This article is a stub, to be expanded later.

I recently installed SoundID Reference 5 for Headphones from SonarWorks and almost immediately found a way to crash my DAW every time the plugin opens. I had added a first headphone profile which worked great. Then I added a second headphone profile, which also worked. Then I deleted the second profile while it was selected. This immediately crashed the DAW, and did so every time the plugin loaded thereafter.

I went looking for a solution but nothing turned up in Google. I deleted the VST file and reinstalled, but the issue remained. I went looking for a persistent settings file and found my solution.

On my system, the settings file for the plugin is found at C:\Users\{my-username}\AppData\Local\Sonarworks\SoundID Reference\Plugin\cfg.json. I renamed that file and reloaded the plugin, which created a new empty file and reset the plugin to the default state. Problem solved!