Which DAW is fastest to load?

[toddbooster]

Weirdly, Samplitude Pro X6. It's just ever so slightly behind Reaper. Couldn't be bothered to actually time it however.

[Iconoklast]

Another example is Arguru's Aodix 4.2 which like Aero Studio parses same large VST directory for new DLLs upon startup, since none found then rather fast as well...




This one seems to be running a little fast in the browser so add another half-second or so for correct timing...

[jjpscott01]

Waveform for me is super fast

[Bartone]

For me Studio One takes long only because the Melodyne integration takes forever. Everything else goes very fast with Studio One, but the Melodyne integration is slow... FL Studio is super fast. Bitwig demo version is slower than FL but faster than Studio One.

I've been thinking to remove Melodyne since I hate how long it takes to load :/

[koolkeys]

I've used and owned at one point or another almost every host out there, and I can honestly say........I have never once thought or cared about how fast they loaded. I know, it's fun to do a comparison, but on the list of things that make me decide what host to use, startup time probably the lowest on the list, followed by where a company decides to host their forum (unofficial list, of course).

That being said, I'm pretty sure Reaper is probably the fastest because I did a scientific study and skimmed 30 or so of the posts in this thread, and saw it mentioned the most.

Cool story, Reaper. If only you were more fun to use and didn't make me want to throw my computer out the window every time I tried to use you.....

[DJDJ]

Renoise is pretty damn snappy at startup

[jjpscott01]

Im surprised to see Cubase listed as the slowest by several folks. I don't know if that's basing it on earlier versions but version 12 on Windows 10 loads up really fast for me. I have a boatload of plugins too. The last version of Cubase I used was 9.5 and if I recall it did used to take a while to load but version 12 feels real quick.

[Tj Shredder]

Any DAW which scans plugins before you can start is unusably slow for me. The worst is Logic, as that scanning is buggy and it can‘t remember it scanned them already… I don‘t know if Apple fixed it, as the newer versions require an OS upgrade I don‘t want to do (yet)
The weird thing is, that scanning isn‘t really necessary. It could be either done in the background or just before you load a plugin the first time…

[Jonas78]

Renoise is pretty damn snappy at startup

Yep, I love that after an initial scan / cacheing of all vst(i), you can turn off scanning for new plugins during start up for consecutive boots in the preferences. Do more DAWs offer this kind of option?

[Rommelaar]

Which DAW is fastest to load?

Answer: the one you don't own.

[Trensharo]

It seems like Studio One takes forever to load. Bitwig takes less time, Cakewalk is even faster. Is there another DAW which is faster to load?

+1 for Cakewalk, owing largely to the fact that it has an Active Background Plug-in Scanner. That is what allows it to load quickly - and that, it certainly does. I'm not sure why more DAWs don't have a background plug-in scanner. There is probably one or two others that do, though

Samplitude Pro X also loads really fast - as fast as Cakewalk, if not even faster - because it scans plug-ins when you open the plug-in browser or click to insert a plug-in or virtual instrument (and the scanner is fairly quick).

Most other DAWs scan plug-ins on start-up.

Sometimes Studio One starts up in 8 seconds. Sometimes it start up in 30 seconds. It's super random, without any type of pattern.

[Trensharo]

Im surprised to see Cubase listed as the slowest by several folks. I don't know if that's basing it on earlier versions but version 12 on Windows 10 loads up really fast for me. I have a boatload of plugins too. The last version of Cubase I used was 9.5 and if I recall it did used to take a while to load but version 12 feels real quick.

Cubase Load Times depend on how many VSTSound Packages, etc. you have installed, as well. People with a lot of that will see slower load times as it checks the license for them on start-up. VST Plug-ins are cached well in Cubase, so it only scans them again when you update a plug-in, etc.

v12 is definitely faster than v11, though not in the same stratosphere as something like Cakewalk or Samplitude Pro X - both of which start up... like Microsoft Word, to use a comparison. Samplitude Pro X does have a longer INITIAL plug-in scan (esp. if you have a lot of plug-ins/VIs), but after that even that pretty much goes away and only new/updated stuff needs to be rescanned (similar to Cubase).

Studio One can be decent, but it's incredibly inconsistent. Sometimes it's decent and then randomly it can be one of the slowest DAWs to boot up. I don't understand the mechanism that triggers this. It feels very random to me.

[koolkeys]

Studio One can be decent, but it's incredibly inconsistent. Sometimes it's decent and then randomly it can be one of the slowest DAWs to boot up. I don't understand the mechanism that triggers this. It feels very random to me.

You aren’t alone in that assessment. Sometimes it loads up fast and sometimes it feels like it decides to do random scans of blacklist plugins or MIDI ports or SOMETHING.

I do like that it lists out what is being scanned as it scans. But it is definitely inconsistent. Doesn’t affect my use of the program and it doesn’t bother me(as mentioned before I really only care how the program acts during use), but it is enough to notice.

Brent

[kritikon]

By the time I've roamed around turning on all the plug sockets, the power boards, the individual units, the amp, the monitor, plugged the soundcard into the laptop, connected the monitor, set the lights to tastefully cycle around tropical hues, brushed off the spiderwebs wrapped around my head that I got when I first walked into the studio (how are spiders so damned fast at making webs?)...I could have loaded Cubase 1.0 on a first edition Atari.

Really...load time? Almost everything nowadays loads quicker than it takes me to walk downstairs into the studio.

[Halonmusic]

LMMS is pretty fast tbh