Which DAW is fastest to load?

[Trensharo]

Studio One randomly decides to rescan all of the plug-ins. It's completely random. Out of your control. The only way to avoid it is to turn off the scan.

So, if you haven't, it's impossible that you haven't had to sit through it scanning all of your plug-ins on start up countless times... It randomly takes like 50 seconds to load on my machines because of this. All of my machines have M.2 SSDs ,and my desktop has a PCIe 4 System Drive (Samsung Evo), so I know the storage is not the issue.

It is literally impossible to not have noticed this.

[dellboy]

Studio One randomly decides to rescan all of the plug-ins. It's completely random. Out of your control. The only way to avoid it is to turn off the scan.

So, if you haven't, it's impossible that you haven't had to sit through it scanning all of your plug-ins on start up countless times... It randomly takes like 50 seconds to load on my machines because of this. All of my machines have M.2 SSDs ,and my desktop has a PCIe 4 System Drive (Samsung Evo), so I know the storage is not the issue.

It is literally impossible to not have noticed this.

Something is wrong with your system. I have a Samsung Evo and it loads to a new song with VST scanning in 7 seconds.

[Propellerhands]

Studio One randomly decides to rescan all of the plug-ins. It's completely random. Out of your control. The only way to avoid it is to turn off the scan.

So, if you haven't, it's impossible that you haven't had to sit through it scanning all of your plug-ins on start up countless times... It randomly takes like 50 seconds to load on my machines because of this. All of my machines have M.2 SSDs ,and my desktop has a PCIe 4 System Drive (Samsung Evo), so I know the storage is not the issue.

It is literally impossible to not have noticed this.

Aren't all daws re-scanning all plugins upon loading? It is quick pretty much always. Unless of course you have like 70-150 plugins. So I could be wrong here

[apoclypse]

Studio One randomly decides to rescan all of the plug-ins. It's completely random. Out of your control. The only way to avoid it is to turn off the scan.

So, if you haven't, it's impossible that you haven't had to sit through it scanning all of your plug-ins on start up countless times... It randomly takes like 50 seconds to load on my machines because of this. All of my machines have M.2 SSDs ,and my desktop has a PCIe 4 System Drive (Samsung Evo), so I know the storage is not the issue.

It is literally impossible to not have noticed this.

I don't see this on my end. I've never had Studio One just randomly scan plugins or take 50 seconds to load it's up in 12 seconds flat for me. The only time it scans plugins is when I've installed something new. I've been a long time S1 user too (since 2.0). I'm on a Mac though.

[_leras]

Bitwig loads fast enough for me.

Where I find it really shines is loading projects. I can open a project fairly quickly then have multiple projects open at the same time AND then switch between them, reloading all plug ins, also really pretty quickly.

I find this impressive everything time I want to jump between a few tracks I have in progress.

[Trensharo]

Studio One randomly decides to rescan all of the plug-ins. It's completely random. Out of your control. The only way to avoid it is to turn off the scan.

So, if you haven't, it's impossible that you haven't had to sit through it scanning all of your plug-ins on start up countless times... It randomly takes like 50 seconds to load on my machines because of this. All of my machines have M.2 SSDs ,and my desktop has a PCIe 4 System Drive (Samsung Evo), so I know the storage is not the issue.

It is literally impossible to not have noticed this.

Aren't all daws re-scanning all plugins upon loading? It is quick pretty much always. Unless of course you have like 70-150 plugins. So I could be wrong here

Some DAWs scan plug-ins on a separate thread in the background.

Cakewalk by BandLab, DaVinci Resolve Fairlight, Bitwig Studio, Ableton Live and others do this. The Application loads normally. The VSTs known before are cached, and anything new is sanned in the background and added to the plugin manager when it's done. So, you can actually load a project while this is happening without issue.

The issue is not that it is scanning plug-ins, it's that scanning plugins locks the application up so you cannot proceed until it's done. If it takes 40-50 seconds to do that scan, then you are waiting 50 seconds for it to complete before you can do anything else. Other DAWs don't have this issue, becasue the plug-in scan is not part of the application bootstrap - it's separated and run on a separate thread in the background.

Between RX, Ozone, Neutron, Arturia, Native Instruments, Softube, T-RackS and others... I'm well over 150 plug-ins. Maybe closer to 240'ish, and about 480'ish when you add the VST2 and 3 together. My VST3 folder has 357 files, but you can probably remove around 100 and it would be more accurate due to iZotope Application DLLs and some files in .VST3 bundles. My VST2 folder has 261 files, which is a more accurate count (98.6% of my plugins are both VST2 and 3).

^- That number of plugins is not abnormal. There are people with far more (large Waves Bundles, etc.). I actually go through my plug-ins every couple of months and remove stuff that I find I am not using regularly to keep that in check, as well

[maanga]

Do not bet on which DAW loads faster. Most of the DAWs once loaded faster.
What loads faster today may not after a new update or version release.
Learn to live with that simple problem.
Regards.

[oddsphere]

Bitwig seems to load faster than Ableton for me, especially considering VST

[FabBad]

Someone tried sunvox? it loads in a few miliseconds

[Yorrrrrr]

Bitwig seems to load faster than Ableton for me, especially considering VST

Live is way faster here

[legendCNCD]

Live 10 from click to arrangement in 2 seconds on new machine Now I do not need to wait two minutes for the larger sample projects to appear while loading either.

[BBFG#]

For me, it seems relative to the "Scan at startup" and relative to how many plugins it has stuffed into it. So they all seem relatively close to the same time to load. The more minimal I am, the faster it is. Though Cubase probably gives more errors on pluggins now for the known philosophy changes, so it might be a little slower?

[keyman_sam]

Live 10 from click to arrangement in 2 seconds on new machine Now I do not need to wait two minutes for the larger sample projects to appear while loading either.

What is your new machine? That’s impressive.

[koalaboy]

Here's a test of each DAW that I have on my machine.
Timed until ready to 'do something'.
Tested on the second run to ensure no update/rescan bias.
~1200 VST files - lots of 2/3 duplicates.
Fairly old 3930K/64GB RAM/Win 10 with a couple of M2. SSDs, so not my fastest machine, but enough for music. iLok and other dongles connected, but I don't believe that makes a difference until using/loading a plugin.
I honestly don't really notice any of them except for Cubase, and even then it doesn't stop me using it. I'm most commonly in Bitwig, so it's clear speed isn't a factor (and it keeps scanning in the background like some others, so the timing is unclear).

Mulab 9.4: 1 second
FL Studio 21: 2 seconds
Reaper: 2 seconds
Renoise 3.4.3: 3 seconds
Live 12 Beta: 5 seconds
Samplitude Pro X8 Suite: 7 seconds
Bitwig Studio 5: 8 seconds
Live 11: 9 seconds
Reason 12: 11 seconds
Studio One 6: 14 seconds (~7 seconds scanning the ~1200 plugins, and a couple for ARA2 activation)
Cubase Pro 13: 23 seconds

YMMV

[legendCNCD]

Live 10 from click to arrangement in 2 seconds on new machine Now I do not need to wait two minutes for the larger sample projects to appear while loading either.

What is your new machine? That’s impressive.

R7950X/32GB and WD Black SN850X 1TB with Win11 Pro.