Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 18312 (19H1) increases number of plugins that can be run in a DAW.
As PCs get more powerful, musicians have created increasingly complex projects with more tracks, more instruments, and deeper effects chains. As a result, some of those musicians were running up against a FLS (Fiber Local Storage) slot allocation ceiling that prevented them from loading into their DAWs (Digital Audio Workstations) as many unique plugins as they’d like. This build greatly raises that per-process FLS slot allocation ceiling, allowing loading potentially thousands of unique plugins. Beyond musicians, this change will positively impact any application that dynamically loads hundreds or thousands of unique DLLs that have statically-linked Visual C++ runtimes, or otherwise allocate FLS slots. There’s no date set for this release yet, but the name means “first half of 2019.”

For more on this: http://www.synthtopia.com/content/2019/01/10/microsoft-windows-10-update-will-let-you-use-more-virtual-instruments-effects-in-your-daw/

FLS checker by Takashi

http://planetnine.jp/wp/2018/03/25/fls-checker/

 

Last edited: Jan 11, 2019 at 8:23 AM

https://blogs.windows.com/windowsex...ncing-windows-10-insider-preview-build-18312/

 

It's good news, but it will only be for window 10.

Wish changing the fls limit in previous windows version was something r2r could pull off.

 

FLS checker by Takashi

"Recently, the limited number of ‘Fibre Link Storage’ slots available on Windows application became a serious bottleneck for any windows daw written in C++. Each vst plugin uses a small number of the FLS slots, plugins from the same vendor shares library they use. But then once the number of the slots used in a process reached 128, it won’t be able to open any more dll files. Thus a plugin fails to initialize on the daw without any apparent reason.

Daw and plugin makers are aware of this problem and already started to update their products to use fewer slots possible, however you still see this problem in many cases. There are lots of reports related this on public forums.

I have built a simple plugin that shows the number of the FLS slots available. It will report the number when its GUI is opened, or when the update button is clicked. It uses 1 slot by itself."

Takashi

http://planetnine.jp/wp/2018/03/25/fls-checker/

 

Last edited: Jan 11, 2019 at 8:38 AM

interesting, wonder if it will also have any impact on regular audio performance in general

 

The more plugins the more CPU power that would be needed. So performance could potentially be adversely affected by the increase in plugins used.

 

Last edited: Jan 11, 2019 at 10:53 AM

Someone compiled a radom list of plugins and the amount of FLS slots they require, I have added some I tested

Steinberg Padshop - 1
Spectrasonics trilian - 1
Waves (Waveshell) 2
Waves Codex - 2
UAD -2
Roland TR 808-2
DBX160 - 2
Slate VMR - 2
FXpansion BFD3 - 2
Korg ARP Odyssey - 3
Steinberg Dark Planet - 3
BX20 - 4
ATR102 - 4
Kontakt -4
Maschine-4
SSL E Legacy - 4
API 2500 - 4
EMT 140/250 - 4
Fairchild 670 MKII - 4
LA-2A Grey - 4
Arturia ARP 2600 v3 - 6
Arturia Buchla - 6
Arturia DX7 - 6
Synclavier - 7
CMI - 8
Analogue Lab3 45


------------------------------------------------

 

I'd be willing to go through all of my plugins and get that info up. Only got around 700ish to go through ;)

Once I have to stop being loud this weekend i'll go into analytics mode.

 

So now we need more plugins!

 

Lol...the nanny filter.
I love audiosex..

@The Pirate
https://www.gearslutz.com/board/showpost.php?p=13733632&postcount=70

Am I correct to assume that the more powerful PCs will see a change from the FLS increase?

 

awesome. wonder how lets say presonus pulls it off with their internal plugins , they are so tighly integrated they use 0 slots. wouldn't it be cool if during startup it would wrap the 3rd party plugs and treat them as internal

 

Great news, I'm often hitting that limit.

Do you guys think whether the LTSB version will get that update as well?

 

They need to rewrite the code, its the least optimized daw regarding plugin management.

 

cool, microsoft finally trying to catch up with UNIX based systems like MacOS and Linux distros

 

Hi All

This is almost certainly because:
1. The plugins and host app are all compiled against the same version of the VC runtime
2. They are all, including the host, dynamically link the runtime.

So presonus can't do anything to help other plugins, but if the other plugins compile against the same version, and dynamically link that, they too will use zero slots (at least for the runtime part. They may still allocate FLS slots for other legit reasons)

Note that when the issue first came to the attention of Presonus, they were cool about it and went and did the work to free up as many FLS slots as possible. Kudos to them.

When the LTSC offers the 19H1 version of Windows, this fix will show up there. LTSB/LTSC is deliberately well-behind the mainstream releases and doesn't auto-update. That's why people use it. If you are using the LTSC, it won't auto-update, you'll need to do a complete reinstall once the 19H1 (or later) release becomes LTSC.

Hope that helps.

Pete

 

@Pete Brown Welcome to the Forum Pete.Did you decide to leave Gearlost or just passing by to expand on this?

 

Thanks. Mostly just popping in to answer questions on this. But I have an account here, now.

Pete

 

If you're having a problem with FLS, irrespective of this update, you might be having a problem with too many, too heavy, or external plugs.

The pirate's sig 'The problem is not the problem. The problem is your attitude about the problem.' is somewhat relevant here.

 

There is an issue where you don't get back FLS slots after a plugin is removed. My Cubase 7 starts up with 105 free slots, after going through about a third of my plugins, and removing them, I have around 70 free slots left.

Some plugins, like from iZotope, are loading between 6 and 8 on the first load but only unloading 4 when being removed.

Checking my Virtual Mix Rack from Slate uses 36 slots. Removing the plug takes away 2 slots, adding it back uses 2 slots. But the other 30ish slots remain in limbo.

Without even using a lot of unique plugins you can easily hit the 128 slot limit.

 

Last edited: Jan 13, 2019 at 2:39 AM

That's really only somewhat true. One Arturia plugin uses 45 slots. Some effects use between 10 and 20 slots, and it seems the majority of plugins use around 2-4 slots. Most DAWs use between 20 and 40 slots. With a max of 128 per-process, you can run out pretty quickly if you're an in-the-box type of person.

Yes, I've seen this. You can run out of slots just by trying out a bunch of stuff.


Anyway, I updated my DAW PC here to 18312. If you use the FLS checker plugin, it will continue to report 128 no matter how many plugins you load. So just to be sure, I wrote a little C++ console app to show how many slots are available. It's running under the debugger here so a few slots are used:



Code



FLS Checker VST output with a bunch of plugins loaded in Bitwig Studio: