How do you organize your vst plugins folder?

[sidrat]

... which is why it would be great if VST plugs could hold metadata/tags. This is up to Steinberg.

yeah, but then i don't think i'd want steinberg (or the dev) to sort my plugs for me.

[blaster78]

no wonder you guys never get any music done... your too busy organising your folders....





that was a jk btw

[Meffy]

Um... "organize?"




Now there's an idea. Hm.

[djdorian]

My main organisational tip is to have a plugin folder (VST1) for good plugins and one for naughty (or untested) plugins (VST2). The good folder has stuff I know is rock solid, the naughty folder is stuff that is or may be more problematic. That way if an app starts to have problems I can narrow down the culprit more easily...

Great thinking. I used to do the same thing when I was an avid user of Buzzmachines within Buzz. Now that I've switched to Renoise as my primary host, I organize all VSTs by company.

And if a particular company produces many many plugins, like Waves or NI, I will categorize their plugins in subfolders (for VSTi and VSTfx) within the company folder.

[djdorian]

So that's how it works - poor approach I think. I thought it would have some way to turn plugins on and off - not move them completely.

What's your thinking on this? That it might be easier to simply have only those plugs showing that you're likely to use with a project? Never really thought about this. It would make the plug-in list much shorter, but how would one know which ones to turn on or off? Might be a lot of work if one had dozens, even hundreds, of plugs.

I think if there was a Plugin organiser that did the job properly it would be possible to have per app or per task configurations - possibly this would be easier with Audio units or DX plugins which are managed and can be turned on/off at a system level, than VST''s which depend on recursive folder scanning (hence the need to move them as a workaround).

That's why I think more hosts should support shotcuts/aliases to plugins like Live does - then it would be far easier to have per app or task configs without duplication of plugins which leads to extra space and confusion.

I AGREE WHOLEHEARTEDLY!

I wish more apps would support "relative folder paths" in addition to "absolute file paths" for storing VSTs. I also wish there were a VST designed solely for organizing VSTs!

[grymmjack]

the way i organize is simple;

simple???

well, i meant simple in that i dont use company names method, or use folders per 1 plugin, just by 'type' ... it's drill-down, so sometimes it can be cumbersome. _favorites really sped things up for me.

i guess in hindsight it doesn't look simple, but it is simple in my head.

[Debutante]

I rename everything I can. FL doesn't allow folders unless you do that Preset-to-Browser trick. But I don't even like having th browser open all the tim.

In my VST folder everything is grouped by manufacturer. I add small prefixes to plugins so that similar ones show up together since the FL scan lists them alphabetically. So all my choruses show up in a nice group and filters, distortion... so when I'm looking for a filter for a certain job, they're all there nicely clumped together (even if I forget about having one, I'll still see it) and all I do is go down the filter section of the list to see what works best.

I also have a "temp" file to try new plugins and a "Beta" file for such plugins. Plugins that come as executables have their own subfolder as well. I can save all my 'drop and play' dlls much easier that way.

[grymmjack]

no wonder you guys never get any music done... your too busy organising your folders....

that was a jk btw

steve you have a point though.. i spend a lot of time testing/evaluating/organizing both plugs and presets.. much of that time could be used more productively. part of my problem is i'm new to quite alot and so there is so much to see/hear/learn. cant speak for others, but i'm fascinated by 'possibilities'.

truly, i say i'm on some kind of mission to preemptively decide/sort WHAT to make music with and WHICH kind of sound each gadget helps produce

indeed it's easy to fall into the 'accumulator'/'collector' role especially ... must have them all, must try them all.. of course the pitfall then is each one rarely gets the attention or time it deserves. however, knowing this cant stop the sickness..

alas, definitely nothing to be proud of, but it's as good an excuse as any to keep entertaining my mind and ears with little effort required.

my name is rick, and i'm a plug-a-holic.

[dubbyah]

(n

[Debutante]

...

my name is rick, and i'm a plug-a-holic.

I know exactly what you mean. Alot of people say you should limit yourself, but in the beginning, I think that it's foolish to do. I've spent about a year and a half wading through countless plugins and I'm glad to say I've finally reached a point where I can just look at some plugins and at least identify that I definately don't want them.

Everyone NEEDS to be a collector in the beginning: it's the ONLY way to find what works for you. I'm a recovering plug-a-holic who's seriously cut down on the plug-ahol. I still have a pretty big VST folder but it's been trimmed furiously. My system works very well for me so I was never truly overwhelmed by its size even though at one point I was nearing 800 plugins . I'm down to about 200. But it took a long time to know why I didn't need any of the other 500+

[opia]

mine are organized in folders by gui color and knob size

[aMUSEd]

Also if you are using Ableton Live I find it's ability to make use of Shortcuts to plugins invaluable for organisation. More hosts should enable that - then everyone could just have one central VST folder and in each host just use the appropriate shortcut set.

that's a cool feature, but does it work well with plugs that have external dependencies and aren't just one enormous DLL file? for example, something with a .dat, like a GTG synth?

That's it's strength - unlike moving a VST using a shortcut enables it to retain it's dependencies (as the dll stays where it is) so it makes no diference where you put the shortcut. I have made a whole folder for Live plugin shortcuts grouped how I want and Live respects that structure - put a shortcut in say a "Reverbs" folder and that is mirrored in Live. The other huge advantage is instead of having to scan every single file in my VST folder it only scans the ones I have shortcuts to which drastically reduces startup scan times and reduces the risk of instability during scan.

[aMUSEd]

live has done this always or is it new in v5?

I don't know as I'm new to Live but it was great when I discovered it. I wish all hosts had this capability - I hope the devs who make Live appreciate what a great feature it is and don't change it.

[.jon]

Tassman and RMIV in their own folders, rest instrus under

C:/VSTi, each instrument in it's own subfolder as there's only ten of them, no need to categorize.

C:/FX, 27 subfolders by type, totalling hundreds of plugins. Currently in process of deleting the worst, I've got too many of each type and most of them are crap anyway. Not in a hurry, tho, as the classification works well. going thru plugins is boring.

C:/VSTi_exp for trying out new instruments, stuff goes usually to archive from there. Archive is zipped and added to DVD-RW and deleted from hd. VSTis can rot there for months before I even test them.

[arkmabat]

All the synths together in a "Synth" folder and the effects separated by company, unless only one and then put it in the respective folder (EQ, Delay, etc.)