Organizing VST/Effects Plugins

[Bobby Thistle]

Greetings...  I have started doing a cleanup on my hard drives, getting rid of stuff that I’m no longer using, and would like to include a lot of vst and plugins that I don’t want anymore.  I would also like to get all the rest of my vst instruments and plugins that I’m keeping more organized, putting them in one or two folders which would put them all together instead of them residing all over my drives.

Could someone show how I would do this so that it won't cause havoc within Cakewalk?  It would sure be appreciated... thanks in advance.

[Glenn Stanton]

try to keep your plugins into "standard" locations and then make sure those locations are in your CW plugin scanner directory list. 

almost all plugin installers (and install instructions) will want to  place plugins here:

C:\Program Files\Cakewalk\VSTPlugins
C:\Program Files\Common Files\VST3
C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\VST3
C:\Program Files\Steinberg\VstPlugins
C:\Program Files (x86)\Steinberg\VstPlugins

any number of plugins will default to the Steinberg folders... so acceptance is ok... ?

then C:\Program Files\Cakewalk\Shared Utilities\Internal (Channel tools and some older CW plugins)

plus maybe the %localappdata% directory one (not sure what was put there, not by me ? )

 

[Xoo]

1 hour ago, Glenn Stanton said:

plus maybe the %localappdata% directory one (not sure what was put there, not by me ? )

That's a newish VST 3 spec one so CbB puts it in by default (I hate it by the way :-)).

[Andres Medina]

An alternate way to organize (option 1)

Keep everything as it is, as you can lose backwards compatibility with older projects if you delete those plugins, AND use the exclude option to get out of view your older plugins.

You won't have to move plugins in C:/ or anything.

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An alternate way to organize (option 2)

Organize your plugins in a meaningful way outside CW, in your hard disk - i.e I created a "Plugins" folder in C:/ to consolidate all plugins in one place (when possible)

Rescan plugins in CW.

[John Vere]

Just to be clear.  Cakewalk doesn’t care we’re the plug in is in regards to old projects as long as it is scanned and on the list. Example is I use multiple computers and the various plug ins are always going to be in completely different folders on each. Those projects all open and work just fine. 
So feel free to move VSTs around as long as you place them in a folder that Cakewalk scans. My scan path has only 4 places. 
And yes use Excluded to get rid of plug ins you no longer use. It’s easier than deleting them Most dll files are tiny so it’s not a storage issue unless the unwanted instruments have large libraries attached to them.