For what it’s worth, I’ve tried the newest version of Pigments in Reaper (A “supported” DAW), and the loading times are just as slow as in Renoise. I think it’s an issue with new engine or “AI” plugin browser feature, not with the host.
A new release of Renoise is in the works. I can’t promise a release date yet (as usual).
Regarding Arturia load times:
Tell us a bit more about your system specs. Is it Windows or MacOS - VST3 or AU you are using Renoise on? Does it really only happen with Renoise for you?
Adding “modern feature X here” usually doesn’t solve such problems. Well, except on macOS, where things tend to break with macOS updates and applications have to be updated for newer versions of macOS.
And we can’t really test all the plugins out there, nor can we fix them. We can only help plugin developers improve things if we know what the problem is. And to find that out, the plugin developers need to tell us what’s going on. Plugins are black boxes to hosts. We can’t see what they’re exactly doing, so we usually also can’t solve such problems.
Have you tried reporting this to Arturia?
Renoise may not be on their official list of supported DAWs, but if you report problems in a simple, reproducible way, they’ll actually fix things for Renoise as well.
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Hi @taktik, thanks for the response and some positive news.
I’ve got Mac Studio on M1 Max equipped with 32 gigs of ram. Latest MacOS. Almost all plugins I use are VST3 except few old ones VST. No issues with old ones though.
Unfortunately I’ve got no other DAW to try, however I have tried Pigments in NI Komplete Kontrol and there is no issues. That behaviour in Renoise of Pigments started in ver 5. With a recent release of ver 6 the delay became worse.
Also I’ve got problem with very recently released Xfer Serum 2. In Renoise if I click arrow to change preset plugin freezing. It might happen after 3 to 6 clicks. In KK I’ve played with these arrows for an hour or so. All was good.
I mostly use VSTs to create music, really rare occasions raw WAVs files.
Thanks.
Thanks for the info. Then please try to report these issues to the plugin developers then. A new release of Renoise won’t fix these problems. We do have some general VST3 compatibility fixes in the pipeline, but as mentioned above, those usually don’t solve such issues. If this is an issue in Renoise, plugin devs usually are happy to report those issues back to us.
I have used this metaphor a few times: if you have a problem with plug-ins in any Host, go and tell the plugin developers about it first. If you have a problem with your DAW, you usually also don’t report it to macOS (Apple) first.
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I have reported Serum issue to devs as well as Pigments and earlier to NI for Massive X. Unfortunately I haven’t got any response, I might understand why - Renoise isn’t most popular DAW and they don’t want to spend time investigating these issues.
I found workaround for this situation - I load the plugin in Komplete Kontrol, tune it, save then load in Renoise. Not a most comfy way but no other solutions yet.
Maybe you could try boot into safe mode and then just restart, I think it does some automatic adjustments when doing that.
As a VST developer i can assure you, mostly the VSTs themselves cause such problems, not the used DAWs.
The big VST companies wanna throw a new plugin or update as quick as possible on the market. They wanna make money and sell their stuff as fast as they can. Then it doesn’t matter if there’re still issues with the plugins. Some companies even go a step further and do this by purpose, so that they can make their updates chargeable.
Most issues are coming from the VSTs. Especially VST3. VST3 is the worst plugin format ever. For a VST developer it is always a nightmare to compile VST3 plugins. The VST3 format is even crappier than VST2. It still has a lot problems.
Even Steinberg, the inventor and license holder of the VST/VST2/VST3 format, have problems in their own products. Cubase has a lot problems with VST plugins. Especially with VST3. Isn’t that ironic enough?
Best example is Reason. Reason didn’t support VSTs more than 20 years, until they decided to implement VST support.
Before VSTs were supported in Reason, it was the most stable music production software out there. But since they support also VSTs, Reason got a lot issues and doesn’t run as stable as before anymore.
In your case, if it worked without problems before you made the VST update, then it definitely is a problem with the VST’s update.
You are using a Mac, so you already should know this issue. On Mac this is a recurring issue. For example, after the Mac OS got an update, a lot DAWs and plugins, which were running fine before suddenly don’t work/don’t work proper anymore. On Windows for example, after a new OS update all still works fine as before.
If something isn’t working proper anymore after an update, so where do you think is the issue?
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Recent Arturia plugins are known for loading immense high scaled GUI graphics (including PNG animations!). These actually also are the main cause for their huge installation size. If there is a problem with loading, I would bet that it is this not well designed GUI skin structure (e.g. lag of vectorization, skeuomorphism all over the place etc.).
Pigments loading time is here like 2s, on an internal macbook ssd. It’s clearly longer than other plugins with lower than 1s.
