StereoTool VST 2 blocking settings saving

[Kyle FM]

When installing StereoTool as a VST2 plugin in ProppFrexx causes the settings saving to hang the entire application for up to a minute.

Steps to reproduce:
1. Install the latest version of ProppFrexx and clean the config directory
2. Follow the regular mixer setup, click OK on everything
3. Download and install the latest VST2 (x64) on the StereoTool website (https://www.thimeo.com/stereo-tool/download/)
4. Go to the mixer channels. Select the StereoTool VST as "DSP 4" for the OUT channel
5. Go to the settings (F3) and just press "OK".

ProppFrexx will hang for 30 seconds up to a minute. Music will continue playing but if a track is finished during the hang no new track will be started until the general settings window is closed and ProppFrexx is no longer hanging.

I was able to reproduce this on 3 servers and 2 laptops:
* Operating Systems: Windows Server 2022, Windows 10 & Windows 11
* CPU: AMD EPYC, AMD Ryzen 5, Intel Core i7
* RAM: 16 GB, 32 GB or 64 GB
* Settings are stored either on a NVME (in AppData) or a Samsung Datacenter SSD. No network drive at play here, everything is available locally.

This issue has been going on for multiple version (since we started using StereoTool almost 8 months ago). It is not something new but didn't bother us much in the past, as our machines were running without a lot of modifications to the settings.
But lately we have been getting new VoiceTracking users that each need to have an account, so we need to save the general settings more often. I need to really be careful with timing to save the settings to prevent silence on our broadcast. So it is actually quite problematic and should hopefully be fixed.

Thank you for looking into this.

[Kyle FM]

The "OnDetectSilence" event is also thrown after the settings have been saved, even when no silence had occurred.

[radio42]

I will take a look, but I guess, that the issue originates in the VST. StereoTools has nearly 1000 params, which have to be saved and the interface must run in the UI thread.

[radio42]

Found the issue - ST now has over 7000 parameters; and saving almost 7000 params just takes too long - I'll optimize that and will in a next version store the VST parameters differently and more compact, which will drastically speed things up. I'l let you know once done.

[Kyle FM]

Thanks Bernd! We really appreciate!

[radio42]

A fix is in preparation!

[radio42]

Fixed in v4.4.3.0!