Just noticed this thread… I discovered this issue a while back. Hard to believe that we’ve got things like limitless audio and midi tracks yet we’ve been severely limited in the number of unique plugins we can load.
On a particular project I’m stopped in my tracks (no pun intended!) because I’ve hit the limit and I haven’t finished the mix at all. It’s actually been exacerbated by the removal of 32bit plugins because those were run in a separate process so they weren’t under the same limit as the 64bit and VST3 plugins. I’ve been testing JBridge and it works well, I can change some of my plugins to run in JBridge instead and the limit is effectively increased. But it can’t wrap VST3 and as more manufacturers move to VST3 I’ll be stuck again.
I regularly use many different plugins from different manufacturers as well as a fair few freebie plugins - they all do their job to create unique/great sounds. The suggestion to use the same plugins is fine for compressors and EQ, but it doesn’t really work for instruments because they’re way more different to each other and each instrument really does have it’s own distinctive sound(s) so using many of them from different manufacturers can’t be avoided.
Indeed, it does look like UAD are taking up a lot of slots. Also I notice that Arturia take up a lot as well. We all need to get onto the manufacturers and probably MS as well to try to resolve this problem because it’s going to effect a lot of people I think.
Can every responder of this thread take time to send a complaint to support of one or more plugin manufacturers. Maybe MS - but where do you start with them!
You are all dreaming if you think that Microsoft, Steinberg or any plugin manufacturers
Are going to change anything for you guys. Didn’t Steinberg already said it was a MS issue.
And the fact that UAD taxes your CPU means that it’s not CPU efficient just like a lot of the
Native Instruments stuff.
It’s 2017 going on 2018 if you want to make serious music for film or use 200-400 VSTi
Switch to Mac… PC is not cutting it anymore…
FYI most people use PC for office software. The percentage of Musicians using PC is less than 1%… Microsoft doesn’t care…
I meant 99% of MS PC computers are sold to others and around 1% of PC user are musicians/studio owners.
As for musicians using PC compared to Mac it’s more like 50/50…
When I wrote this post I was under the impression that you could buy a 2.3 i7 Mac mini
For $600 and upgrade it, but I don’t think you can buy those new anymore.
marQs - I saw your video, very interesting… If you create a new thread on the UAD forum specifically for this issue then I’ll register and add my thoughts/findings as well.
Its not that UAD are worse than others, actually they’re the same as Soundtoys, it’s just that there are many many UAD plugins and because they have different characterfull sounds I tend to use 20 different plugins in a project, so that’s about 1/2 of the DLL slots for Cubase used up. Waves don’t suffer the same problem it seems. Arturia instruments are definitely greedy on my system, and VSTi’s come under the same limit, so it’s not just FX plugins which fail to load. In fact I first noticed the problem when trying to load Retrologue.
Would be more than happy to help as I confirm others results when moving from 9.0.2 to 9.0.3. Although I am still trying to understand the issue and which plugins effects more or less.
For MS issues we should start a Feedback Hub thread and point users to support there (if not already). If there is one thread there someone could share the link or provide appropriate keywords to locate it. Then, we’ll make sure Pete(from MS) knows of it and point him there too.
Secondly, I would like to hear more about how to safely disable/remove some of the Cubase startup features in order to open up more ‘slots’. Would appreciate more info on that, too.
quoting Fabio from older posts / topics The problem is that it’s not possible to define the behaviour exactly.
Dynamically linked plug-ins should be always loaded, but once the limit is actually reached, it gets temperamental and at times you can’t add any more plug-ins (or can add only specific ones).
There are plug-ins that use an abnormal amount of slots.
Some VSTs do not release the FLS slots when they are removed from the project - some don’t even after closing the project, meaning it is necessary to restart the application to free them up. This also means that if you load a project after closing one containing this kind of plugs, you effectively start with less slots available (possibly the reason why some reported that after quitting Cubase, a project showing the issue opens with all inserts active)
Additionally some slots might be taken by drivers or components (e.g. our UR series) or VSTs on starting the application.
This is actually way more complex than I remembered, we have several tasks related to it, it would take a week to go through all of them. Let alone fully understand them
In other words, some plugins using an abnormal amount of slots make the issue worse. Still waiting someone to identify those plugins. I don’t have UAD but maybe
I wouldn’t expect immediate action from MS as this limit is there since forever. Also the plugin developers are responsible to at least improve things.
again quoting Fabio For the time being, those who have the problem can lower the amount of loaded dlls by moving some of the components out of the folder C:\Program Files\Steinberg\Cubase 9\Components. Of course, this applies only to the dlls which are not needed during use (eucon if you don’t use such controllers, video files if you don’t need video support, hubservice, etc - make sure to not remove any core component like Baios, the exception dumper, mediaservice, SamplerTack, stepdesigner and the VST files). This will allow for more plug-ins… not much more, but could help some of you.
euconadapter (support for Euphonix / AVID controllers)
hubservice (Steinberg Hub, without this, you will only see the Project Assistant, the Hub on the left will be missing)
omffilter (you will be unable to import OMF files)
video (all files, of course all video features will be missing)
vstconnect
Of course, if you need one or more of these features, the corresponding files can’t be moved.
I can totally confirm that there is an issue and especially UAD plugins appear to be problematic.
When filling 5 inserts per track in Cubase 8.5 under Win7, this is what I get:
46 individual UAD plugins, then it´s game-over and no more individual UAD plugins can be added. Plus maybe one or two more native plugins, depending on what plugin it is and that´s about it.
I also tried the same with native-only individual plugins (Sonnox, Slate, Kush, Waves, NI, Exponential Audio, Lexicon, Relab, Eventide, Soundtoys). I stopped at 150, I probably could have added more.
I wouldn’t under estimate any issues properly submitted through that hub. There is a very good track record of issues fixed even when few people report them. If lots of people can get behind it the chance does increase of solution, ofc wouldn’t be until next major build or two.
Just sayin’.
thanks for quotes, actually helpful. I got rid of some of those suggested.
In Cubase 8.5 I’m fine, but 9.5 I can load about 11 plugins before UAD even starts preventing me to add some of Steinbergs own plugins. Then I save, open the project in 8.5 instead and everything is great. I have written UAD about this and I hope as many as possible do the same so we can speed this process up. Officialy UAD doesn’t actually support Cubase 9 and it was released a good while ago.