How do you manage your whole production setup?

[martar1994]

I had 400+ plugins, lost license keys, Kontakt libraries slowly eating my SSD, and old projects where I couldn't figure out which plugins were missing. The usual mess.

Ended up building a studio manager app for it called ProducerGrid. It scans all your plugins (AU/VST/VST3/AAX/CLAP), lets you open any of them standalone without your DAW, tracks which ones have updates, stores your license keys and serial numbers, and can scan your Logic/Ableton/FL Studio/Cubase projects to show you exactly which plugins are used where.

Also handles sample libraries and presets, so you can actually see where your disk space is going and find sounds without loading up a full session.

Free to try, no signup: https://producergrid.com

Curious what other people use to keep things organized, or if most of you just live with the chaos.

[AsPeeXXXVIII]

if most of you just live with the chaos.

Don't know about most, but I do.

[jancivil]

I don't experience anything like chaos.
I'd bet there is some kind of market for this and I believe it'd be found here but I can't relate. I've been at this for 20 yrs+ and can't stand squalor for long. I don't have 400 even counting all the things that are 1 in usage but on disk are like 9 or 10.

For example: I remember once in recent memory I revisited a project, not that old of one and the Cubase project was missing most of what was plugged into it; Cubase indicates specifically what, and I knew right away what the issue was, I had forgotten that at that time a suite of plugins had been updated to Apple Silicon-ready but the VST3s were yet to be. I had a lot of VST2.4 taking up space and deleted all but a couple I knew I needed still. They were all downloadable and installable from one location.

I haven't had occasion to care about what plugin appears where, in itself. The vast majority of plugins plug into VE Pro and most of those use iLok so there's no mystery at all. I did notice that NI is not showing serial numbers where they always have the other day, but the chances I'll need to see it is slim-to-none.

[wadamek]

The app looks really cool but I personally believe it's better to have fewer tools but actually master them. I find myself using a handful of plugins constantly and they meet 99% of my needs. Mostly Ableton stock plugins, the kHs suite and a few other specific plugins and I feel like I don't need anything else.

[teilo]

People who are producers rather than collectors do not tend to have this problem.