The Sheer Joy of 3.10.2

Vocalpoint already said a lot of what I was about to, regarding why it may be scanning, and the extreme unlikelihood that NA is doing something dodgy.

You think the sheer amount of issues that people have had from NA2 is after it has been tested?????

The issues I have seen are:

• plugins going into demo mode
• slow startup times
• login problems

And yes, these could all be after the software has been tested. I know it seems unbelievable to you, but to people who work in software development and understand the reality of developing for complex systems, not so much. All of these problems are affecting only some users, indicating they are problems which are not universal, depending on context specific factors, and so can much more easily slip through in testing.

If releases of NA are being rushed out without sufficient testing, I want to be clear on one thing: it is NOT the fault of the people who are bearing the brunt of user frustration here. If anyone is rushing these things out, it will be upper management forcing those who actually develop and test the software to cut corners.

So even if it is true – which is not proven – let's have some grace when dealing with support and the developers. I've worked as a developer for a long time. I've reported bugs to other developers. In all that time, I have almost never encountered a developer or support person who did not want to help when a user had a problem with their software. Even in the face of being blamed by users for things beyond their control.

—

And look, in case it hasn't come across well: I am in no way saying that whatever is happening is correct software behaviour and should be accepted (and nor are NI, which is why they are looking into it). I am saying let's give them a chance to investigate and try to fix the problem and drop the idea that what is happening is anything more than an unintended bug.

This is going in circles, so I'm done. NI support and developers have more patience in this matter than I, and I have better things to do this weekend.

I'll leave you with a question: after acknowledging that a situation is frustrating to all involved, what's the point in making it more frustrating by continually casting aspersions on those trying to help?

@tempsperdu

"Apart from the initial scan, it shouldn't matter how many plugins you have, there are many who have far more than I, just as there are many with less. If you introduce a system that is heavily penalising users who have a lot of other products, that is not going to sit well."

All through this - you are making some grand assumption that just the "initial scan" should be the "the scan" or that other vendors scan techniques are better, faster or whatever. None of that matters.

What does matter is the THIS scan (in presumably all 4 apps that do scans) are poorly written. They are clearly written in a way that a penalty is built in and there is NO initial scan (and never will be one).

It does the same thing over and over (painfully) because that is the way it is - for now.

That you have 658 plugins to grind through - every time this scan occurs - will never get better until NI makes it better.

But I do agree with @Paul B - endlessly grinding on NI does nothing. I am fairly certain they know this whole thing sucks a** but do not have the programming time, talent or resource at this time to rewrite the whole thing from scratch. A more plausible theory of mine is they never thought to do proper Q&A on a specific use case where 658 plugins were installed.

Regardless of where we are at - or where you are at - no amount of negative vibes (and I know it's been going on a LONG time) will change this fact until NI recognizes that NA - as especially their NTKDaemon - is not ready for prime time.

And I want to be clear - no one is making excuses. On my prior DAW - I could not tolerate a 5+ minute scan either - so on my new build - I took measures into my own hands and cut out ALL VST2 plugins and anything else that I know I am never going to use.

In the old DAW - I had 1238 plugins being scanned - now I have maybe 100. Worked for me - I am down to 7-10 seconds now with my Komplete Kontrol scans.

It is what it is and it is up to NI to address this.

VP

@tempsperdu

Bitwig can do it

Reaper can do it

Waveform can do it

The one-man operation called MuLab can do it

Why can't NI??????

Because exactly none of these are capable (in any way) of NKS (in my opinion) .

And they are all DAWs - which none of these NI apps are. Not even a fair comparison.

All these apps above have to do is scan the plugin and make sure it shows up in the program.

VP

+1 like IL plugin manager somehow, much better somehow IMHO

"I suggest that they try to make a diagnostic script that any of us can run and that might indicate just why some of us have issues that others don't as the NTK Daemon logs don't describe a lot of the activity that is taking place"

Not a bad idea - but I do not think NI is going to give anyone any insider info on what NTKDaemon is doing, why it's doing it or what it needs to do it for. That could compromise licensing, promote hacks and possibly make this worse than it already is.

Clearly if you are waiting 5-10-15-20 minutes for a scan to complete - it has to be one of these things - either because you have too many plugins being scanned in every pass, some oddball plugin (or two or three) in there are particularly difficult to scan OR your machine is sufficientl underpowered to be able to do this in an efficient manner (did we ever find out exactly what you are using hardware and OS wise?) Or a combo of these.

NI cannot test every plugin ever made on every machine combo from 2015 to now. Sooner or later an "edge" case will appear and maybe in this case - yours is it.

Scrolling through these forums - I haven't really found anyone else suffering the extremes that is your scenario so you may have an install that actually defies logic.

What that tells me is that your case is not the norm - and that cannot be 100% blamed on NTKDaemon scanning.

I scanned your logs and see your plugins - you do have a lot of obscure items that I do not have but the big guns are about the same. But you also have 4-5 times the plugins that I have and that alone is going to increase your scan times not matter how good this thing is.

No doubt this whole scan process needs work - but without a bit of bend on your end - like dumping 100 plugins and trying again - we will never known where this issue actually lies with your install.

VP