How to speed up the vst scanning & your folder structure suggestion, please

[cowby]

Hi all,

Just wondering if there is a way to speed up the scanning of a newly added vst synth say in Live 10 or other DAW ? Right now, it seemed to rescan the whole folder->sub-folders recursively.

And right now, all my 64bit vsts are stored in C:\program files\vstplugins. I found it is quite messy if the installer doesn't create a sub-folder under it. So I am starting to think to create some sub-folders under vstplugs:

e.g. synths, effects, tools etc ... What is your suggestion on creating folder structure?

thanks!
Cowby

[Michael L]

Some programs autoscan the whole folder upon launch, some just auto search for uninstalled plugins, some only do manual rescan (my preference). I found plugins in subfolders makes no difference.

However, I must keep my mind uncluttered, so I create a folder structure in the DAW and-- most importantly-- delete/archive plugins that I do not/rarely use.

My synth folder structure is simple: Midi (arp, sequencers etc), Percussion, Samplers, Synths. FX folders are the usual types, plus Analysers, Channel Strip, Multi FX, and Utilities. I keep my most-used plugins outside any folder.

[pekbro]

Hmm, Live 10 doesn't take long for me and I have like 1500 plugins installed. Folder structure shouldn't
make much difference, although it 'will' literally slow things down due going through each, one at a time.
So technically, fewer folders would conceivably be faster. I have them organized by company name as
a preference myself.

One thing, some plugins have trouble being in a protected directory, so they might be slowing
things down, consider moving them to "C:\vstplugins" or whatever. Also, make sure an anti-virus
isn't slowing things down, you can likely set it to ignore the vst directory, although you would
need to be careful about scanning them before you install. If you have one, try disabling it before
the scan to see the difference. Windows defender can slow things quite a lot for instance.

Other than that, maybe check the fragmentation on the disk... Assuming of course, you're not
just eating too much sugar and being impatient . It's going to take a little time no matter
what you do.

-Cheers

[sqigls]

yeah not sure about "speeding up", but if your DAW is doing a deep scan each time you open it, you might need to delete a preferences file or something. Cubase used to do that to me, and i ended up deleting some corrupted text file that was causing the deep scan.

Personally I put all my stuff into sub-folders, i used to use many, but settled upon this structure...

All Unused (all my old plugins go in here, stuff that I don't load anymore, such as superseded versions etc, for loading old projects)
Channels Busses
Delay
Distortion Saturation Enhance
Drums
Dynamics
EQ + Filters
FX (this one has all the effects that don't really fit into conventional categories, also multi effects and such).
Instruments
Limiters
Modulation
Reverb
Stereo Pan
Tools

then I have 15 of my most used plugins sitting in the root folder, for easy access.

The pain is though, for example, when I update all of my Softube plugins, they're automatically installed into a "Softube" folder, so I need to go sorting them all into the categories, entering my password for each cut and paste.
I once had everything sorted into vendor folders, but I found that some plugins were constantly being overlooked due to me forgetting the name of the company, or just forgetting that I bought it and in the end i had a vst folder with a million company names in it. Not so manageable. A bit more left-brained. Generally I know what type of effect i want, and the above filing system seems to be the fastest for me.
At one stage I also had 4 instrument folders, one for emulations, one for real instruments, one for sample based stuff and one for all other synths... but it was a bit of overkill really.
I guess it depends what you use and how many you have.