Thanks YVan from Steinberg for the valuable info.
Also thank you Grim for the tests, interesting findings. Adding to that, according to Cakewalk, Sonar can handle at least 64 unique plugins. Fabio mentioned before that Cubase can handle a similar amount, so Grim's number (53-55) makes sense. I suppose the number may vary depending on the actual plugins you use. But Grim's method is very good, for comparing
Reaper seems to be doing well on this issue. Based on this workaround to increase (a bit) the amount of loadable unique plugins in Cubase:
Fabio Bartolini wrote: ↑Wed Dec 21, 2016 11:09 am
For the time being, those who have the problem can lower the amount of loaded dlls by moving some of the components out of the folder C:\Program Files\Steinberg\Cubase 9\Components. Of course, this applies only to the dlls which are not needed during use ...
euconadapter (support for Euphonix / AVID controllers)
hubservice (Steinberg Hub, without this, you will only see the Project Assistant, the Hub on the left will be missing)
omffilter (you will be unable to import OMF files)
video (all files, of course all video features will be missing)
vstconnect
...make sure to not remove any core component like Baios, the exception dumper, mediaservice, SamplerTack, stepdesigner and the VST files). This will allow for more plug-ins... not much more, but could help some of you.
Those extra features in Cubase are obviously reducing the number. And Reaper surely handles the issue much better, twice the number of plugins!?
Let's hope Steinberg developers can increase the number of unique loadable plugins within Cubase...