How do you organize your vst plugins folder?

[shorn44]

I have a combination of both by type and by company. It's easy to organize the 'standard' plugs (delay, reverb etc.) into categories, but it changes when dealing with multieffects or FSU stuff. So for example the Kjaerhus classic stuff is all by type, but the Izotope stuff is all together (i.e. Trash is not in distortion folder). I can't help wondering if there's a better way.

[The Chase]

-zips (for the rars, zips and exe's)
-Active Plug-ins (for the dll's that I link to my host)

that's it . Inside the active plug-ins folder I give every VST it's own folder.

[blaster78]

i stick it all in the vst folder (unless the installer specifically makes a subfolder)

i was breifly organised ~last install, but its all gone to shit again.

not that it matters, i know what it all is.

[beej]

VSTPlugIns -->
/Synths
/Samplers
/FX
/Instruments (organs, clavs, epianos etc)
/Demos

Then in each of those, company subfolders if I own more than one plug by a given company...

[bduffy]

I found making a "Bundles" folder helped clean up a bit, but over time I've taken some of the more oft-used plugins out of there and had to place them back into the category stuff. The daily things like Vintage Warmer, that I use in almost every project, I installed to the root so I don't have to go Plugins/Bundles/PSP Audioware/Vintage Warmer. Some things I want as close to root as possible so I'm not f**king around with those menus jsut to insert my fave EQ/Compressor.

I do a mix of category/brand; sometimes the brand just seems easier to remember.

I place almost all synths in into a "Synths" folder, otherwise the list is just too damn long.

[O.L.T]

Organised, you must be kidding?

[PTV]

VST Plugins:

*Instruments:
Synths
Samplers
*Effects:
Comp/Mastering
Distortion
EQ-Pan
Filtering
FSU
Rev-Delay
*Midi Plugins & Tools

[Lagrange]

VSTPlugIns -->
/Synths
/Samplers
/FX
/Instruments (organs, clavs, epianos etc)
/Demos

Then in each of those, company subfolders if I own more than one plug by a given company...

To add to this I (being a total cabbage brain) rename the .dlls from lets say XYZ1010synth.dll to XYZ1010synth_PIANOSYNTH.dll (can also have company, emulation name etc). This is usefull if you have plugins with strange 'code like' names. You want to be careful with renaming plugins after you've already saved the project with the oringial .dll names (the app will not be able to find them).. So remember to go into each project and reload the renamed plug's!

[smart]

C:\Vstplugins\Company Name\

Then sometimes plugins will put stuff in a folder with the plugins name or whatever i dont care, I just like to sort by Dev because theres only a few devs I really use plugins from.

[aMUSEd]

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.

Inside those folders my approach is to have folders for particular purposes - so I have a folder for experimental plugins, a folder for emulations, a folder for romplers, a folder for mastering tools etc, but inside those broad categories I group by company if I have more than 3 from one company, or type (e.g eqs) if I don't. If I have a lot of plugins from one particular company, say NI (I have Komplete 3), I tend to like to group them all as one as I like the feel of having a suite.

[DevonB]

I have Instruments like this

betas
demos
drums
samplers
synths

I have effects like this

compressors
modulation
reverb
other
etc...

I separate into categories to make my life easier.

Devon

[Sascha Franck]

I do organize things by style and/or company.
The bigger bundles (in my case namely NI, Kjaerhus, Voxengo and smartelectronix) have their own "company" folder whereas most others are sorted by style.
In addition, I've got some plugin folder dedicated to EnergyXT, which I'm basically using for all SE creations and other plugins that I'm sure about they won't be available for MacOS any day soon (because that's gonna be my future platform and I'm gonna use my current music PC as a standalone host for them).
Further, I created one "inactive VSTplugins" subfolder, so they're installed and ready to go, should I need them for some older songs. They're just not important for any new things anymore.
And well, there's a few things sitting in my root VST directory, such as DR-008, GURU, AA reverb and the likes.
Ah well, and I've got a dedicated folder for WaveLab too. I keep a few mastering and audio editing plugins that I don't need for actual music making in that one.

After all, I'm not all that happy with this organisation, even if so far it somehow works. It's gonna be a true pain to recreate things after a system reinstall, at least for the plugins requiring some installer or authorisation.

[dubbyah]

for effects, subfolders of

delay
reverb
mangling and glitching
distorting and destroying
filter and pitch
gating and rhythmic
midi effects
unique/misc (for vocoders, audio to midi, other stuff that doesnt fit into the other categories)
utility and mastering
and then other folders of like, Pluggo, Mode, SpectralShapers, ect.

for synths,

i just have two folders, one is "experimental", one is just "instruments"

then I have various other folders for bundles like avox bundle, and stuff like that.

[Hybernation]

I don't bother with too much organization because in SONAR it all looks like one big nasty list anyway!

[eduardo_b]

...I can't help wondering if there's a better way.

There's many ways to do this, and I think it works best when you organize them by how you use them. It was much more difficult for me to organize mine until I removed the majority of them from the hard drive and stored them on discs.

What was left came down to a combination of type and sometimes brand name sub-folders for those that had sufficient numbers of plug-ins to justify this. So, things like dynamics, EQs and reverbs-delays have sub-folders, whereas filters and choruses are in the main folder.

In the end, it works as well for me as anything I've done before, but it might seem arbitrary and even difficult for others. And I did rearrange the current configuration a few times until it seemed to work (more or less) well enough.

The thing is, there are always exceptions because of plug-ins that don't fit one existing category. So the choices are: create a new category, decide what you're going to use the plug for and choose that category or just leave it in the main folder. These are the ones that screw up any attempt at organization.