VST plugin scan should be optional

Feedback and Discussion Forum
1

Hi,

I am only, and will only ever be, interested in Audacity as a pure wave file editor. No mixing, mastering, production, nothing like that. Just simple wave file editing. And thus, there is absolutely no reason for Audacity to go poking it’s big, fat nose into my VST plugin folders, nor make any sort of list of what VSTs are installed on my system… and since I sometimes also buy new ones, it’s totally unnecessary for Audacity to rescan, ever.
Please, could VST support be an optional feature, either chosen in the installer, or off by default? As it is now, there is not even any option of turning it off. Sure, I can disable the plugins that isn’t needed (when would Audacity EVER need Cherry Audio GX-80?!) manually, but that’s unnecessary work, that I shouldn’t have to do. And it’s not like it’s a “once and never again” thing, because any new VSTs will be scanned, added and be enabled by default.

I’m sure you feel that VST support is an awesome feature, and something that most people might want, but I know for a fact (by the number of hits on searches for “disable VST in Audacity”) that I’m not the only one who has no interest in this feature.

So please, could you make this feature entirely optional? It’s not useful, it’s not wanted, and it’s not even a nice thing to have as far as I’m concerned.

Thanks.

2

IIRC I think the ability to turn off effect scanning on launch may become a preference setting in the upcoming 3.5.0 release.

No promises , but I’m pretty sure I saw it on Muse’s plan on GitHub.

Peter.

3

Does that mean that it won’t scan by default on first launch?

It’s a bit sad, that every time I fire up a modern wave editor, I really miss good old Cool Edit from 20 years ago.

4

Don’t know till I see what they implement (if thy implement it) - but I guess so.

Peter.