A look at what VST plug-ins are and how to use them in both home and professional recording studios. Digital Performer includes hundreds of sampled virtual instruments, from acoustic guitars to brass and woodwinds to cover just about any musical style you can imagine. Also included are a host of virtual synth plug-ins, featuring MX4, DP's mega multi-synth. Thumpin' bass lines, sparkling leads, rich pads, and slammin' drums: they're all included. How do you scan your plugins in Mixcraft? What folder does your plug ins reside in? I have Sonar X3 in my system and the plug ins for that reside in a folder called Cakewalk/Vst/Plugins. Something like that. Sonar automatically creates this folder when you install it. You don't have to use it of course but I do. External plugins types VST VST2 VST3 VSTi you'll be able to have them in studio one pro or studio one artist if you have the external plugin/rewire plugin. In order to see them in your S1's browser you wan't to go to preferences locations plugins & vst's and there add the locations of the folders with your vst's.

VST stands for Virtual Studio Technology. There are three types of VST plug-ins:

• VST instruments: These plug-ins generate audio and are either virtual synthesizers or samplers. Many VST instruments emulate the appearance and sound of famous hardware synthesizers. Popular VSP instruments include Massive, FM8, Absynth, Sylenth 1, Reaktor, Gladiator, Vanguard, and Omnisphere.
• VST effects: Effects process audio instead of generating it. VST effects function like hardware audio processors, like reverbs and phasers.
• VST MIDI effects:MIDI plug-ins process MIDI messages and send MIDI data to other VST instruments and hardware.

VST Plug-ins

VST plug-ins can be used within a digital audio workstation, in programs like Pro Tools and Logic. They’re frequently used to emulate hardware outboard gear such as compressors, expanders, equalizers, and maximizers. You'll frequently find these distributed to emulate certain models of hardware; there's some for vintage compressors, and you'll frequently find effects that emulate vintage hardware (both in instrumental and stompbox-like effects).

Think of VST plug-ins as really affordable ways to make your home studio sound like a really expensive commercial operation.

VSTi Plug-ins

Aside from VST plug-ins, you'll also find VST-instrument or VSTi plug-ins. These can emulate really cool, but expensive, hardware (like Hammond B3 and Nord Electro). The quality of these VSTi plug-ins can vary from acceptable to really poor; it all depends on the quality of your system resources (RAM and scratch space on your hard drive, for example), and how well-sampled the instrument is. You also want to make sure that your VSTi plug-in offers true polyphonic content, meaning you can make life-like chords that don’t sound too artificial.

Quality

There are thousands of plug-ins available. Some only take a few hours to produce and are free, but the quality is terrible. Some are made by huge companies and sound amazing, but are expensive. VST plug-in developers try to recreate the sound as closely as possible, but the original instrument is probably always going to sound better than the plug-in. You might be trying to get the rich, full-bodied sound of an organ, for example, but who owns an organ? No one has access to every type of instrument, so a plug-in will have to do. The good news is that VST plug-in technology is improving, so quality can only get better with time.

VST Plug-in Standard

Created by Steinberg, a German musical software and equipment company, the VST plug-in standard is the audio plug-in standard that allows third-party developers to make VST plug-ins. Users can download VST plug-ins on Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux. The vast majority of VST plug-ins are available on Windows. Apple’s Audio Units are standard on Mac OS X (it’s actually considered a competing technology), and Linux lacks commercial popularity, therefore few developers create VST plug-ins for the operating system.

Where to Find VST Plug-ins

There are thousands of VST plug-ins available, both commercially and as freeware. The Internet is flooded with free VST plug-ins. Home Music Production and Bedroom Producers Blog have robust lists of VST plug-in recommendations, and Splice and Plugin Boutique also offer a ton of free plug-ins.

As shown some time ago for the Mac, today’s tip shows you how to organize your plug-ins on windows, in order to find and load them quickly/cubase-vst-plugins-reverb.html. into Blue Cat’s PatchWork or MB-7 Mixer.

As you will see, It’s no rocket science, and this will greatly improve your experience and reduce the time to load your plug-ins.

Spending Too Much Time Looking For Plug-Ins?

How Do You Organize Your Vst Plugins Free

Some people have been asking for the capability to load the plug-ins directly from the menu instead of having to open an Explorer Window. While this may be added in the future to our software, be aware that it may never beat what you can already do today with the Windows Explorer or Finder, as you will see below…

How To

On Windows, whatever you do, your VST plug-ins folder will probably quickly look like a huge mess, unfortunately…

There is however a very simple way to overcome this issue and organize your plug-ins properly: it will just take you a few minutes!

To quickly access your plug-ins, without modifying the original install locations (for optimal compatibility), just do the following:
1. Create a new folder somewhere convenient on your system. For example in the ” My Documents” directory.
2. Label the new folder as “Plug-ins”.
3. Drag it into your Sidebar Favorites section to make it available as a shortcut there.
4. Go to your VST plug-ins folder.
5. Right click on each plugin you want and choose “Create shortcut” (multi-selection works too).
6. Move these shortcuts to your new folder, and create sub-folders to organize them.

Here you go! You can now access plug-ins quickly using the shortcuts, inside the appropriate folders:

VST Plug-Ins organized into subfolders, directly accessible from the Favorites Sidebar

Additional Tip: You can also choose to add several folders to the favorite bar instead of a single one, to access directly the mostly used plug-ins that you use most of the time.

One More Tip: It is possible to add a shortcut to the same plug-in in different folders, as it may be valid for several categories.

Not Fancy Enough? Add Some Icons!

Once you have properly organized the plug-ins thanks to shortcuts and linked to them from the favorites bar, you may want to add some colors to it and change the icons. You can set a different icon for each folder, and even for each plug-in:

Plug-Ins Folders with Custom Icons

With custom icons, it is even easier to find the plug-ins: a glance will suffice to pickup the right one!

Free Search Included!

How Do You Organize Your Vst Plugins Without

And one more thing… Did you know that you can then use the standard windows search feature to find the plug-ins? Just type in a name and you’ll get it instantly!

How Do You Organize Your Vst Plugins Download

VST Plug-In Search Included !

How Do You Organize Your Vst Plugins Plugin

Conclusion

Simply using the Windows Explorer properly and taking the time to organize things will greatly improve the plug-in loading experience. There are even features that are not available in most host applications (how many do provide custom icons and search?).

Do you still need an included plug-in menu? Please discuss below!