John T
I had this very problem yesterday.
 
I dunno if it's waves-specific, or a general issue, but here's what I tracked it down to: I had a few waves plugins I was trialling, which I've since uninstalled, but the uninstalled plugins were still in my custom plugin layout (albiet greyed out). Getting rid of those entries and re-saving the layout fixed the problem.

Not to hijack this thread but I also had the same issue and it turned out to be vst's that I had uninstalled but were in my custom plugin layout. Thanks for the suggestion John T!

No problem. It's interesting; when I was googling for solutions, Waves came up a bit, but I suspect it's more messy uninstallers that are the problem. Clearly Waves have a messy uninstaller, but probably lots of other developers do too.

John T
No problem. It's interesting; when I was googling for solutions, Waves came up a bit, but I suspect it's more messy uninstallers that are the problem. Clearly Waves have a messy uninstaller, but probably lots of other developers do too.

It was a vst that I was trialing but it wasn't waves.
Thanks again!

John T
I had this very problem yesterday.
 
I dunno if it's waves-specific, or a general issue, but here's what I tracked it down to: I had a few waves plugins I was trialling, which I've since uninstalled, but the uninstalled plugins were still in my custom plugin layout (albiet greyed out). Getting rid of those entries and re-saving the layout fixed the problem.

 
I just finished spending most of last evening and this morning cleaning out plugins, searching for anything that might be causing the delay times. Some improvement, but still haven't found the root problem. I'm still right at 7 seconds waiting for the popup to appear when I right click on the fx bin - even in a brand new project with no fx and just a single audio track....
 
Loading a small project takes about 60 seconds. Not sure if that's normal or not for X3. I know it was much faster in earlier versions of Sonar.
 
I've cleaned the registry, defragged and optimized the drives as well.
 
 
Still stuck with this issue.

RESET the VST plugs in the plugin manager. DO NOT SCAN the VSTs. Close the plugin manager and reopen your project. See if that makes a difference. If it does make a difference, only scan one of your VST directories at a time and see if you can locate the offending DLL by checking out the FX listing after each scan.

Another suggestion I thought for this issue was to make a custom plugin list and have only a couple plugs as default. That way it should only try to pull a couple plugs in the list. I don't know if building or verifying the list is causing your problem or not though.

One other thing that I did, before removing the grayed out plugins, is:
I created a vstplugins-archived directory outside my vst plugins directory and moved all my vst2 plugins into it that I have vst3 versions of.
For example, there is a vst3 version of the cakewalk CA-2A plugin so I moved the vst2 version of it out of my vstplugins directory into the vstplugins-archived directory so it doesn't get scanned by Sonar.

Guitarmech111
RESET the VST plugs in the plugin manager. DO NOT SCAN the VSTs. Close the plugin manager and reopen your project. See if that makes a difference. If it does make a difference, only scan one of your VST directories at a time and see if you can locate the offending DLL by checking out the FX listing after each scan.

Another suggestion I thought for this issue was to make a custom plugin list and have only a couple plugs as default. That way it should only try to pull a couple plugs in the list. I don't know if building or verifying the list is causing your problem or not though.

 
Thanks for the advice.
 
I followed your plan and it appears that I do have an offending vst adding to - or is the cause of this problem. Which ones or a combination of which ones is still a long and tedious journey to find. I found that removing the path for my main vst folder caused X3 to behave as normal - snappier, quicker, better. So I at least have eliminated several other folder paths containing vsts as problems.
 
The main VST folder had about 500 plugs in there. Way too many unused plugs that I was hoarding for a raining day I guess. So I got rid of all the 32 bit ones (saved them in another folder) and rarely used 64 bit plugs. And still I have the problem. Trying to identify which one of the remaining 250 is the pain right now - something I'm really running out of steam for. I probably have 3-4 hours invested in this. Side note, I'm dreaming of a more sophisticated plugin management screen that allows me to test and segregate/organize the plugs from the root window. Seems like low hanging fruit to please customers  - it's been requested formally many times.
 
Another thing, The graphics are sometimes glitchy on the console view with X3D. The counter stops/hangs/stutters. Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm
 
Anyway, I also opened up X2 to see if the problem is also happening with that version. Surprisingly, it's not. Works like a daw should. No glitches or plugin problems using the same directories. So the problem is definitely something with X3D.
 
Anyone here think I might also get to the resolution of this problem by uninstalling/re-installing X3?
 
Thanks!

IF you have that many plugins(500), you need to toss some out. How can you possibly use that many plugins? I understand the hoarding, but functionality should be more important. ;)
 
In X2, Make sure the VST scan paths are the same. If you have the same number of VSTs in X2 and X3, I would call tech support and report a problem.
 
Have you tried the custom layout as I suggested earlier? That may help with your current number of plugs and the plugin menu start too.

Guitarmech111
IF you have that many plugins(500), you need to toss some out. How can you possibly use that many plugins? I understand the hoarding, but functionality should be more important. ;)
 
In X2, Make sure the VST scan paths are the same. If you have the same number of VSTs in X2 and X3, I would call tech support and report a problem.
 
Have you tried the custom layout as I suggested earlier? That may help with your current number of plugs and the plugin menu start too.

I was surprised at the number!!! However, I only have around fifty in my plugin manager custom layout. And to ease the load and guilt - I got rid of most of the plugs yesterday.
 
Yes - X2 is using the same custom layout. (with the same large number of plugs scanned)
 
Yes - I did try the layout you suggested and that's when I found out which directory that contained the plugs that was causing problems. I still need to distill that down to the problem plug or plugs.
 
Thanks for for you help.

I would go the other way. Strip down to bare essentials and then add what you need. Cheers