Which DAW Loads Projects The Fastest?

[Domlun]

Is there any consensus out there for a DAW that loads large projects faster than the others?

I can't take the 15 to 45 minute (sometimes more) load times of my current DAW and it's my primary factor in choosing a replacement DAW. I had one project a few months ago that took TWO HOURS to load.

I'm on Cubase and strongly considering Studio One, Ableton or Reaper.

Any experience on the snappiest loader among these three?

Is there another I haven't considered?

[martinjuenke]

There's something completely wrong with your DAW setup.
Such long loading times are crazy.

[Domlun]

There's something completely wrong with your DAW setup.
Such long loading times are crazy.

I can't imagine what. I was having these problems for a loooongg... time, so I recently got a new NVME drive and did a complete fresh, brand new install of Windows and EVERY application, plugin, etc. I switched out my ram for new ram and I'm maxed out at 64gb. My processor is a 12 core. It's a muscular machine that flies through 4k video editing.

All I hear lately is how great Cubase works on the new Apple silicon. Is it really primarily an Apple program now, cuz.. all i get is long ass load times and constant, every five minutes hanging and hour glassing while trying to work. My CPU and ram are almost constantly at 100% and I've tried every trick and power setting on the internet.

My machine acts weak and sickly ONLY IN CUBASE. I don't have any odd hard drive configurations, or strange settings on plugins. Cubase just refuses to work well for me. I honestly think it was much better and more stable UNTIL version 11. Versions 8-10.5 all seemed to work much better. It's like it's actually getting worse with every "improvement", which is why I stopped getting updates.

I've tried to get support from Steinberg, but they won't talk to me because I'm on Cubase 11 and they no longer "give support" for that. It doesn't matter that I've paid for upgrades for years. Meanwhile I get friendly support from other DAW and plugin companies for things I bought once, many years ago. Steinberg told me "no support for you" outright, even when they were still on Cubase 13. Cubase 11 was just too ancient for them to give me time of day. REALLY SOURED ME ON THE COMPANY to say the least!

NOTE: Just had to force quit Cubase AGAIN, because we were going on 35 minutes to load a project I worked on last night. Just hanging when it gets to a certain point, no signs of life, totally frozen. Had to restart my machine and reopen. Hopefully I can get lucky and only get a 15 minute load time on the second attempt to open. I get SO TIRED of doing this all day long.

[jancivil]

n.m...

[MrJubbly]

That sounds unbearable. I could never have that kind of patience. I am particularly averse to long loading times for projects and would regard anything over a minute as a deal-breaker.

That being said, I wouldn't have thought loading times as a factor would be specific to any particular DAW over another.

I can't speak for any of the four DAWs you mentioned as I use FL Studio and the average loading time for my projects is about 10 seconds or less. The DAW itself loads (with an empty template) in 1 second. Which was one of the reasons I like using it, is it's fast launch time. Since you never mentioned it, it's probably not for you, since the workflow is quite different to most DAWs.

However, like I mentioned since I am particularly sensitive and averse to long loading times, over the years, when deciding upon which software to use, I have actively avoided using third party plugins and workflows which typically tend to bloat the loading processes of projects. So I avoid using large Kontakt sample libraries etc., in favour of super fast-loading physically modelled instruments, like PianoTeq and SWAM.

And any other sofware plugins which seem to noticeably increase loading times even by maybe a few seconds or so each, I ditch. It was for those reasons, I stopped using Arturia's software (I used to own V-Collection and Pigments), but I didn't like the way they noticeably (to me at least) wait to connect to ASC (Arturia Software Centre) before instantiating when being loaded in projects.

Likewise, for the "supposedly" iLok-less Sonible plugins. (buried within their FAQs, they reveal that without iLok installed, their plugins may take much longer to load) and I never install iLok plugins.

Therefore, all the plugins I own are super-fast loading and don't have any obtrusive DRM protection methods.

You never mentioned the kinds of music you create or types of plugins you use that elicit such long loading times. I imagine, if you are loading dozens of huge sample libraries that would certainly play a factor. But like others mentioned the intolerably long times you stated, suggest other issues (perhaps hardware) could also be responsible.

[BBFG#]

And I thought the thirty seconds that some plugins take on my 4c Xeon with 32gb ram was tedious.
(Yes, with Cubase [14] and Bitwig [4])

[Agg]

Install Reaper (for free), launch, add a random VST synth on a new track (might have to specify the file path in the settings), duplicate the track 50 times, save, quit, load the project again.

It's 100% not your PC specs. Should take max 1 minute to load with your specs, unless you have like 100 heavy duty sound design VSTs launching at the same time. I have i5-11400 and 8Gb ram and my projects load in 15 seconds. Either you have faulty hardware, or something is seriously wrong with your DAW setup.

[mjolnir]

If you are using any 32-bit old plugins they might be causing crashiness inside the DAW. Since 32-bit isn't as supported as it used to be, there might be missing DLLs. But I'm really just guessing.

I'm on Linux and sometimes certain VST plugins freeze the whole project as soon as I try to just edit the MIDI while the VST is on.
After I freeze to audio the problem goes away. For me, the wait times for those faulty VSTs is in seconds up to maybe a minute or two. But I start deleting the buggy VSTs to preven that.

As for regular DAW load times, for me it's usually just a few seconds, but I work almost 100% with WAV files because I freeze ASAP as I go along.
I agree with the other guys that something is wrong with your setup. And maybe it's RAM overheating or something hardware related. But then again, if it only happens with Cubase, that seems glaring.

Are you using any 96 kHz 24-bit sample libraries? (any large sample libraries)?

[Robert Randolph]

I use quite a few DAWs regularly, Cubase is consistently the fastest to load projects.

[gullfo]

i'm using Sonar on W11 on an HP Victus laptop (16 cores, 24 threads, 4TB each of 2 SSD + OS on NVM drives, 32GB RAM), even large projects (20 VI w/ ~15gb of libraries loading then virtualized, 20+ audio tracks w/ FX) - probably 45-60 seconds. sometimes a few of the Kontakt libraries will continue loading in the background. CbB before Sonar - this would have taken up to 2 minutes for the same project.

[eLawnMust]

All those are slow shit... In AXS it loads as fast as you press the button & this is for a large project many samples...

[Samual]

It shouldn't take this long. I use a lot of heavy Kontakt libraries but it hardly take more than a couple of minutes and I am sitting on an ancient system. For the question, on my system Reaper loads projects the fastest. FL Studio comes second and just a bit behind the Reaper.

[harddaysnight]

FL Studio and Reaper are about neck and neck on my system for pure speed when it comes to loading projects.

I don't have any massive projects though, necessary to highlight that for transparency - I'm a bit of a minimalist when it comes to recording.

[vurt]

15 to 45 mins? are you running cubase on a potato?

[_leras]

How big are your projects?

15-45 mins seems more like a problem with the set up.

However it could be a particular plug in playing up like others have said. Is the UI giving you any clues as to where it's getting stuck?