Just did a clean install of Cubase 14, renamed 13 folder so I get a fresh start and will tweak preferences later. Second attempt to get Cubase Pro 14 to start up and it hangs on scanning VST and task manager shows it is checking licenses.
How long does this VST scan take? Or is this a known bug.
I only have about 20 VST3 plugins on this machine.
Going on 15 minutes so far.
I have rebooted after installing and activation.
Hello
the plugins are in the folder:
C:\Program Files\Common Files\VST3
and they are in vst3 version?
because otherwise you have to activate the small vst2 button
and it is not the same file
C:\Program Files\Steinberg\VSTPlugins
or
C:\Program Files\VSTPlugins
otherwise you have to manually add the location
It could be that the vstscanner or vstscannermaster is choking and therefore hanging indefinitely. If you reboot again and restart Cubase, does it get stuck again or does it suddenly work? If not, have a look in the list of processes (Win: Task Manager, Mac: Activity Monitor) does it show a vstscannermaster or vstscanner process?
@Freuden - FYI, this issue was that it was the first time starting Cubase Pro 14 and it never loaded so I could not get to the VST 2 button.
I rebooted a couple times after hanging and decided to use the third option in that dialog one gets after having to end task. For the computer in question, Iām not using VST 2 so once I got Cubase loaded. I made a few preference changes and quit and restarted a few times and it seems to be working now. Thank you.
the problem is that you canāt see the vst3s loading and you canāt see which vst3 is blocking or slowing down startup? solution: take fl studio for a test run and scan with it, which displays the names of the vsts itās loading, so you can identify them.
Steinberg, can you change this on the next version?
Facing the same issue with Cubase 14 Pro.
I also had this issue the first time I downloaded Cubase 14 trial and then Nuendo 14 when I bought it. It eventually fixed itself after I let it sit for a while, but not longer than I had previously ā it just decided to work that time around. Now Iām running into the same issue after having Nuendo 14 (kinda) working over the past couple weeks. I say kinda cuz Iāve been running into a ton of bugs that are very similar to this one.
On Windows you can have a security setting activated that prevents Cubase from launching properly.
Look in the Security settings for āProtected Foldersā. Cubase needs to access the Documents folder and Windows might block that access.
You need to allow the CubaseXX.exe (XX = version number) and the file āvstscanner.exeā in the same Cubase program folder access to the Documents folder.
Hello,
This is also happening to me, Cubase 14 on Mac M1 MacBook Air, latest versions of everything, plugins included. Hangs about 6~8 minutes on the āScanning VST3 pluginsā phase of the startup. VST2 is disabled.
If I then quit Cubase and load it again it loads very fast. But, if I restart my Mac the same thing happens again - a very slow startup hanging on the VST3 scan phase.
I know this is related to the scanning of one or more plugins. Some months ago, the same discussion was happening in the forums relating to slow startup problems in Dorico in this thread Request for help: investigating slow VST scanning - #82 by mducharme
After some time an update was release for Dorico that seems to solve the startup problems or, at least shows the name of the plugin being scanned during the scanning progress so that we can try to identify the offending plugin(s). @Ulf any plans to bring a similar type of thing to Cubase? Canāt the code for the Dorico plugin scanner be, at least partially, ported to Cubase? Surely itās not something completely different, correct?
I would also like to leave a suggestion for future versions of the plugin scanner. A report at the end of the process with the scanning time per plugin would be very helpful. At least, list the plugins that take more than a āreasonableā time (1 min?) to scan. This report should be able to be saved to a text file.
Already done. Have a look here:
Hello @Johnny_Moneto , thanks for the reply. I didnāt know Cubase was already generating the log files like Dorico. Still, my problem persists. After each restart of my Mac, Cubase takes a long time to start. If I donāt restart the computer, every subsequent start of Cubase is very fast. But if I perform any restart, the loading time is very slow.
@Ulf @PaulWalmsley , Iāve got copies of the āCubase Pro VST3 Cache (arm64)ā folder for each situation I mentioned before - first Cubase launch after reboot and subsequent launches without reboot. Is it possible for you guys take a look at the log files, please? I took the liberty of attaching the files in case you guys are able to take a look at it.
Cubase plugin scan logs.zip (479.7 KB)
Thanks,
Miguel Barrosa
Canāt you just look yourself which plugins takes a long time to get going? The log files are in text form, you can open them in any text editor. I think it is not necessary to ping developers for this.
