I was thinking about a issue that has been happening since I installed a large number of Waves plugs (the Platinum bundle).
It takes a long time to scan the whole VSTshells every time I start Cantabile.
I’ve thought about these possible workarounds:
A no-scan on some folders, selected in the Plugin Settings. But I don’t really like this option.
A rescan button in the main window (e.g. next to Panic). That way I’d turn off the automatic on starting rescan and only do it when needed. Maybe with the same ‘long press’ logic as the Power Button.
I have VSTs I never use live in a “local only” folder that Cantabile is not set to scan. Of course that works well for VST2, but not VST3 which gives you less choice of location.
Waves plugins don’t have a separate dll file for each effect/instrument. Many effects/instruments are grouped into a few files called Waveshell xx.dll.
I guess this is why scanning is so tricky and slow.
I can’t split the individual effects/instruments into one for each dll file.
Another option is to create a RAM drive. I have a 14GB on one of my systems, and a monster 34GB one on the other. I put all my VSTs – especially the sample-based ones – and all my offline rendered .wav files on the RAM drives. Cantabile loading is significantly faster (2x?), as is switching between songs.
@Derek I always move/copy my VST3s to a preferred folder after the installation is complete, and access them from the new location in Cantabile. My Program Files/Common/VST3 folder is essentially blank.
I notice that a few of the VST vendors are starting to add this option to their installation software. I wish everyone would do this. The ‘industry common’ location helps support teams more than it helps end users, IMHO.
I don’t think it’s the speed of the SSD. It can go up to 6GB/s. And none of these Waves VSTs are sample based. Anyway, I’ve got 64GB of RAM (yes, I use a lot of sampled pianos), so I’ll try the RAMdrive option.
