Sonar rejecting IK Multimedia plugins

Today I have been trying to install various IK Multimedia softsynths and fx on my new PC. They appear to have installed and authorized successfully and the softsynths all work as standalones (although they need to be run as admininstrator to avoid a prompt to re-authorize after every launch). But when Sonar scans them it stops at each item with the following message:

The following plug-in caused an error during load...

Inserting any of this plugins within a project immediately crashes Sonar.

Plugins installed so far:

• Miroslav Philharmonik 1.1.2
• SampleTron 1.0.2
• SampleMoog 1.0.2
• Classic Studio Reverbs 1.1.1

These plugins all work on my old setup (same o/s, same Sonar version, same plugin versions).

Sonar Platinum 22.11.0.111 (32-bit)
Windows 7 (64-bit)

msorrels
You have to run SONAR as administrator in order to use any of those old IK plugins.

 
Thanks. I'd forgotten about that.
 
Maybe I should make notes to avoid getting caught out next time.

They changed bitbridge and the plugin manager a while back.  Before then it was hit or miss if the 32-bit IK plugins would work on a 64bit machine.  But after the changes it required SONAR and the plugin manager to run as admin.  There are many, many threads on these old 32-bit IK plugins and their issues.  The specific combination of OS, CPU bitsize, SONAR version, SONAR bitsize, and plugin required to make them work is mostly black magic.  But here today if you are running a current version of 64-bit SONAR on a 64bit machine you have to do the admin thing or these older 32-bit IK plugins will not work.  Other combinations may or may not work, who knows.  Sampletank 3 can read these old libraries and there are modern 64-bit versions of the CSR plugins.  Which may be a better solution.  Running SONAR as admin is almost always a bad, bad idea.

scook
It depends on the OS. These plug-ins w4ere designed to work on XP. Microsoft subsequently secured parts of the registry and IKM did not update their programs to reflect these changes. This is why the programs running these synths must run as administrator.

 
My previous setup was Windows 7, not XP. My current setup is Window 7 too. I'm using the same versions of everything. The only difference is the hardware.

I believe it's not just the registry.  It's also the install location.  I don't put plugins in c:\Program Files, which I think is another reason the IK plugins worked for a while (X3 and early SONAR Platinum).  But there was a specific release of SONAR Platinum (it was early in the Platinum releases) where things stopped working on Windows 7, even though they worked before.
 
Using the old IK libraries in modern Sampletank 3 you lose the plugin specific GUIs.  I'm not sure about anything more, there may have been something else in Miroslav that the specific player did that you can't do with generic Sampletank 3.  I still have them all installed and they will work, if I run SONAR as admin.

Tech support told me to run them through Sample Tank because they are 32 bits. 

vladasyn
Tech support told me to run them through Sample Tank because they are 32 bits.

 
I've got SampleTank v2.5, not 3. It's 32-bit.

msorrels
...It's also the install location.  I don't put plugins in c:\Program Files...

 
I've now uninstalled all the IK items that were installed within the Programsx86 folder and re-installed some of them (including Authorization Manager) in non-system folders. This has not changed their behaviour at all. They all still crash Sonar if it is not run as administrator.

By the way, the T-Racks plugins don't seem to cause any problems. It's just the softsynths and the CSR reverbs.
 
[EDIT]
...and also the AmpliTube plugins.

That modest RAM footprint was one of the reasons SampleTank 2 was so popular. If someone isn't into sampled instruments in a big way, e.g. they are mainly recording audio, then 32 bits need never be a limitation. At least, not until the day comes when some must-have plugin is offered only in 64-bit, but that day is still years away.
 
Kev, it's actually a good thing that ST3 is 64-bit only, as that'll save you from making a purchase you might regret. I bought ST3 on the assumption that a) it would be like ST2 only better, and b) I could continue to use all my ST2 libraries. I was disappointed on both counts.
 
While running as administrator is generally frowned upon for security reasons, the risk is very low when specific trusted programs are run as administrator. For malware to exploit that practice, it would have to infect sonar*.exe or a DLL that SONAR calls, most of which are protected system files. Nobody's going to write a virus and name it Dimension Pro.dll.
 
BTW, SONAR still runs fine on XP. 

bitflipper
...While running as administrator is generally frowned upon for security reasons, the risk is very low when specific trusted programs are run as administrator. For malware to exploit that practice, it would have to infect sonar*.exe or a DLL that SONAR calls, most of which are protected system files. Nobody's going to write a virus and name it Dimension Pro.dll...

 
I keep my DAW PC offline most of the time anyway, so security risk is minimal.

Today Sonar would not allow me to import an audio file using the drag and drop method. I tried running Sonar not as administrator and it allowed it. So there's another reason not to want Sonar to be run as administrator. This is getting annoying.

scook
It is the operating system preventing drag and drop not SONAR. The media browser in SONAR always supports drag and drop between it and the rest of the application.

 
I've never used the media browser. I'll check it out.

Thanks Scook for those suggestions. I'll pursue that when I get some time during this weekend.

And thanks for reminding me about Pentagon. I use it sometimes and I'd forgotten to install it this time round.

I also tried installing X3 to see whether it would accept these plugins as it did on previous setups. But no, it doesn't like them now.

scook

Kev999
My previous setup was Windows 7, not XP. My current setup is Window 7 too. I'm using the same versions of everything. The only difference is the hardware.

Was this post made about the old Win7 machine?...

 
My last three DAW setups, athough abandoned, are all still operational. I have been revisiting the last two W7 installations trying unsuccessfully to discover why the IK software worked differently there.
 
2011 setup:
i7-950 PC running Windows XP (x32) and Sonar 7PE. All IK plugins worked without any issues.

2012 setup:
Same i7-950 PC (now dual-boot) running Windows 7 Ultimate (x64) installed on a partition of the same drive. Running Sonar 7, later X2 and X3. IK plugins worked normally, although there were some issues with SampleTank.

2016 setup:
same i7-950 PC (now triple-boot) running another instance of Windows 7 Ultimate (x64) installed on a new SSD. Running Sonar X3 and Platinum. Again, IK plugins worked normally, aside from SampleTank.

New 2017 setup:
i7-6850k PC running Windows 7 Ultimate (x64) and Sonar Platinum. Most IK plugins not accepted by Plugin Manager unless running Sonar as administrator.

There must be something different about the new setup compared to the previous two. Could hardware differences account for it? Or maybe a Windows update present on one and absent on the other?