Hey taktik, unless I messed up something but it seems that Renoise is indeed supporting C:\Program Files\Common Files\VST3 while it does not support e.g %LOCALAPPDATA%/Programs/Common/VST3/ which is supposed to be an official path from their documentation here: Plug-in Locations - VST 3 Developer Portal (steinbergmedia.github.io).
It is quite annoying that it does not support such path, but I would also point out that when we are developing VST3 plugins, it is even more a pain that we can’t specify a custom folder, as we need to copy our plugins to fixed folders (and in the current case, an administrator folder) or to link our plugin specifically (not great frankly).
I would really appreciate that there is an option for adding custom VST3 folders similar to the option we have for VST2. Respecting a spec is a good thing, but it would be so more user (developer) friendly to allow other options as well!
That’s interesting. According to the docs, %LOCALAPPDATA%/Programs/Common/VST3/ is meant for development use cases, while C:\Program Files\Common Files\VST3 is the actual default for all VST3 plugins on Windows. All VST3 plugins that I use get installed in that directory, including plugins I build from source from other developers, and that has been the case for as long as I’ve been using VST3 plugins. I don’t understand the purpose or the benefit of having a separate development directory, and I feel there is no benefit at all (from my very basic and limited experience developing plugins).
You don’t need to run with administrator rights your development/deployment or to create a symbolic link from the administrator folder. When I was developing VST2 plugins, I could launch Renoise and debug my plugin from Visual Studio directly on my local folder. I can’t do that with the current VST3 setup in Renoise. Adding a list of folders (or reuse the existing one) as we have for VST2 would be a minor change, but would greatly facilitate on-going development of a VST3 plugin.
+1 for custom path support for vst3
Im using a portable setup wherever i can (cause its just better, much much easier to maintain etc), i get the default path is in common folder but please, add support for custom folder, it works perfectly in reaper (with Surge xt for instance). Thanks !!!