I’ve come back to this many times over the years & never really got an answer. Anyone here the wiser?
Simple scenario is this:
Already have TBs of sound libraries installed on a dedicated volume (thunderbolt 3 RAID 4) & this includes for various manufacturers including Native Instruments, ToonTrack, MOTU, Abelton, Spectrasonics and Steinberg.
So, when setting up a fresh OS install - either on a clean install, same disk , or on a dual boot system, or on a new computer - there is then the need (of course) to re-install various VIs. There should NOT however be the need to re-install and/or long-wind download GBs of sound libraries yet again. They already exist and are located on the Sound Libraries volume.
In the case of most other manufacturer’s VIs, it is relatively simple to install just the VI, then launch, then set the path to where the libs are.
Except it would seem for Steinberg Absolute 4 or HALion, Groove Agent, Grand 3 etc. These demand downloading the entire libraries every time, otherwise the Sound Library Manager can never register and locate the Libs. There seems to be no way to simply locate the existing libraries without re-installing over the top of them like this, and, Steinberg seems to be the only one who continues to persist with this time-wasting sloppiness (in 2020).
Am I missing something obvious? I can’t say that any amount of trawling seems able to pull up a solution, also is not presently possible to raise a ticket because am unable to login into MySteinberg (yet again).
As far as I know, at least on Windows, all you have to do is double click the .vstsound files.
The Steinberg Library Manager will automatically add all libraries found in the same folder to your sound library.
Em… no. Plus there are thousands of soundfiles on this RAID 4. This is exactly the same behaviour in our Windows workstations as well.
By comparison: Native Access works perfectly & has made great strides to acknowledge and support the fact that very large sound libraries are accumulated and archived over many years, and maintained on dedicated ‘external’ disk(s). The obvious intrusions to this:
a new computer, a re-install of the OS, a mult-boot system etc and this seems completely lost on Steinberg.
Native access recalls & knows what you have purchased, what versions are installed and/or which ones need to be updated, and remembers or can re-set the library paths. The Steinberg Download assistant shows zero understanding of what has been purchased - just shows everything available, does not understand versions or help install to latest versions. Ditto the Library Manager appears to know or can set Library paths, but provides zero smarts in practice.
Overall, the glaring discrepancy in the functionality between these two vendors shows just how poor the Steinberg design is and just how little they seem to care for their customers, or perhaps more simply, just display a naive understanding of computer workstations in the real word.