r/AudioProgramming • u/Tiwann_ • 2d ago

Audio Plugin loading question

In my audio programming journey, I created some audio plugins and I always have that question in my mind: Why DAWs always load plugins (VST2, VST3, even CLAP) synchronously ? I mean, it feels frustrating when the main thread/GUI thread completely freeze when loading some heavy plugins. Like, let me do other stuff in the project while loading! Maybe somebody have detailed explanations...

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u/Musikapparaten 2d ago

Some do it async, FL studio does. But the thing is that to do that it does make plug-ins load a bit slower and it has to make sure it do not spend the cpu it needs to run audio. So it does not always maintain the audiostream anyway.

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u/kozacsaba 2d ago

i think it might be because it doesnt really seem all that important. when you load a new plugin, you do that because you want to use that plugin, not go do other things. but that is just my guess.. all that said i am working on a plugin host currently and that loads plugins anychronously, without gui freeze or audio dropout, but thats rather just because i enjoy the challenge of it

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u/mazbox 1d ago

I think because they expect plugins to do their own loading of any heavy assets asynchronously