What is the deal with DAWs and Sequencer's VST recognition?

[runagate]

What is the deal with DAWs and Sequencer's VST recognition?

I've never seen any explanation as to why every program
has a totally different way of scanning and recognizing your VSTs.

How can any developer think it's a good idea to have a non-failsafe
way of scanning VSTs?

I think because I have a couple hundred VSTs that I'll always use
FLstudio because it'll never be in a state that it will forever
crash until I go through my entire VST folder and figure out which
one is crashing a program. I've pretty much stopped demoing all the
nice daws and seqs because it takes too long, or isn't possible,
to get them to work with the plug-ins that I have. FL not only doesn't
have this limitation but it will load all but a handful of plug-ins.

[Superchibisan]

fl has lots of other limitations. some of which have probably been removed since the last time i used it. which was several years ago...

[runagate]

I'm not trying to say FL is better than the others.
I just don't get how so many programs do such a bad job
ensuring that your weirdo pile of plug-ins won't crash their
program over and over with no solution (there's always solutions
for a PC techy like me but I seriously doubt most people are
as computer-savvy or glacially patient as I am).

[shamann]

The most painless scans of the many hosts I have are energyXT, Vaz Modular and Audiomulch (all three are fairly quick and non-crashy).

The most painful are Tracktion v1.6 and Live 5 Lite.

With Live I had to remove a bunch of plugins to get through the initial scan. Once through the big one, it updates pretty well, including with the plugins that crashed the initial scan.

Tracktion's initial scan was just painfully slow, damned thing kept freezing up. It too scans painlessly for latter updates (thankfully).

I have no idea why some hosts scan in a less-than-simple manner, though.

[Reverse Engineer]

The most painless scans of the many hosts I have are energyXT, Vaz Modular and Audiomulch (all three are fairly quick and non-crashy).

The most painful are Tracktion v1.6 and Live 5 Lite.

With Live I had to remove a bunch of plugins to get through the initial scan. Once through the big one, it updates pretty well, including with the plugins that crashed the initial scan.

Tracktion's initial scan was just painfully slow, damned thing kept freezing up. It too scans painlessly for latter updates (thankfully).

I have no idea why some hosts scan in a less-than-simple manner, though.

I'll second EXT. Whenever i have demoed it, i just point it in the direction of my vst's and they just "appear" It seems as if it doesn't even scan them (although it obviously does)..they just.....appear.

[Debutante]

FL has NEVER failed to scan my folder even when it had >600 plugins (that's right, I had that many). I think there is concensus about the stability of FL with plugins in general. Adobe, my other program, has never been able to scan my vst folder. A large folder konks it out every time. I wish they would do proper vst support in Adobe. Otherwise it's awesome.

[Ildon]

FLStudio and EnergyXT are the fastest, yeah. Cakewalk's VST adapter is pretty good too. Takes a while sometimes, but it's never once failed me, and I have a sh*tload of VSTs in my folder.

[shamann]

FL has NEVER failed to scan my folder even when it had >600 plugins (that's right, I had that many).

I apparently have 795 at the moment (and that's fairly paired down from a year ago).

[deaf dunderkwac]

MW only needs to scan upon additions. It's failed to see a couple out of more than 400, but I'm in the process of discarding the unused effects and instruments. I try to try everything I load up, but I already have quite a few favorites (ones' that I spent time learning how to effectively use)
I have yet to find anything -not- useful.
I've been less then successful with VST recognition in hosts like Audacity and a couple of others.

[grymmjack]

Tracktions vst scanning/refresh is world class. Never had a single crash that crashed the app (the plugins yes but not the app) and it smartly adds plugs it cant init/recognize to an ignore list which you can then edit if you like. Best implementation for organization too (honors folders -- unlike FLstudio which has no folder hierarchy which is a real problem if you have several hundred

[runagate]

Ok, so everyone has preferences as to which system they like.

But why are they all so different?
It seems to me that there'd be way Steinberg figured out that just works
with the way they created the VST standard.

[bduffy]

This is too funny, coz I'm currently doing battle with a Cubase project that simply will not open because of a plugin, that I can't determine.

