Hey guys, this question is bothering me

I started producing in the early 2000's, gone from FL Studio, Ableton and Logic.
I have about 20 good songs from that era that I would love to remake, remix and/or remaster.
at that time I gig every weekend with my Dj set and/or the Live action.
I didnt have much time to well polish these tracks, hence the renders arent as good as I could do this days.

I can open and edit the old projects, but the VSTs or the VSTs presets from that era doesnt work anymore.
When I try to replicate the sounds using modern VSTs or my hardware synths I always feel weird, like something it's not right... "its good, but it isnt the song I composed anymore"

Its not nostalgia, I truly prefer the tools we have nowadays.

I have a scheduled realease for this year and I would like to include 1 or 2 tracks from that era to fill the 10 track LP.

How do you deal with that?
Should I leave these songs aside and forget the past?

 

Usually i can find such old vsts around for download, but nothing i've worked on goes as far as that, so i'm not sure if that's possible in your case. There are people here and in other places that have been storing plugins since forever, so you might get lucky if you specify what you're looking for.

Check out this thread, maybe it helps:
https://audiosex.pro/threads/trove-of-old-vsts.62644/

 

They haven't gotten any better just sitting there. If there are parts which were recorded to audio (real instruments, vocals, etc) maybe you can repurpose any good ones. You'll end up doing the same thing to anything you try to re-work anyway.

Post a list of the plugins you are missing. Get them working correctly and decide. But I bet you will not end up using any of it.

 

I keep an old PC around with XP installed, I can open open past projects (going back to my first PC in 1999) with the correct version of DAW and plugins from when I made the tracks. There's always 1 or 2 that present difficulties, but hundreds that open fine.

 

I always suspected that...

 

I tried that last year but my machine turned into a mess, a mix of abandonware and the modern plugins that I legit bought.
So I decided to format the machine and did a fresh install because the most recent projects are "more important" at this moment

 

Well, thats not a bad idea... I have an old machine that I could try that.

Thank you very much.

I appreciate all the answers

 

Virtual machines are a good option too.
As far as you don't use too many tracks.
You can install any old OS on them.

No need to reboot to change OS or swap files between computers : you can virtual share/copy paste.
With the same hardware if you find old drivers. Same screen, mouse ...

I even use a MacOs Ventura VM in Windows 10.
i downloaded it from a famous russian tracker

 

i always just swap them out for whatever new vst's i have. its never the same, but its close enough and often times better! I keep my sessions meticulously labeled, so its easy to know whats what. Floaty pad, Gritty Arp, Saw Bass, Glitch Lead, etc etc.

 

No. Just render the projects to audio and mix in a modern DAW with modern plugins.

 

If I have something modern to replace it with, I just replace the plugin. If I don't, it's probably a plugin that does something unique that's worth keeping.

Honestly I haven't had a lot of plugins that don't work under modern Windows. Hypersonic 2 comes to mind, but I think there's even a way to make that work.

 

shift + delete
You're welcome

 

Right, exporting stems: that's exactly what I do with my all my finished project. This is to open the project on different daw, in a different studio, maybe in the next 20 years. If you haven't done stems exporting in the past, your projects are probably lost now, but you can start this procedure in your present workflow so to be future proof.

 

I stem everything, mostly. But it's not very helpful with things you didn't finish and are going back to the production stage where you still have lots of plugins which matter. Even if you are missing an "effect" plugin that you use in your mix; those are always very easy to substitute using new ones. If it is a synth or a modulator type mfx plugin, you are SOL even if you do stem everything.

in Logic, the difference is only between bounce and replace, or bounce to new tracks. Then disable/hide.

 

Last edited: Mar 16, 2024

this is so important, I started doing this too recently.

I didn't think about this, for god sake.

What I had weren't exactly Stems, but the renders used to put together my live show in Ableton.
although I managed to save all my song projects in these last 20 years, the same did not happen to all the .wav renders I used to craft my live action.

Well, thank you, I gonna stem everything now. lesson learned.

 

Now we've covered what you should have done.

The only real solution is to get you old/back-up PC or buy a cheap one and install the old stuff.

Windows XP or Windows 7 & all DAW you where using.
Then open the project files.
Then find and install each VST.

If you haven't got one of the VST or just don't know it from the name, then start a thread and ask who has a copy here.

Almost everyone has CD, DVDs and old HD with the installers on, for the stuff we used to use.

 

The best advice I'd give myself is to turn old computer's into virtual machines before trashing them, and print your damn MIDI to audio.

I've got stuff going back to around the 2000 in Cubase, Nuendo. I rarely if ever printed any instruments or effects which becomes hellish when you try to open something a decade later. I also had UAD-1 plugins all over the place and my newest computer didn't have a compatible PCI slot for it.

Thank god I switched to Reaper around 2007 and took the time to manually port over most of the tracks stuff I cared about.
I was able the load/run my UAD-1 plugins remotely (using the old computer as a DSP farm) and swap them with native alternatives in my projects.

Regardless of your overall opinion of Reaper it's basically the best choice for compatibility/archiving.
- It's never dropped support for any plugin format. I can still load DX/DXi plugins, the earliest VST plugins made still work (Windows gets some credit here too)

- It's project file format is designed to be backwards/forwards compatible and is human readable as much as possible rather than some proprietary binary encoded pile of uselessness.

-It's highly scriptable so backup/archive related tasks can be much easier.

-They won't sell out by choice or forced necessity and become part of some vulture hedge-fund conglomerate like NI/Steinberg. The developer created Winamp to listen to music, GNUtella to share it (which became the largest file-sharing platform for a while), now Reaper to create music. The team is very small, but all have a shared user-centric ethos.