My poor aging XP installation is a pain in the arse. It’s starting to die a terrible death. It’s slow. Blue screens. I haven’t reinstalled in 18 months… all because I have so many VSTi, and I don’t have the time to spend literally a week getting my software music setup to what it was before. It’s actually more productive to cope with the unstable OS. D-day is approaching, and this is an emotional issue.
I’ve got so many VST, and I’m scared that I’ll miss something and make a lot of my RNS files useless.
What I was wondering was, is there anything out there that can manage your VST collection. Either store them as a list to compare with your new installation, or at least do the list! (with the version numbers perhaps)
That way, I know exactly what the computer thinks I have VST wise, and I can begin the slow process of matching my new list with my old list.
Anyone got any suggestions about the best way to deal with it?
press windowskey - R to open the ‘run program’ dialog, type ‘cmd’ & hit enter.
in the dosbox type the following always followed by enter:
[b]c:
cd \program*[path to your vst directory][/b]
once you’re inside the right directory type:[b]
dir /b /n /on /s *.dll >plugins.txt
[/b]
you have now created a file ‘plugins.txt’ within the vstdir with a list of all dll’s inside. the dll’s in subfolders are listed too.
of course you won’t have any of your dx plugins listed in there.
Some kind of management inside Renoise would be great as well with the main focus on ability to rename (actually alias) and group VSTis. There is the possibility of renaming the actual DLL’s but that makes .rns’ with VSTi even less portable. What I find troublesome is the lack of imagination of the VSTi developers when trying to come up with a name for their generators. Calling a synth 303 isn’t very handy (especially when its sound doesn’t even resemble a 303) and when two plugs are called the same, there’s a name clash and only one is loaded. What I’m after would be the ability to load both and distinguish them by renaming the the title to e.g. include the authors name, like “B. Serrano 303” without altering the actual DLL’s name. This way an .rns will work from computer to computer if they in fact do have the same plugins installed. Well, how could a song exists with two different “303s” then? Well, the actual DLL’s are bound to be very different from each other beyond their name so identifying them by MD5 sum for example could work.
Directory Lister lets you list all or selected files you have in selected directories on your hard disk, cd-rom, floppy and wherever you want into text or html file.
not sure how big your vst collection is and if you have a seperate drive you can store things… but maybe copying the whole bunch? or zip it first… A lot of them work without needing to reinstall…
But this might be a great opportunity to clean up your vst folder
Not a good idea, I got a faulty DX-wrapper I just couldn’t identify and decided to go for a clean install instead, re-installing VST’s as they appear as “missing”.
Making the txt is a good idea, but knowing the .dll-names doesn’t always help. Trust me. I’d have to go for the notepad-suggestion, take a couple of hours, go through every VST and VSTi you have and write down what you actually use. I had tons of useless plugins, and finding the right tool is actually much easier now.
damn man that is going to be hard!
i do not envy what you might have to go through!
i have a 950mb vst folder from my previous install,
i’m kinda scared to do anything with it cuz i know
for a fact that if i gave renoise the address to it
there would be error after infinite error +2.
(i would bet everyone knows what i’m talking about. Total pain in the Ass!!!)
-i would just delete it, but i cant help the feeling
there might be something in there i still want but forgot about.
So if there was some type of vst managing software it would be heaven for this type of situation!
i remember using some vst program for trying to
figure out what was wrong with a vst,
i dont know if it would help this situation.
i’ll dig it up an report back if it would be of any value to this.
oh yeah! i do know that if:
(#1) all those vst’s were actually hardware components,
(#2) i had enough space to set up everyone of them, (patch, midi & powercables)
(#3) everything worked…
(#4) an the roof of the building was caving in…
i would fix the roof, cuz that building would be the place i grew old an eventually died in!
D-day is approaching, and this is an emotional issue.
