Just can't deal with Live's slow plugin scan on windows

[legendCNCD]

Has anyone checked if the Defender is hogging those files when running Live? I did not install Defender at all (neither on XP, or Win7) on Win11Pro, so no waiting for the scanner checks either.
I'm quite puzzled as my friend either does not have this problem and he has over 300 plugins, on Win11Pro (though he has Defender on) and Live 12. Also here new plugins are available immediately.
I've seen slow start on mac too with Live 11 though... so maybe something is really fishy in the plugin check on Ableton side.

[mcbpete]

People here with looooooong scan times (like me) do you have either BlueCat and/or uhe plugins by any chance ? If so it seems like Ableton scans everything in the plugin folder(s), whether it's a plugin or not ( viewtopic.php?p=8742083#p8742083 ). For the majority of plugins that's not an issue, but in u-he's case there's a symlink to the 'data' folder for every one of their plugins (where all presets and skins/themes are stored) and BlueCat stores all the UI graphics for each plugin in there. That'd be for each one of their plugins, and for each plugin type installed (e.g. having both VST2 and VST3 versions of the plugin installed would double the number of files scanned)

Combined, for me, that's an additional 129 thousand files that Ableton scans .....

[damoog]

I hear tons about these long plug-in scans with live but honestly I’ve never had this problem in 20 years of using Ableton in both windows and Mac ,apart from the ILok initial install which live seems to hate its pretty straightforward from that part on

[elxsound]

A different experience here...

5-second load time on M2 MacBook. I timed it 6 times, and each was 5 seconds from double-clicking to scan completion.

Total VST 3 installed: 311

These are all the vendors installed on this machine:

Screenshot 2024-05-14 at 12.40.05 PM.png

[wasi]

People here with looooooong scan times (like me) do you have either BlueCat and/or uhe plugins by any chance ? If so it seems like Ableton scans everything in the plugin folder(s), whether it's a plugin or not ( viewtopic.php?p=8742083#p8742083 ). For the majority of plugins that's not an issue, but in u-he's case there's a symlink to the 'data' folder for every one of their plugins (where all presets and skins/themes are stored) and BlueCat stores all the UI graphics for each plugin in there. That'd be for each one of their plugins, and for each plugin type installed (e.g. having both VST2 and VST3 versions of the plugin installed would double the number of files scanned)

Combined, for me, that's an additional 129 thousand files that Ableton scans .....

This is the reason imo. Ableton knowledge base even says to have only VST dll files in the folder.

"Note: The folder you select must exclusively be used to install .dll files of VST2 plug-in devices."

"However, plug-in installation folders must not contain any other files besides valid, authorized audio plug-ins."

"Do not install device preset files or audio sample libraries inside the plug-in folders."

What they are basically saying is that any other file type in the vst folder other than a VST dll will trip up Live. U-he and many others install their presets within the plugin folder. Also, live follows links from within the folder and scans that folder as well, so even if you try to have them elsewhere, Live will just walk itself over there and scan that. Also, some developers will use a link to their sample content folder if have graphic or settings files I the folder or linked. Also, normally freshly installed plug-ins are not authorized yet. All of this are things that Live apparently can't handle - or can't handle well.

My conclusion is that live has a known (to Ableton) and age-old flaw under windows that makes their plugin scanning extremely susceptible to problems. You may luck out and just not have many plug-ins that cause that. Also, it's not an issue with Apple. But if you do there's hardly a fix because you can't change how the plug-ins need to be installed (like U-He, Bluecat and many others).

[Vocalpoint Studios]

I did not install Defender at all (neither on XP, or Win7) on Win11Pro, so no waiting for the scanner checks either.

Be very curious to know how you managed to "not" install Defender on Win 11.

I know there were ways around this a few years back - but I thought it was almost impossible now.

VP

[legendCNCD]

I did not install Defender at all (neither on XP, or Win7) on Win11Pro, so no waiting for the scanner checks either.

Be very curious to know how you managed to "not" install Defender on Win 11.

I know there were ways around this a few years back - but I thought it was almost impossible now.

VP

Download Win11 Pro image, edit image, install OS without the stuff you removed
I used NTLite. I did not remove WinUpdate though, its there just GPO'd to do nothing until I press "check updates".

[Vocalpoint Studios]

I used NTLite. I did not remove WinUpdate though, its there just GPO'd to do nothing until I press "check updates".

Nice. NTLite user here too. Might have to give this a test!

VP

[oneway]

What they are basically saying is that any other file type in the vst folder other than a VST dll will trip up Live. U-he and many others install their presets within the plugin folder. Also, live follows links from within the folder and scans that folder as well,

Wow, good to know. It’s funny because I’ve used other applications that can quickly detect symlinks in a directory. Why aren’t they doing that then ignoring them?

