Reaper and Ableton are crashing when i load more that 6 different plugins made with SynthEdit

Question

I have like 10 plugins made with SE, and when I load more than 6 it just asks for modules....

This is a similar error to the one when you do not run the DAW with admin privileges.

The DAW just crashes and asks for SE modules.

If I load 6 instances of the same plugin it works fine!

It seems it only crashes if different VSTis....

Answer 1

Microsoft Windows has a limit on how many dlls (dynamic link libraries) it can load (a VST plugin is a dll, also SEM modules are dlls).  Last time I checked my XP machine could load approx 300 dlls. So, if you have a plugin with 50 SEMs, that’s 300/ 50 = 6 instances you can load before Windows is overloaded.

Workarounds:
- Combine SEMs, A single SEM can hold several modules, you can ask the developer to bundle related SEMs together. (e.g. all SE’s patch-mem modules are combined into one SEM).
- Use a 64-bit operating system. I understand that when you run a 32-bit DAW on a 64-bit system, that 32-bit program has as much resources available as if it had a whole 32-bit system to itself, even if other 32-bit programs are running (they each get their own ‘space’).