This 
Heck I am running an old PC I built myself back in 2015, that for back then was a low end gamer style setup with a mere 4 GB of RAm , Pentium Dual core 2.93 Ghz , and still running bloody Windows 8.1 . Funny this is the 1 TB hard drive still has a bout 700 GB of RAM on it, since i only use this computer for music and surfing the web. I can’t even download current software as most of them require Windows 10 or higher, and a LOT more processing power to boot. Still using older ,yet latest editions, of vsts like Tone 2 products, U-He Zebra, Waldorf Largo. Geist 1, Surge, etc. I can run several instances of any of these and many lanes of Renoise instruments with hardly any hit. But try to use/demo Vital, Serum, Falcon, Hive, Isotope, and most modern crap…etc etc Forget about it. Thing is…I prefer being a minmalist these days and after years of self abuse trying try everything out there, i have settled what i know well, and what just…WORKS. And is why i still and will always use Renoise, future updates or not. It is like an bloody extention of my brain at this point. I would rather have a bottle in front of me, than a frontal lobotomy in the form of learning a new DAW again. hehe
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Heartening to hear you’ve made a positive life choice and recognise the dangers of spending on stuff you don’t need. A lesson I’m still learning.
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Better technology doesn’t make you a better musician. Experience and training skills make you better…
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A completely far-fetched argument. I never said that technology affects my creativity or playing skills. I start composing any melody on the piano, and it is analog. If you did not understand me, I meant compliance with today’s level of technology of third-party manufacturers - synthesizers, samplers, effects, etc.
Reply #8 may be (hopefully) somewhat helpful @ZeoS
It basically says this:
As a solution they suggested this procedure:
"Delete a specific temp file called “db.db3”.
MAC: /Library/Arturia/Presets
WIN: C:\ProgramData\Arturia\Presets
If you have not enabled the display of hidden folders please go to your file explorer → display → check “show hidden folders”
Alternatively, you should be also able to directly copy/paste the path indicated above in your Windows File browser address bar.
Once this file is deleted, the preset list will be updated on software opening."
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Compliant with what, though?
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People always forget that Renoise is a classical tracker with some modern features. But it’s no high end DAW like Ableton, Cubase, Bitwig, etc.
Btw: i also use the latest version of Pigments and i never had such issues in Renoise or my other VST hosts. Startup time <1sec, switching presets <1sec.
No crashes until today.
Same with all other high end VST’s. The only VST that needs a bit more than 1sec to load is VPS Avenger 2. But it also takes more loading time in any other VST host
As i wrote before, if it worked before the VST update, then it’s definitely the update that has an issue.
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I’ve been writing music in trackers since 1991, and believe me, I understand what the word “classic” means. You want to say with this word “don’t demand too much here.” And here I diametrically disagree with you. This is not the problem. I raised the issue several times on the forum, but it will not change anything. Fundamentally.
Renoise is not a commercial project. It is a fan-hobby - anything but commercial. I accept and respect this. I write music in exactly the same way. Many people tell me “go commercial, you are doing great” but this is a matter of principle. All the problems of Renoise development stem from this. So do not say that it is a classic tracker.
Your next argument is the fast loading of Pigments. I am glad that this is not a problem for you, but what exactly do you want to say by this? That this is my problem? My software, equipment, my DNA? If this problem does not apply to you, does it mean that it does not exist at all?
I downloaded the trial version of Logic Pro and Reaper for the sake of experiment and tried to load Pigments in these shells. There were no delays. But in Renoise there are. I understand your desire to protect Renoise from attacks.
Nevertheless, the problems I described above exist and you will not reduce them.
Thank you for your participation.
Thanks Jek for trying to help. But I’ve tried this unfortunately with no result.
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Re-read my posts. I never wrote it’s your fault. I wrote, if it worked before the update, then definitely it is the update that has an issue and have to reported to the manufacturer first before reporting here.
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A bug can occur in one DAW, but may work fine in another DAW. But that doesn’t mean it’s a DAW issue. It even can work flawlessly in a specific DAW for one user, but for another user using the same DAW and even the same system setup it doesn’t work proper. Bugs can occur in one session, but in another session it works without problems. Just for info. Believe me, i’m a programmer and deveop VSTs for over 15 years now. I know what’s going on.
I don’t protect Renoise. It’s fact.
Renoise even isn’t my main software for music productions. I’m using Renoise just for fun, because i’m a big tracker fan since the end 80s/early 90s. I worked a lot with trackers back in the days. People always compare softwares with other softwares that you can’t compare because they are way different. It doesn’t matter if Renoise or any other software out there. I produced music with Renoise where people even didn’t believe that it was made with Renoise. Renoise already is powerful as it is. It may not have all the features of modern DAWs, but most people here don’t care. They use Renoise as it is and have lots of fun with it.
The difference between Renoise and most DAWs out there is, the big DAW companies have dozens of programmers. Renoise is a small company. A few programmers can’t do all these things the way and in the time than the dozens programmers of the big companies can do.
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The support list only means it’s tested on these DAWs. It’s just a list where the developer guanrantees, that their plugin runs fine in the listed DAWs. Renoise isn’t listed, because they probably don’t know Renoise and didn’t test their product there because of that. But it doesn’t mean that it’s not working.
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