Unbelievable, why are there no VST managers?

[EnGee]

For years, I've tinkered around with my own database system for organizing instruments, presets, and song ideas. I've always wondered how much a market there would be for it if I polished it up and started selling it. Surely almost every producer/songwriter must have the same problem that I do: thousands of presets, loops, samples, song snippets, lyric snippets, MIDI clips, miscellaneous production-related notes, etc. scattered all over the place, with no easy way to organize or search through it all. Any thoughts?

There are two problems in my case that limit the advantages of organizing the whole lot! First, using more than one DAW. Second, How to judge a preset (or any piece of Midi/Audio ..etc).

The first problem arises when changing the main DAW, so staying with one DAW can solve some parts of the mess.

The second problem is a very tiring. I spent a long time categorizing the presets of one synth (Blofeld), so that I know my favourites and also what to overwrite of the not so good presets. I made a spreadsheet for that but now after few months, I found some presets, that I marked very low, really a good fit for a song I'm working with!! So a nice preset doesn't mean it is nice for every piece. So, what the point marking all the presets

There are also presets that I created or modified, although, I begin to not really care about spending a long time in designing my presets especially from scratch! The reason is that every song or piece of music requires testing many sounds that fit musically. Sometimes, these sounds which I marked the worst ones, they fit perfectly in the mix! So in short, I stopped categorizing them!

The solution for me is to concentrate on the project or song I'm doing, and then gather all the notes (especially about the presets/synths/effects) in one single spreadsheet. Spreadsheet is easier to create or delete new columns although is not as efficient for big records as a database (properly designed), but using the hyperlink is very useful to open the folder of the song or project that supposedly contains all the materials and info. So, the solution for me is Project Oriented Organization (in the same rhyme of Object Oriented Programming )

[glokraw]

My Windows 7 64 bit pro has an inbuilt plugin manager. It forces the user (me) to manually download and install each and every plugin, thus ensuring I don't end with too many plugins. It also has a function to delete those that don't pass the first test.

I found a linux version of that manager some time ago.
Should be on every computer.
It even handles endianess issues

[andrew732]

There are two problems in my case that limit the advantages of organizing the whole lot! First, using more than one DAW. Second, How to judge a preset (or any piece of Midi/Audio ..etc).

Thanks for your thoughts on the issue. If you'd indulge me, I have a few comments and questions about what you've said.

The second problem is a very tiring. I spent a long time categorizing the presets of one synth (Blofeld), so that I know my favourites and also what to overwrite of the not so good presets. I made a spreadsheet for that but now after few months, I found some presets, that I marked very low, really a good fit for a song I'm working with!! So a nice preset doesn't mean it is nice for every piece. So, what the point marking all the presets

There are also presets that I created or modified, although, I begin to not really care about spending a long time in designing my presets especially from scratch! The reason is that every song or piece of music requires testing many sounds that fit musically. Sometimes, these sounds which I marked the worst ones, they fit perfectly in the mix! So in short, I stopped categorizing them!

I agree that being able to rapidly try many, many presets in the context of a song is much more valuable than relying on tags or notes. For me at least, this problem is essentially solved by MediaBay in Cubase, except for the "internal" presets problem that I mentioned in my previous post. I don't know if you're a Cubase user of if your DAW of choice has anything like MediaBay, but it can radically speed up the production process if you (like me) prefer to find presets rather than make your own.

The solution for me is to concentrate on the project or song I'm doing, and then gather all the notes (especially about the presets/synths/effects) in one single spreadsheet. Spreadsheet is easier to create or delete new columns although is not as efficient for big records as a database (properly designed), but using the hyperlink is very useful to open the folder of the song or project that supposedly contains all the materials and info. So, the solution for me is Project Oriented Organization (in the same rhyme of Object Oriented Programming )

My question is what do you mean by "supposedly contains all the materials?" What if you could do something like find a single sample, bassline, midi clip, etc. that works really well in the project and then tell the database to "find everything similar to this." Would that be useful to you? Would you trust the results that the database comes up with? Or would you prefer to manually search through "all" your materials and gather all the ones relevant to a project in one specific location? That sounded sarcastic, but I'm genuinely asking, because those are both perfectly valid approaches. I'm just trying to figure out if anyone else approaches things the way I do.

[EnGee]

I agree that being able to rapidly try many, many presets in the context of a song is much more valuable than relying on tags or notes. For me at least, this problem is essentially solved by MediaBay in Cubase, except for the "internal" presets problem that I mentioned in my previous post. I don't know if you're a Cubase user of if your DAW of choice has anything like MediaBay, but it can radically speed up the production process if you (like me) prefer to find presets rather than make your own.

I have Cubase Elements but it is not my main DAW. MediaBay is doing a good job organizing the audio and midi files. I always miss the midi audition in Cubase.

My question is what do you mean by "supposedly contains all the materials?" What if you could do something like find a single sample, bassline, midi clip, etc. that works really well in the project and then tell the database to "find everything similar to this." Would that be useful to you? Would you trust the results that the database comes up with? Or would you prefer to manually search through "all" your materials and gather all the ones relevant to a project in one specific location? That sounded sarcastic, but I'm genuinely asking, because those are both perfectly valid approaches. I'm just trying to figure out if anyone else approaches things the way I do.

I mean that the project folder should have all the information and materials (audio/midi) in case you want to replicate all in another DAW, or for the record.

Anyway, I believe it is all depends on the workflow of your current project/song. I usually start with my fav synths and drum kits, but many times I find it challenging to have exactly what I hear in my mind. In that case I either make a sacrifice and accept something little bit different or keep searching or trying to create/modify here and there trying to reach that sound.

