John


I could be wrong but I don't think Sonar has a limit on how many plugins one can have. I do think there is a limit on how many can be displayed in the menu though. I believe this is a Windows limitation on how many objects can be in a menu.

If you read the dialog it doesn't say you have too many plugins. It says that you have too many to be displayed and some will not be displayed.

I don't think the browser has this issue.  

Trying to come up with an analogy that would help clarify things. 
You've got world with 

• a pantry that contains all of your ingredients. 
  - plug-in database created by the VST Scanner/Plug-in Manager that references ALL VSTs know to Sonar.
• a kitchen which contains all ingredients accessible to you when cooking.
  - Sonar's internal data structure, the database that holds what plug-ins can be accessed.
• and lists of available ingredients.
  - i.e. plug-in menus.

When Sonar loads it fills your kitchen (it's data structures) with items from the pantry (the physical database of plug-ins) until the kitchen is full.  After Sonar loads it will only look in the kitchen for ingredients.
  
If you check the list of available ingredients (your plug-in menus) it might say that you have something available but if you suffer from pantry bloat (i.e. exceeding the max plug-in limit) you won't realize that the item is not available until you try to access it and nothing happens.


Sticking with the above analogy - the problem isn't with pantry space nor with the ingredient lists and the various tools to browse them/use them; the problem is that in your virtual world the kitchen is locked into a set of fixed dimensions and it's capacity is set.  So whether you're cooking for a 3 piece or an orchestral mansion the kitchen will always be the same size. 

As stated previously... This is not a menu limitation issue.
I created a batch of plug-ins to test & explore the plug-in limitation issues so that I would know how Sonar dealt with the issue and to see if my MenuMagic ap was handling things correctly. My test setup contains 1299 FX VSTs and 299 instrument VSTs - all of them individually named/numbered so I could determine accurately if a plug-in was showing up in the menus and if that menu contained a live or dead link.  ALL of the plug-ins show up in the menus - but only 735/255 have live links.

It's a pain in the @ss to setup & test but the results are 100% reproducible.
If you are interested in testing this out yourself and would like more info - send me a PM with your name & email address. 

carl


How many plugins are allowed in Sonar X2?
I just re-scanned for update x2a & received the limit reached message for the first time ever &  haven't added new ones in over a week.

 
Sonar is merely channeling the universe which is telling you to stop pursuing the accumulation of things you will never use.
 
The universe works in mysterious ways.
 
To what other activities in your life may this advice be pertinent?

Post 13 in this thread may put some light on the subject Here

jm24

carl


How many plugins are allowed in Sonar X2?
I just re-scanned for update x2a & received the limit reached message for the first time ever &  haven't added new ones in over a week.

 
Sonar is merely channeling the universe which is telling you to stop pursuing the accumulation of things you will never use.
 
The universe works in mysterious ways.
 
To what other activities in your life may this advice be pertinent?

Yeah, I think you're right. I'm was organizing & getting rid of many plugins I no longer use, many of them x86 when I scanned & got the message.

Pre x2a I scanned at last a dozen times with Waves Mercury bundle installed & using both x64, x86 w/o any limit message.

Removing a few x86 plugins from the scan path stopped the limit message. I can now use any of my user or full layout menus.

John


Post 13 in this thread may put some light on the subject Here

"From my understanding of the situation, the limit is just in how many one menu can show - not an actual limit in the number of plugins that SONAR supports."


His information is wrong and anyone who has battled this issue and seriously tried to find a work around will tell you so.  As said in previous posts on this thread: menus, submenu, subsubmenus - have no affect on the limit.

Many of the people who run into this issue never post it on because if you do a quick search on the subject you'll find that the issue most often gets a hostile response from many of the forum faithful - from accusations that only a pirate would have so many plug-ins to questions on their sanity or professionalism.  You don't see such comments about people who say they need more than a 100 tracks for a project...

There are many valid reason why someone would want or need to have a large collection of plug-ins

• Studio owner wanting to attract business by offering clients a wide variety of choice, or match what the artist/producer is using or just say they have more than Joe's Studio down the street.
• Musicians who work with other musicians and want to be able to easily exchange tracks without having to bounce them first.
• Obsessive collectors - there are thousands of free plug-ins available.
  Is it really up to you or me to decide how many plug-ins someone should be able to own & use?
  How about the numbers or computing devices, keyboards, guitars or name-your-item that someone should own?  

Nowadays you don't have to be a plug-in whore to have a lot of plug-ins.

The whole plug-in limitation issue could be fixed by Sonar switching from the current static to a new dynamically allocated memory structure to hold plug-in information - wasn't the major impetus of going to 64 bit to remove fixed memory limitations?

Anyway hope everyone has a Merry Christmas, happy post Hanukkah, etc.

...Steven

Steven I am not attacking anyone or finding fault. All I am saying is that what is in a menu is not what is available to a user after a certain number of plugins is reached. Yes there is a limit in the menu but only there. The work around is to create multiple menus. 

Again it is a windows problem in how windows handles menus. 

It may not be a wonderful thing to have to figure out what is missing and create other menus but there are ways to do this and avoid this problem. 

As far as I can tell the browser has no limitation. 

This has been a long standing issue that has been explained. For now it is the way it is. 

Steven - you make great points as to why some would want a large plug-in library.  I'm in total agreement with the need for dynamic allocation instead of static - as a programmer I'm always in favor of that approach.

For me this is not an issue as I follow the same kind of policy as Bitflipper.  Every 3 years (approximately) I upgrade my system and then go through a purging of old plug-ins.  I don't like to keep old stuff around - it's just easier to rebuild my system with fewer components. 

But I just do this for myself - I'm not maintaining tons of other people's projects, in which case I'd want to keep all the old plug-ins on my system.

John


Steven I am not attacking anyone or finding fault. All I am saying is that what is in a menu is not what is available to a user after a certain number of plugins is reached. Yes there is a limit in the menu but only there. The work around is to create multiple menus. 

Again it is a windows problem in how windows handles menus. 

It may not be a wonderful thing to have to figure out what is missing and create other menus but there are ways to do this and avoid this problem. 

As far as I can tell the browser has no limitation. 

This has been a long standing issue that has been explained. For now it is the way it is. 

Hi John,

If it came off that I was implying that you or anyone else here was attacking or finding fault, my apologies. 

Multiple menus unfortunately don't fix the issue.
If you have 1200 FX plug-ins and create 2 separate menus system each with 600 plug-ins - you will still have loads of dead menu slots - theoretically up to (1200- 735) 475 in one of them). This is because Sonar's internal data structure is loaded with its information on program start up; also there are at least 12 different areas in Sonar that use plug-in layout menus so it is possible that each one could use a different menu layout.

I will be more than happy to provide anyone with a test set of plug-ins if they wish to test the nuances of the plug-in maximum limit issue themselves. 

The plug-in limit has been a long standing problem - but the real reason behind it is a design decision not a Windows limitation. Possibly the fixed allocation system was put in place once upon a time because of concerns about exhausting the menu system, or that in a 32bit OS it made sense to impose a limit; but regardless of claims the menu's are not the cause of the limitation. 

It is what it is, but there is no reason by today's standards that it should be what it is.

Arguing with the universe is a waste of life time.

This is really a case of less-is-more.