Waves Plugins Disappearing From Studio One? Here’s How To Fix It

If your Waves VST plugins are starting to disappear from your list of effects in Studio One, then you needn’t worry, as here is a trick I’ve leant to fix this.

Background: The error messages & disappearing Waves plugins

My Waves plugins, (and only my Waves plugins for some reason) started to disappear from my list of effects, or I’d upload an old session and I’d get the “missing devices” message appear with a list of Waves plugins that could not be loaded or found anymore.

For another odd reason, not all my Waves plugins would disappear, only a few. But those same few, after attempts at reinstalling, would almost always keep on disappearing while others would still appear.

These were the usual disappearing suspects:

• CLA-2A
• Vitamin
• Waves Tune
• Abbey Road Mastering
• RVox
• Sibilance

When I’d load up Studio One I’d often get this message too:

WaveShell2-VST3 12.0_x64 ignored, because it crashed before.

The fastest way to get your Waves plugins back again in Studio One

If you’ve tried other methods like repairing your Waves plugins within the Waves Central app and the issue is still happening try this:

1. Open Studio One
2. Click ‘Help’
3. Click ‘Open Settings Folder’ and close Studio One
4. In the ‘Settings’ folder click on the folder ‘x64’
5. Copy the file ‘PluginBlacklist.settings’ and paste it to your desktop (this is a backup just in case we need to revert back)
6. Now delete the ‘PluginBlacklist.settings’ in the ‘x64’ folder
7. Open up Studio One again and bingo your Waves VST plugins should be back.

It’s an inconvenience but I have found I’ve had to repeat the above process about once a month.

However this does the least damage in that all your plugin presets, sound sets, files etc should all still be there and working.

Plus, if you save a shortcut to the ‘x64’ folder on your desktop then that cuts out steps 1-4 above.