The browser in my main DAW (in this case Bitwig) can help me locate some drums/percussion/effect audio sounds to use them in my beats. That's it! I don't use loops and the midi auditioning in Bitwig is as bad as in Live. All other sounds they are from my synths that I know only few of them well. However, the more I know my instruments, the easier for me to create or modify the desired sound. It also makes me depend less on the factory presets, but if there is a preset that I really like, I use it as it is. So, as you see, I try to balance between learning/experimenting new things and between using what I have.

[bookofthoth]

For years, I've tinkered around with my own database system for organizing instruments, presets, and song ideas. I've always wondered how much a market there would be for it if I polished it up and started selling it. Surely almost every producer/songwriter must have the same problem that I do: thousands of presets, loops, samples, song snippets, lyric snippets, MIDI clips, miscellaneous production-related notes, etc. scattered all over the place, with no easy way to organize or search through it all. Any thoughts from the KVR community on this?

I'd buy it !

It's a whole area of music production that's overlooked, how many organisers are there for other media production? Loads. Surely if it caught on, DAW's could use a specific file format to import results, or export to one they grasp. (I'm no programmer).

[Orbit-50]

Unfortunately, not many people would give two craps about a useful tool such as proposed. This is probably why there are none. It sucks that it has to be like that.

[aMUSEd]

Unfortunately, not many people would give two craps about a useful tool such as proposed. This is probably why there are none. It sucks that it has to be like that.

Yeah and when there was one that was cross platform and did so much more as well (Kore 2) it didn't get adopted enough for NI to see it as worth developing.

[Orbit-50]

Unfortunately, not many people would give two craps about a useful tool such as proposed. This is probably why there are none. It sucks that it has to be like that.

Yeah and when there was one that was cross platform and did so much more as well (Kore 2) it didn't get adopted enough for NI to see it as worth developing.

Yup.

[andrew732]

My understanding of Kore is that its organization capabilities were limited to tagging samples and presets, which makes it more or less the same as Cubase MediaBay or the browsers in most samplers in that regard. Like Orbit-50 said, if many people were unsatisfied with that, I guess there would be a market for more sophisticated apps, but apparently the vast majority of people are content with their own ad hoc system and/or whatever is built in to their sampler or DAW.

[aMUSEd]

My understanding of Kore is that its organization capabilities were limited to tagging samples and presets, which makes it more or less the same as Cubase MediaBay or the browsers in most samplers in that regard.

No you can also organise plugins any way you want in it, as well as organise your presets by plugin. Unlike media bay though it works in any host so you have an organised and unified collection of plugins and presets, all setup with hardware control, in any host.

[bungle]

Unfortunately, not many people would give two craps about a useful tool such as proposed. This is probably why there are none. It sucks that it has to be like that.

Yeah and when there was one that was cross platform and did so much more as well (Kore 2) it didn't get adopted enough for NI to see it as worth developing.

Lets be fair here, it got adopted a lot, however the kore packs did not sell well enough, NI have wanted to create a captive audience eco system for a long time, they still haven't worked out how to do it outside of Maschine+Expansions, they are trying stems for DJs, which are catching on like a lead balloon (Or is that lead remix deck after them trying to eco system remix sets hahaha) and they would have tried Kontrol add ons, unfortunately their hardware/software is so far out of date now it is starting to be farcical.
Kontrol will be the way of Kore soon because they cant compete with the speed of development of inmusic, Maschine hasn't had a real update since v2 came out years ago and their DJ hardware is in joke town now that Pioneer and Denon are dropping better controllers that don't even need a computer but will work with a computer, for pretty much the same price as NI.
I am an NI fan, but they are in no mans land right now !!

[Orbit-50]

Unfortunately, not many people would give two craps about a useful tool such as proposed. This is probably why there are none. It sucks that it has to be like that.

Yeah and when there was one that was cross platform and did so much more as well (Kore 2) it didn't get adopted enough for NI to see it as worth developing.

Lets be fair here, it got adopted a lot, however the kore packs did not sell well enough, NI have wanted to create a captive audience eco system for a long time, they still haven't worked out how to do it outside of Maschine+Expansions, they are trying stems for DJs, which are catching on like a lead balloon (Or is that lead remix deck after them trying to eco system remix sets hahaha) and they would have tried Kontrol add ons, unfortunately their hardware/software is so far out of date now it is starting to be farcical.
Kontrol will be the way of Kore soon because they cant compete with the speed of development of inmusic, Maschine hasn't had a real update since v2 came out years ago and their DJ hardware is in joke town now that Pioneer and Denon are dropping better controllers that don't even need a computer but will work with a computer, for pretty much the same price as NI.
I am an NI fan, but they are in no mans land right now !!

Very good point.

[Mystic]

I'm more interested in a manager that will tell me when a VST or Library is updated. My collection of plugins and Kontakt libraries has gotten so large in the past 5 years that it's impossible to know when one has been updated. Sure, I get emails but I get emails from like 100 companies a day so looking through them has to be done quickly and when most are advertisements, I do happen to miss the occasional update notice.

PluginUpdate looked interesting but they've not done anything with it in years by the looks of things plus that wouldn't include Kontakt libraries.

[HardSinc]

Put them in folders based on type within your VST folder.

Cubase and Sonar and Samplitude have built in managers.

Why people need 6 million plug ins is beyond me anyway Less is better.

[Orbit-50]

Why people need 6 million plug ins is beyond me anyway Less is better.

Dude, I do need 6 million plugins. You don't understand.