Ableton external VST devices cannot be found on tracks after resetting preferences

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mitrue
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Joined: Fri Oct 14, 2022 2:15 am

Ableton external VST devices cannot be found on tracks after resetting preferences

Post by mitrue » Mon Mar 27, 2023 2:37 pm

Hi guys,

I have a problem with Ableton Live (currently using version 11.2.11) which I try to describe below.

First of all, Ableton crashes quite often. In my project I have a lot of tracks (300+ at the moment), so it may be CPU/memory related project, but anyway, this is not a main issue.

When Ableton crashes, just restarting is usually good enough to make it work correctly again. However, sometimes it goes worse: sometimes I cannot open my project anymore - for example because it crashes again every time after start and or because it freezes forever after starting.
When this happens, way to make it work again is to reset Ableton's preferences. And by resetting I mean deleting Preferences.cfg from the /Users/username/AppData/AppData/Roaming/Ableton/Live 11.2.11/Preferences (on Windows).
When I do this, I am able to open my project again. BUT: after resetting all my EXTERNAL VST plugins cannot be found (as devices on tracks and in Ableton in general). Which make sense, since I am storing my plugins in a custom folder, and resetting preferences also resets my settings regarding where to look for my plugins. However, when I set correct folder again in Audio settings and perform rescan (so the plugins are again available in Ableton), they still cannot be found ON TRACKS. As a result, I have to remove a device from the track and load it again, and because of that I loose all the settings for that device.

Did anyone encounter similar problem and may have a solution or a workaround?
For start, I'm thinking about maybe making frequent backups of the Prferences.cfg file itself, so next time I encounter this problem I can use previously working file instead of deleteing it completely.
I also wonder if the problem would go away if I was using default folders for VST plugins (will check).
I'll also try to upgrade my hardware and maybe to reorganize my project so it does not use so many tracks, but do you have any ideas why this is happening and how to solve it?

And as a bonus questions:
What is the MAXIMUM number of tracks you usually work with?
Are you working on Windows or Mac? Do you have a knowlege if maybe Mac version of Ableton is more stable?

Kind regards,
Dawid

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