I have a lot of old projects in which I need to replace a missing DXi softsynth with its VSTi equivalent. Obviously replacing a synth is easy, but unfortunately the parameter settings get lost in the process. If possible I would like the original settings to be transferred over.

Is this feasible? I don't know but I'm guessing that there is no difference in the way that the parameter settings for DX and VST for a given softsynth are stored in the project file, so retrieving them and applying them to the replacement synth would not be a problem.

Without this feature I am doomed to spending a lot of hours moving back and forth between my current setup and my old Windows XP platform (which I am hanging on to mainly because of this issue) in order to get old projects up and running again. It's a tedious process that I would prefer to avoid.

Kev999
Is this feasible? I don't know but I'm guessing that there is no difference in the way that the parameter settings for DX and VST for a given softsynth are stored in the project file, so retrieving them and applying them to the replacement synth would not be a problem.

Either the settings are the same is plug-in dependent. There is no standards for saving settings and there are "black box" for DAWs.

azslow3
Either the settings are the same is plug-in dependent. There is no standards for saving settings and there are "black box" for DAWs.

 
That should not really matter. I just meant that there would not be any difference for any individual synth. For example, parameter settings that were saved and stored within the cwp file for Dimension Pro DXi could be applied to Dimension Pro VSTi when it is loaded as a replacement.

Kev999

azslow3
Either the settings are the same is plug-in dependent. There is no standards for saving settings and there are "black box" for DAWs.

That should not really matter. I just meant that there would not be any difference for any individual synth. For example, parameter settings that were saved and stored within the cwp file for Dimension Pro DXi could be applied to Dimension Pro VSTi when it is loaded as a replacement.

Either that matters or not is relatively easy to check... I do not have DXi and VSTi versions of some plug-in, but you can check yourself.
 
In the Cakewalk Plug-in manager (Utilities menu) export 2 SPP files, one from DSi and one from VSTi, with single what you think equivalent preset (I know you can not make presets absolutely identical, there are too many parameters, but may be there are some factory presets which should be the same...). Now compare these 2 binary files. If your theory is true, apart from some bytes at the beginning they should be equivalent.
 
If you find them more or less equivalent, next step will be conversation from one SPP to another. I can try to do this (if you upload both files somewhere). If after importing converted DXi preset VSTi version will be able to load it, than you are right, at least for that plug-in.
 
The next step will then be hacking CWP files or convince CW to do this. With the proof it is possible with SPP, CW can not answer like me in my first reply.
 
But I am skeptical at the moment 

I have never saved presets using Plugin Manager (but will try it later). I always use the synth's GUI and save as a program. Every such program that I have saved from a DXi synth has always loaded successfully in its equivalent VSTi, even when the VSTi was a later version and not exactly identical. I have done this many times with the following synths:
 
Rapture
Dim Pro
Z3ta+
NI Battery 3
NI B4II
IK SampleTank 2.5
IK Philharmonik
 
 

You are right with the good way to create perfectly the same presets, I am away from away synth and forgot that option
 
But the rest is still true. The "Program" you save inside plug-in is the way to transfer settings between plug-in incarnations and versions, so logically plug-ins are prepared to deal with that. MS Word is able to read many versions of .doc files, but that does not mean all of them have the same format.
 
What you get as "Cakewalk preset" and save as .spp in Plug-in Manager is how Sonar (or any other DAW) see the settings. I do not say it IS different. But it CAN be different since the plug-in can assume a DAW will not mix presets for any 2 plug-ins with different IDs (and DXi has different schema for such IDs then VSTi). Using MS Word analogy, nowhere is written that some internal auto-saving format can be understood by other Word version.
 
But as I wrote before, please create 2 spp with the same Program and we can have a look.

azslow3
In the Cakewalk Plug-in manager (Utilities menu) export 2 SPP files, one from DSi and one from VSTi, with single what you think equivalent preset (I know you can not make presets absolutely identical, there are too many parameters, but may be there are some factory presets which should be the same...). Now compare these 2 binary files. If your theory is true, apart from some bytes at the beginning they should be equivalent.
 
If you find them more or less equivalent, next step will be conversation from one SPP to another. I can try to do this (if you upload both files somewhere). If after importing converted DXi preset VSTi version will be able to load it, than you are right, at least for that plug-in.

 
OK. I will look into this at the weekend.

azslow3
...In the Cakewalk Plug-in manager (Utilities menu) export 2 SPP files, one from DSi and one from VSTi...

 
I'm not sure how to proceed. The Export button is greyed out for almost all of the softsynths. And I've searched all the drives for .spp files and found none at all.

I don't really know anything about this Import/Export Presets feature, so I went to look it up in the Sonar manual. But I couldn't find any mention of it there.

I do not have "real" Sonar these 2 weeks. But you should first save at least one "Preset" (the top of plug-in UI window), then it should appear available for "Export...".

azslow3
...you should first save at least one "Preset" (the top of plug-in UI window), then it should appear available for "Export...".

 
I tried this. Unfortunately these presets have a different file extension, i.e. FXP rather than SPP. Also, the drop down menu with the save & load options is only present in the VST versions and doesn't exist the the DX versions.