I edit vst2 directory paths and next time I start, deleted entries are back

Not a big thing, but I edit the vst2 plug in paths and delete non-existent directories and so on. I end up with two directories–one for steinberg and one for native instruments. Next time I open dorico a bunch of the unused paths are back including a blank line between them. It looks like some sort of template of required entries gets merged with the ones I have added. Since these are non-existent directories for the most part, I don’t see the need.

My larger goal here was to speed up startup of dorico. It spends some time ‘connecting to audio engine’, and I wondered if vst searching was taking some of this time. Thanks for any suggestions or explanation.

You try to edit the VST2 paths via the Preferences dialog, right? That seems to be broken somehow, it does not work the way intended here with me.
You could try and edit the configuration manually simply by opening following file in a text editor:
C:\Users<yourname>\AppData\Roaming\Steinberg\VSTAudioEngine2_64\Vst2xPlugin SearchPaths VSTAudioEngine2.xml

And yes, I once had a customer who simply just used C:\ as search path and by that the audio engine was scanning the whole C-drive for plug-ins.
That indeed slowed down significantly the startup progress.

I edited the xml, but apparently upon startup dorico blasts some defaults out there so I got the old stuff back. I would guess the editor works ok, but the startup is forcing some stuff onto it. It retains the things I add like the native instruments, but it ensures a baseline of default paths. Some of which do not exist or do not have any vst in them.

It does start pretty fast now, but I just moved my C drive from a sata ssd to an m.2 ssd, so its 6.6 times faster.

On an unrelated note, when I play the pigmalion petite suite, it starts out with a cacapohony of sound, not the notes on the score. When I stop playback and click re-wind, it will start playing properly. I recall it said it needed to be updated from earlier version of dorico the first time I loaded it. It sounds pretty good–a good advertisement for dorico and the halion symphonic orchestra.

I note that this behavior has not changed in dorico 3. As noted in another post, the playback of pygmalion suite is working properly now. This is not a big deal to me, and I am sure you have more pressing matters to attend to with the new release, but just putting this out there in case at some point, it gets looked at. Thanks.

I’m having weird issues with VST paths. Not sure if this is related or not, but here is the reference thread: