I’m not sure if this is the right place to ask and whether it’s technically feasible but from my user perspective it would be great if all Steinberg applications could use a shared database that holds the information collected during a VST scan. Once an application has collected the data, it could be reused by the other ones without the need to perform their own full scans.
Currently, Cubase, Dorico, WaveLab etc. scan for changes at startup which can take some time to finish and every time there are plugin updates, all applications require longer scans again. I must confess that I have many plugins installed which I primarily use with Cubase/Nuendo and don’t really need in Dorico, for example. However, Dorico often takes 2 to 4 minutes to startup when a plugin collection was updated. If Cubase already updated the data and put them in a common database, Dorico maybe could reuse it.
There are certainly aspects I don’t know and technical details that make it hard to merge the functionalities of the different programs. I’d nonetheless like to make such a feature request.
Hi Martin,
technically feasible are many things.
On the other hand, reading that what you write, I rather sense a different feature request, namely to blend out not needed plug-ins from Dorico. This is a request we hear quite often and it’s on the list of want-to-implement in the future, we just can’t tell when this is going to happen.
Thank you for your feedback, Ulf. I guess I’ve mixed up two different things. It would indeed be nice if unnecessary plugins could be deactivated in Dorico.
The long scanning times happen in all applications, though, and are required in all of them after plugin updates. Therefore, I thought that the scan results of the first application started after a plugin update could be shared with the other ones to reduce the overall waiting time.
However, I am reading a quite clear and well stated Feature Request/Topic title from the OP; what you are describing is morphing that FR into something specific to Dorico, something under its control. As such, I’d respectfully say that is an additional (useful) FR.
The OP’s request is importantly, to benefit Steinberg users application-wide. One database all installed apps refer to. Gets my vote.!
Unfortunately, no single place (on the forum) to post such a request…
Hi @Puma0382 , having a shared module cache rather than individual ones does not speed up the scanning, because still every program needs to check the plug-ins it finds against that what it is in the module cache. Depending on the constellation one would only reach minimal gains in terms of loading time.
So I think a better feature request would be: “Speed up the start time” and leave it to the engineers of how to achieve it.
