I have never played with z3ta+ and decided to take a look at it today. But surprisingly, it does not appear on the plugin list.

If I pull up the Plugin Manager, it's listed under "Legacy Wrapped VST Audio Effects" and "Legacy Wrapped VST Instruments". Should it also appear under "VST Instruments"?

I have verified that the DLLs are present in c:\program files\cakewalk\vstplugins\z3ta+. There is also a c:\program files\cakewalk\z3ta+ directory that contains wavetables, documentation and stuff.

z3ta+.dll, z3ta+_fx.dll and z3ta+_fx2.dll are all present (version 1.5.4). They are not ActiveX, so I assume they're normal VSTs and require no registration or voodoo sacrifices to make them work.

Maybe somebody would be kind enough to check and see if there is another folder or file I'm missing?

ORIGINAL: bitflipper

I have never played with z3ta+ and decided to take a look at it today. But surprisingly, it does not appear on the plugin list.

If I pull up the Plugin Manager, it's listed under "Legacy Wrapped VST Audio Effects" and "Legacy Wrapped VST Instruments". Should it also appear under "VST Instruments"?

I have verified that the DLLs are present in c:\program files\cakewalk\vstplugins\z3ta+. There is also a c:\program files\cakewalk\z3ta+ directory that contains wavetables, documentation and stuff.

z3ta+.dll, z3ta+_fx.dll and z3ta+_fx2.dll are all present (version 1.5.4). They are not ActiveX, so I assume they're normal VSTs and require no registration or voodoo sacrifices to make them work.

Maybe somebody would be kind enough to check and see if there is another folder or file I'm missing?

Maybe it has failed to load once and Sonar quarantined it? Have it rescan all plugins, including those that didn't load correctly or at all. I can't think of anything else right now. Anyhow, you're not really missing much...

ORIGINAL: bitflipper

Should it also appear under "VST Instruments"?

yes, at least it is there in my setup S8PE

ORIGINAL: bitflipper

Maybe somebody would be kind enough to check and see if there is another folder or file I'm missing?

Your installations sound good to me
1) a program directory tree with Arpeggios, Documentatoin, Resources, Tunings and Wavetables directories, uninstall stuff, the standalone exe and dll.
2) the VST dlls amd standalone exe in the VST plugings directory

What is the name of the standalone exe?

Hi Bit - For me, it's C:\Program Files\Cakewalk\Vstplugins\z3ta+\z3ta+.dll
Everything else is in C:\Program Files\Cakewalk\z3ta+

But no EXE file.

z3ta+.exe
FYI, I did not install the z3ta+ that came with SONAR. I bought it quite a while ago.

My opinion of ZETA3 is contrary to PaPi. I'm not into electronic industrial type sounds at all..(which is what ZETA excels at ) Aside from the fact that most of the presets are geared way too loud- The underlying synth engine is fantastic. You will find a few mellow sounding presets and some goofy appregiated stuff that sounds absolutely killer. It's a very deep synth to program and there isn't much you can't create if you have a mind and desire to program.

Ah, OK, makes sense that you might not get the standalone executable when bundled.

Thanks everyone for taking a look for me. I guess I've got everything that's supposed to be there. Time to consider the possibility that I've overlooked something obvious and/or trivial...

...you might not get the standalone executable when bundled.

But sometimes you can create one yourself. If you have Rapture (including its microhost), then the following workaround method might work:

Create a folder somewhere away from any VST plug-ins folders.
Copy the Rapture.exe file into this folder.
Copy the z3ta+.dll file into the same folder.
Re-name the z3ta+.dll file to Rapture.dll.
Create a shortcut (in your start menu or desktop) to the Rapture.exe file (and rename it to "z3ta+ Standalone" or similar).

Running the shortcut launches z3ta+ as a standalone. Hopefully anyway! I have not tried this method for z3ta+, but it worked for DimPro (although it turned out that a DimPro standalone was available after all so I need not have bothered contriving one).

I'm not sure whether it came up, bitflipper, but z3eta+ is not only a VST(i) instrument but a VST fx plugin as well. It takes audio as an input for processing so there are separate dll's for that as they are obviously different 'programs'.