Why do you dislike Arturia VSTs?

[tactile_coast]

Holy smokes!

I WISH mine were that fast... and I've got better specs on my PC!

...How many Arturia plugins do you have installed, OOC? Is it maybe related to the number installed? I doubt it, just a thought. ...'cause that's a pretty radically different result.

Pigments, V Plus FX Collection, those BF crossgrade deals were too hard to resist!

I just recently uninstalled/ reinstalled Analog Lab V and deleted Analog Lab 4 which might have fixed whatever was causing the slow downs in my case. I didn't time it before though so cant say for sure.

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

Just to summarize where we are so far on the slow load times:

1. On impacted system, load times are slowest the first time loading an Arturia plugin
2. They remain slow on subsequent loads, but subsequent plugins load faster than the first
3. So far, only Windows users have reported the problem
4. So far, it only impacts SOME Windows systems - others have fast load times
5. Slow load times have been reported on systems with and without discrete graphics
6. On impacted systems, slow load times occur with Pigments, which indicates it's not the graphics bitmaps slowing things down
7. At least some impacted systems are using SSD's for the system drive and Arturia resources
8. CPU power doesn't seem to be a deciding factor (I've got a 3950x other "slower" Intel systems load faster, other Intel systems have slow loads - so it's not an AMD vs Intel thing)
9. No data to support that internet speeds are or are not a factor
10. No data to support plugin format are or are not a factor

...This seems tricky.

[EnGee]

Controlled Test Procedure

Step 1. Fully RESTART your PC. Do NOT shut it down and turn it back on. Do NOT wake it up after having put it to sleep. Do a full restart (not shutdown) of your OS. This will prevent any prior loads of Arturia instruments from impacting load times. Wait a few seconds after restarting your PC for all the background tasks and services to launch.

Step 2. Launch your DAW to a completely empty project. Do not load any projects beforehand or during the test.

Step 3. Use the clock/stopwatch app on your phone, have it ready to go....

Step 4. Load an instance of Jup-8 V4 into your empty project and start the stopwatch at the same time.

Step 5. Only stop the stopwatch when the plugin GUI is fully visible.

Step 6. Make note of the "First Load" results.

Step 7. Load it again. Make note of the "Second Load" results.

Step 8. Load another Arturia V-Collection plugin. Let's say, DX7V. Make note of the "Second Arturia plugin Load" results.

Step 9. Post here. Include your OS, DAW, PC specs, and load results.

MY RESULTS

Here are mine:
Windows 10 x64, Reaper 6.46, AMD 3950x, ASROCK Creator X570 Mobo, 32GB DDR4 RAM 3600mhz, Radeon RX 5500 XT 4GB DDR6 graphics card, 1TB MX500 SATA 6Gb/s SSD. Seems like a plenty fast modern system and efficient DAW right?

First Load of Jup-8 V4: 36 seconds!!!
Second Load of Jup-8 V4: 8 seconds (more reasonable)
Second Arturia plugin load (DX7V): 16 seconds

Conclusions: the first time any Arturia plugin loads, it's doing some extra checks (probably with ASC or something). This results in a particularly brutal load time even on a fast PC. Note: this is why restarting your PC is important. If you never restart or just put it to sleep, you're likely not seeing the full slowness of first load.

The second load of the same plugin is generally not too bad. This is probably because the graphic resources are already loaded into memory. When you open a new Arturia plugin after the fact, it's faster than the brutally slow first load (probably because ASC doesn't need to be called), but it's still slow (likely because all the new graphics resources need to be loaded).

I don't have Jup-8 V4 (I have VC7). I did tested with Pigments (latest) and DX 7 V (latest).

My PC has Ryzen 5800x, 32 GB DDR4 3200, 1 TB SSD Samsung Evo +, nVidia 1060 GTX 3GB with motherboard Gigabyte Aorus B550 Elite Ax v2 (latest BIOS I think!).
DAW is Cubase 11.0.41 Pro on Windows 10 64bit (latest update). Antivirus/Firewall (Default came with Windows).

All are VST3. I didn't test VST2:

Pigments 1st 07.40
2nd 03.47
3rd 03.87

DX V 1st 04.32
2nd 04.12
3rd 03.67

Compared to:
Bazille 01.64
2nd 00.72 (less than a second!)