[wasi]

What they are basically saying is that any other file type in the vst folder other than a VST dll will trip up Live. U-he and many others install their presets within the plugin folder. Also, live follows links from within the folder and scans that folder as well,

Wow, good to know. It’s funny because I’ve used other applications that can quickly detect symlinks in a directory. Why aren’t they doing that then ignoring them?

They consider that a feature because Live only allows one VST-directory in settings, so you can hack that by putting simlinks to other directories in the main directory. But if it's a link to a preset directory you're in VST-scan-hell.

U-He plugins for example put their presets in the VST-directory or in a user location that they simlink to from the VST-directory.

[beatsbykhalil]

Forget those other DAWS and check out FL Studio.

[jlgrimes11]

Man I really thought I was coming back to Live with 12. I love the new features, they ironed out a few UX issues, it felt fresh again. But I was demoing a few plugins recently and almost lost my mind. I would wait a literal half hour for them to show up in Live (Bitwig: two minutes max. Renoise: After startup).

I know Live hates simlinks and maybe there is a plugin or two that's messing with the scan (or more likely Live is trying to parse some external files as VSTs) and I know it really hates iLok stuff on first install but man, this is is untenable. I can index my entire file system in that time using other programs. What the hell.

Any suggestions? For now I gave up and went back to Bitwig.

With Macs the scans are almost instantaneous.

This is some type of bug in Windows. It might also have something to do with a failed VST that is slowing down the process.

[wasi]

Man I really thought I was coming back to Live with 12. I love the new features, they ironed out a few UX issues, it felt fresh again. But I was demoing a few plugins recently and almost lost my mind. I would wait a literal half hour for them to show up in Live (Bitwig: two minutes max. Renoise: After startup).

I know Live hates simlinks and maybe there is a plugin or two that's messing with the scan (or more likely Live is trying to parse some external files as VSTs) and I know it really hates iLok stuff on first install but man, this is is untenable. I can index my entire file system in that time using other programs. What the hell.

Any suggestions? For now I gave up and went back to Bitwig.

With Macs the scans are almost instantaneous.

This is some type of bug in Windows. It might also have something to do with a failed VST that is slowing down the process.

No, it's not a windows issue, it's a Live issue. For posterity, I think I've cracked it:

As suspected, Live for Windows has a badly programmed scan algo. It doesn't ignore non-VST-files and gets bogged down testing presets, EULAs and GUI-bitmaps for their VST-compatibility. It also does this on every rescan.

BlueCat and U-He are frequent main culprits, because they keep their presets either in the plugin folder or have a simlink to a user preset folder elsewhere. Blue Cat Audio store even more ressource files than just presets in the plugin folder. Live just bumbles on over and starts chewing through all those files like they're VSTs. Since they are not VSTs, it takes forever. And when you install a new plugin, you have to wait for it to go through all those files again, because maybe they're VSTs this time around.

Further to posts on Reddit and other forums I can confirm that installing U-he presets in a user location and then manually removing the *.data simlink that U-He places in your VST-folder helps a lot. As far as I can tell, the plugins don't need them to function and removing the simlink keeps Live from scanning the presets.

On my system, Bluecat, Glitch 2, Redux, Zyn Fusion and Surge have a lot of non-VST stuff in their folders that can't be moved. I count 25'000 files. U-He has more than 50'000 files (!) in their .data-Folders and I don't even have all their plugins. If you use Live on Windows, do yourself a favor and delete all the "Diva.Data" and similar simlinks in the VST-folder.

But again: It's a Live issue. Other Windows DAWs have no problem with this at all.

[elxsound]

Man I really thought I was coming back to Live with 12. I love the new features, they ironed out a few UX issues, it felt fresh again. But I was demoing a few plugins recently and almost lost my mind. I would wait a literal half hour for them to show up in Live (Bitwig: two minutes max. Renoise: After startup).

I know Live hates simlinks and maybe there is a plugin or two that's messing with the scan (or more likely Live is trying to parse some external files as VSTs) and I know it really hates iLok stuff on first install but man, this is is untenable. I can index my entire file system in that time using other programs. What the hell.

Any suggestions? For now I gave up and went back to Bitwig.

With Macs the scans are almost instantaneous.

This is some type of bug in Windows. It might also have something to do with a failed VST that is slowing down the process.

I explained the same thing too (not an issue on Mac), but they're unconcerned with different ways to resolve this and only want to say it's a Live issue.

I mentioned before that its only 5 seconds to load up Live on the M2 MacBook. I even showed my list of plugin vendors which includes u-he (all u-he plugins).

On my Intel Mac, it's slower and occasionally can take longer but after removing folders from Places it's super quick (10 seconds).

[wasi]

Yeah I've also concluded it's only an issue on the windows version of Live, not the Mac version.

I changed the title to show this so people don't have to read the thread.