I'm surprised no one mentioned Cubase! Not only does it have the longest initial scan, but the scan is long every single time you open it; it scans the whole folder - more quickly than the initial scan (if you make it through) - but not much.

Wavelab is one of the best (oddly enough), I think: it only scans new plugins and will not allow through bad ones, or will de-register them.

[grymmjack]

Ok, so everyone has preferences as to which system they like.

But why are they all so different?
It seems to me that there'd be way Steinberg figured out that just works
with the way they created the VST standard.

I would guess because each host is completely different. It isn't just a standard template kind of thing that every developer uses aside from the API to do the VST stuff. The hardware level is up to the developer and all that so.. And I think it's safe to say that with VST being core to the success of an app, every developer hopes to outdo the others by trying to do something unique/special -- like gol he adhered 100% to the specification, which unfortunately hardly any other host does (including Cubase itself I was told) -- yet people stoned him for it and continue to do so. He then added features to introduce workarounds for these incompatibilities (or someone on the fruity team did not sure if gol is the guy in charge of that or not). I mention this because the developers goals sometimes do not match the users goals initially, as is the case with FLS -- of course this is not law though.

Like I personally really hate the VST->DX wrapper that cakewalk uses, even though it works and it's giving me the ability to use the plugins and such, it's just not my favorite way. Soundforge and Audition 2 had the absolute worst scanning IMO when they would crash they wouldn't even omit the plug or add it to a 'skip list' it'd just keep crashing incessantly .. That's not excusable in a professional product, IMO.

In fact, an app that tests plugins in it's own memoryspace/thread/whatever it's called and by doing so jeopordizes the stability of the core app cannot possibly be considered 'robust' implementation for scanning IMO. C'mon, if FLS can do it and Tracktion can do it, then it's got to be possible for teams with much more $$$$ to pay their programmers to get it right ya?

[runagate]

Yes, grymmjack, that i exactly what I mean.
Audition does this? I can barely believe this is allowed to happen.

Say you install a new program (Audition as an example).
Some VST you have crashes it.
Now imagine the amount of time it would take to figure out which of 600 VSTs
was doing this.

Ok, so now imagine how long it would take to figure out which 35 of 600 are
crashing your program...

And the program literally will never start until you do this.
Factor in the fact that until one meets this problem and figures it out
they may just not even know what to do about it.

I certainly messed up my setup recently trying to make a folder structure for
my VSTs without knowing which .dats and the like need to accompany the VSTs to
the new folder.

Now I'm not personally experiencing VST-related crash-on-startup problems at
the moment but I've managed to make quite a number of my VSTs not work by
moving them around. I am slowly sorting out which ones to try to make it work.

But I'm the kind of person that has almost exclusively free plugins. I can't
even imagine the pain if I had a ton of copy-protection crap to go through.

Now a solution to both of these problems would be to re-install everything
clean and orderly in a folder hierarchy so that I could remove chunks of VSTs
temporarily to troubleshoot a problem more quickly. I've got all my plug-ins
backed up on CDs but I seriously doubt most people do. And they're not exactly
burned in any orderly way where I can just find something I'm looking for,
either.

So if I recall correctly this PC I got 4 1/2 months ago took me 5 days
to install all my music software and VSTs!

I can't even imagine what a pain it is to even demo a new DAW or sequencer for
someone who's proffesion rides on there system working the next day, let alone
however many days it would take to make it all work just because the new
program simply won't start until all this bs has been gone through.

Isn't this a really, really huge problem what will only get more serious
unless addressed as more and more people discover the ever-growing number of
free (and for that matter, cheap commercial) VSTs?

[Alan]

I've pretty much stopped demoing all the
nice daws and seqs because it takes too long, or isn't possible,
to get them to work with the plug-ins that I have. FL not only doesn't
have this limitation but it will load all but a handful of plug-ins.

I'm glad things are working good for you, but to be honest, after all the threads Iv'e seen regarding Fruity Loops, I wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole regarding the VST problems Iv'e seen posted. Fruity Loops was never known for smooth VST integration, and not a day goes by that I don't see yet another problem regarding this app. In fact my brother actually gave up on this program regarding it's VST handling. He couldn't take it anymore. Anyway, to each his own. I guess.