Massive X 03.93
2nd 01.83

Dune3 01.25
2nd 00.79 (less than a second)

So, they are lagging compared to other synths I have, but not that bad!

I haven't participated in the poll because I do like Arturia plugins and there is no "fish" for me

[syntonica]

Y'all keep talking about how slow instantiation is. Once you have a plug loaded, try auditing patches. It's like a dead slug wading through molasses in January. I have the same issue with Omnisphere, but it has the excuse of loading several hundred MB in samples per patch.

Software bloat is out-of-control lately. Absolutely insane. I downloaded Balena Etcher to write an SD card image since I didn't feel like using the CLI. It was over 500MB in size, all as a front end for a ~100kb utility.

[boombaxx]

I don't feel they take to long to load if they are you on your computer maybe the computer is the problem not the vst. I use a amd 16 core with the fast m3 ssd.

[felis]

Y'all keep talking about how slow instantiation is. Once you have a plug loaded, try auditing patches. It's like a dead slug wading through molasses in January....

I have excruciatingly slow Arturia load times - for example -just loaded up Matrix 12v - 31 seconds.
2nd and 3rd instances - 9 seconds each.

But once it's loaded, auditioning patches is fairly quick. I'd say probably 1/2 to 1 second per patch down or up, or randomly picking a patch.

[Introspective]

I don't feel they take to long to load if they are you on your computer maybe the computer is the problem not the vst. I use a amd 16 core with the fast m3 ssd.

I think maybe you should read a bit more of the thread.

[Introspective]

OOC, I just Googled it, and one suggestion was to delete (on Windows) C:\ProgramData\Arturia\Presets\db.db3

...I just tried this (okay, I didn't delete it, I moved it to my desktop), and, indeed, my load time cut in half.

It's STILL slow, compared to other synths, but this did help. ...Does this maybe suggest a solution of some kind?

[felis]

OOC, I just Googled it, and one suggestion was to delete (on Windows) C:\ProgramData\Arturia\Presets\db.db3

...I just tried this (okay, I didn't delete it, I moved it to my desktop), and, indeed, my load time cut in half.

It's STILL slow, compared to other synths, but this did help. ...Does this maybe suggest a solution of some kind?

Are you still able to use presets OK after doing that?
I'm thinking .db3 is a database file.

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

OOC, I just Googled it, and one suggestion was to delete (on Windows) C:\ProgramData\Arturia\Presets\db.db3

...I just tried this (okay, I didn't delete it, I moved it to my desktop), and, indeed, my load time cut in half.

It's STILL slow, compared to other synths, but this did help. ...Does this maybe suggest a solution of some kind?

Are you still able to use presets OK after doing that?
I'm thinking .db3 is a database file.

The next time you launch any Arturia plugin it will just create the missing DB then scan the presets and add them.

[Synthack]

.......

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

OOC, I just Googled it, and one suggestion was to delete (on Windows) C:\ProgramData\Arturia\Presets\db.db3

...I just tried this (okay, I didn't delete it, I moved it to my desktop), and, indeed, my load time cut in half.

It's STILL slow, compared to other synths, but this did help. ...Does this maybe suggest a solution of some kind?

Just gave this a shot. Didn't seem to do anything for me on first launch of an Arturia plugin, at least first launch after a restart, but subsequent launches are faster (<3 seconds).

[Synthack]

.......

[EnGee]

As I see it is the SSD performance. Funky has a Sata iii (I have the same one but 480GB attached as a second drive, non-system drive) and it is about 500mb per second while the m.2. I have is up to 3500mb per second.

Not saying that it is not the fault of Arturia. Arturia needs to optimise their loading speed. Pigments 3 is also a CPU hog compared to synths like Bazille and Massive X.
Note that I'm not complaining as I don't have a problem with my PC (or with my previous m1 macbook) but I can understand that some users still have good computers and they don't need to upgrade their SSD drive as their computers are performing just fine with other software.

[felis]

I really like the Arturia stuff I have and am willing to put up with their shortcomings,
but I am curious about what causes them and if there's a way to ease them.
I'm sticking with the first option in the poll though.