Hi,
can you try to temporarily disable or remove the Presonus VST 3 (Studio One) from your VST3 folder and check if this has an impact, please?
@OFS , looking at the vstscannermaster log file, then it is - as @Reco29 already pointed out - the Presonus VST3 Shell that is making the big difference. It gets scanned every time and in the good case takes around 1.5 sec and the slow case 5.5 sec, thatās a difference of 4 sec. But I wonder if that is really your issue, because 4 sec longer in the start up sequence of Cubase almost accounts to nothing, I dare say. So what is the overall start up time that you have with Cubase in both cases?
@Johnny_Moneto , on one hand you are right, the files are there and are all text files, on the other hand, not for everybody it is obvious what to look for and how to interpret the logs.
Hello @Johnny_Moneto . Iāve been following this subject since it was first addressed in Dorico a few months ago. Around that time, the developers themselves asked for information on the issue, precisely the information I provided them in my previous post. I would think they would welcome information from users in case there are still ongoing issues regarding plugin scanning.
As @Ulf pointed out the files are human readable - some xml files (which are text) for the blocked plugins and the vstscannermaster log file. This last file contains the scanning time for each plugin. Only one entry contained the text āERRORā and that was for the Synthmaster Player plugin, which was taking 30+ seconds to load. The rest of the plugins take a reasonable average of about 500 msec to a second.
If you read my post carefully, I pointed out that plugin scanning is not the problem. The problem is that Cubase keeps taking a long time to load if I restart my Mac. After the first, very slow launch, subsequent launches are very fast until I reboot the Mac. After this, the first load is again very slow and subsequent ones very fast.
Also, if you look at the vstscannermaster log file you can see that no plugin takes an abnormal time to load except the Presonus VST3 shell which takes 4 seconds - nowhere near being the culprit for the 6/7 minutes Cubase is taking to launch.
So this is not an issue with a slow loading plugin, that wonāt justify my issue.
Hello @Ulf thanks again for your attention on this issue. The overall time for loading Cubase after a reboot is around 5 to 6 minutes. After that first launch, if I quit Cubase and launch it again it loads very fast, in a matter of 8 to 10 seconds. Until I reboot the computer, then the cycle repeats - first launch very slow, subsequent launches very fast.
One thing that might help. In my Mac, I tried pressing space while selecting the vstscannermaster.log file to quick-view its contents at the moment the space key is pressed. Itās a good way to follow the scan process because I can scroll to the end of the file and see how many plugins have been scanned until that moment. Iāve done this during full plugin scans to check how many plugins have been scanned so far.
If I do this while launching Cubase after a reboot, I can see that while the āScanning VST3 pluginsā message is shown on the Cubase splash screen, the contents of the vstscannermaster.log are a single line containing āInitialisingā. This doesnāt change for quite a few minutes. Then after 5 or 6 minutes it suddenly displays the list of plugins, all cached, as expected - no new scans since no new plugins were installed. The actual plugin scan takes approximately 7 seconds as reported at the end of the log file, the problem is the time spent on the āInitializingā phase. Once again, subsequent Cubase launches are very quick, probably the fastest loading DAW Iāve tried.
So the question is what makes Cubase get stuck for so long after every system restart, without any changes to the system whatsoever - no new plugins, no new hardware, just a reboot.
Thanks for your help!
Hi @OFS , thanks for clarification.
Indeed, your long loading times of Cubase have nothing to do with the plug-in scanning (or at least not directly).
On Windows there is a similar issue that we know of. There it is a security setting of the operating system which intercepts all first time file accesses, so the first start of Cubase after reboot is also very slow and every subsequent fast as expected. On Windows you can exclude the plug-ins directory from that security interception and then also the first start-up becomes equally fast.
On Mac on the other hand we donāt know as of yet. But because there are only a minority of people reporting the behaviour that you have, we assume that must be rather a personal setting or due to a software that you installed yourself. Could be a virus checking program that then suddenly intercepts disk access, but this is just an assumption.
But I will bring this thread to attention of one of our colleagues who is responsible for the performance and efficiency of Cubase, maybe he can do some further investigations.
Hi @Ulf thanks for taking the time to help me with this issue. Please, let me know if more information (like a Mac system profile or something) is needed! Meanwhile Iāll try disabling the anti virus.
