Should I keep installed unused versions of my VST's?

[Guitar Binge]

I own many VST's (effects & intruments) & unfortunately at first instead of learning how to use the ones I had, I added/bought more. I know there are great inexpensive & free VST's. I have a couple cheap packs from 'Thenatan' & 'WA Production'. They sometimes can be buggy but mostly work, though I don't use them often. Is it suggested to keep these installed, unused VST's or uninstall them??? As of now, there are some that show up in my DAW lists that I don't use but it's not bothering me.

[Guitar Binge]

When installing VST's I always just let everything be "checked" to install; so in my DAW's list of VST's there are multiple versions of the same VST. (ex. 32bit & 64bit)... Should I just keep them all installed? What about the other versions of the plugins that aren't ".VST"; should I keep them installed? I don't think there hurting anything

[martiu]

keep them if you have old projects that you want to revisit, some of them may have unused for a long time plugins

[Vortifex]

I remove the AAX versions as I'll never use them and they're just taking up space on my hard drive. I also never keep VST2 and VST3 versions, only one or the other. Don't see the point in keeping both.

[Examigan]

I agree with Vortifex about AAX.

If I am helping beta test a plugin, they may want to know which type (VST2 or VST3) I may have had an issue with. So for those cases, I install both of those.

[pdxindy]

I uninstall anything I don't use. I also uninstall stuff I might use once in a while. I prefer less.

[mixyguy2]

it's not bothering me.

There's your answer. Why waste time uninstalling something if having it installed isn't bothering you?

If I'm really sure I'll never use something, I uninstall and delete. If it's something I know I may use but that use will be rare at most, I'll probably uninstall but not get rid of. Everything else I leave alone for the same reason...it's not bothering me.

[Guitar Binge]

keep them if you have old projects that you want to revisit, some of them may have unused for a long time plugins

Very good call... I almost forgot... Thank you

[Guitar Binge]

I remove the AAX versions as I'll never use them and they're just taking up space on my hard drive. I also never keep VST2 and VST3 versions, only one or the other. Don't see the point in keeping both.

Okay, that sounds good. I'll look into removing/uninstalling the 'AAX's'.. I'm still new, so I'll research if there's a preference between VST2 &. VST3. If one is better than the other, and if there are both installed, which I should remove/uninstall

[Guitar Binge]

Isn't this basically a duplicate post? I just saw your other one asking the same thing.

Very true... My bad... It's crazy how that happened, I must've been very tired. lol.... Thanks for helping though

[Guitar Binge]

it's not bothering me.

There's your answer. Why waste time uninstalling something if having it installed isn't bothering you?

If I'm really sure I'll never use something, I uninstall and delete. If it's something I know I may use but that use will be rare at most, I'll probably uninstall but not get rid of. Everything else I leave alone for the same reason...it's not bothering me.

Good call. That's probably the route I'll take. Thanks

[jamcat]

On occasion I’ve downloaded some free stuff just because it was there. Every once in a while I’ll go through my plugins and wonder where the hell some of them came from, and uninstall all of those. Invariably, the plugins in scenario 2 are the same as the ones in scenario 1.

If I upgrade to a new version of a plugin, I will swap out all the old instances for the new version and then uninstall the old version.

There are also some plugins I have purchased in the past which have been replaced by better versions of the same thing. For example, Lindell Audio plugins that have been replaced with Universal Audio plugins. Of course I got the Lindell Audio plugins as a substitute for the UAD ones which weren’t available native when I got them. Those plugins stay.

Sometimes I’ll open an old song to discover I haven’t swapped out retired plugins yet, so it doesn’t hurt to keep them around for a while.

[swilow11]

It's more a workflow thing than anything else. I have a friend with worse GAS than me and he just leaves hundreds of random VSTs installed. He uses perhaps 20% of them.

Depending on how easy installation is, I often uninstall things I'm not currently using- for me, this reduces decision paralysis. I have V Collection and have maybe half installed. Also have Komplete Standard and about 1/3 installed. I've purchased many other synths, and have about 1/2 installed. If a product is installed, I feel obligated to use it- some sort of sunk cost fallacy kicks in- and this just leads to an endless treadmill of superficially learning multiple synths, so dumping installers onto my SSD for future use is clarifying for me.

There is good logic behind only installing the bare minimum you need for production. For me, I'm going to be upgrading my computer later this year and so the least amount of bullsh*tting around, the better.

[Guitar Binge]

Sounds good. Thanks for helping

[Ah_Dziz]

Outside of quickly demoing and uninstalling plugins, I do almost no housekeeping with my plugins. I have hundreds and hundreds of licenses and probably use less than 10% very regularly.

Having vegan my musical journey with all hardware , and quickly moving to a hybrid plug-in/hardware setup and now to an almost 1000% plug-in workflow, I'm still horrified by any step back towards having cool bits of unfinished music lost due to misplaced files, disks, and routing setups.

When I start with a new system, I try to make sure that everything I am using, have been using and may potentially be using are installed, but I'll often just skip entire chunks of software that I almost never use. If it's worth using, I'll remember it and then reinstall it.

So I guess I'm more into not installing unused stuff rather than uninstalling it. Storage is cheap enough and a large plugin menu isn't a problem for me. I could see it being neat to streamline my tools but I often need to revisit older work for new jobs that pay my bills.