemaroni (Apr 1, 2018)

I'm experiencing this as well, about to email Plugin Alliance support, really frustrating to see they've known about it for two years and still haven't fixed it.


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## Smashemcee (Dec 27, 2019)

Similar problem here. But I think it can be related somehow to my hardware or drivers.
My experience is this:
I costantly run Native Instruments Komplete 12 VSTi without any issue on Cubase 10.0.5 running on Windows 10. I tried to install the free versions of some plugin alliance/brainworks plugins and I had two different results on two different machines using the same e-licenser for Cubase:
- My old desktop manages them without any problem;
- My new laptop don't even let brainworks plugins to be open in Cubase. They are moved to black list at the first run and once I try to re-activate them, Cubase immediatly crashes.

This is my hardware list, if can helps:

DESKTOP:
- Intel I7-920 CPU;
- Asus P6T-SE Motherboard;
- Noctua NH-D14 CPU Cooler;
- Asus ATI EAH5670 Graphic Card;
- 10GB Kingston 1333MHz RAM;
- 250GB Samsung 860 Evo SSD + Several HDD (Seagate and Western Digital);
- Universal Audio Solo PCI;
- Asus Wireless Card.

NOTEBOOK (Asus Vivobook PRO 15 N580GD-FI018T):
- Intel I7-8750H CPU;
- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Graphic Card;
- 16GB RAM;
- 500GB SSD + 1TB HDD;
- Other (see manufacturer specs).

I'm going letterally crazy...


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## tuantranaudio (Jan 16, 2022)

so is the issue solved with upgrading to new version now?


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