Reference Guide

895
Organizing plug-ins
Mixing
Organizing plug-ins
Once you have more than a few plug-in effects and/or soft synths installed on your computer, you
might want to organize the way they appear in the various plug-in and synth menus that you use.
The Cakewalk Plug-in Manager is a powerful tool to organize your plug-in menus. Open the Plug-in
Manager by using the Utilities > Cakewalk Plug-in Manager command, and display the Plug-in
Manager’s help file by pressing F1.
Even if you don’t use the Plug-in Manager, SONAR now automatically organizes all DX and VST
plug-ins into a default plug-in menu layout called Default – All Plug-ins. If you select the Plug-in
Layouts > Manage Layouts option from a plug-in menu, the Plug-in Manager opens and
automatically populates the Plug-in Layout area with the Default Layout, which produces a solid
starting point for customizing layouts.
VST plug-ins are organized in menus according to the file folder structure in which they reside on
your hard disk.
VST configuration
SONAR automatically scans your VST folders for new plug-ins on startup, registering any
unscanned VST plug-ins so that they become available in SONAR’s plug-in menus. You can turn off
automatic scanning in Edit > Preferences > File - VST Settings by clearing the Scan For VST
Plug-ins On Startup check box.
There are two places you can configure your VST plug-ins manually: go to Edit > Preferences >
File - VST Settings or use the Cakewalk Plug-in Manager (Utilities > Cakewalk Plug-in Manager).
You can use Edit > Preferences > File - VST Settings to set general VST options, such as
choosing which folders to scan, but not specific options on individual plug-ins. Use the Cakewalk
Plug-in Manager to set options on individual plug-ins (use the Utilities > Cakewalk Plug-in
Manager command to open the Plug-in Manager). The following procedures explain how to use the
settings in Edit > Preferences > File - VST Settings. The Cakewalk Plug-in Manager has its own
help.
To configure global VST settings
•Go to Edit > Preferences > File - VST Settings.
To add a folder to scan
1. Go to Edit > Preferences > File - VST Settings.
2. Under VST Scan Folder(s), click the Add button to open the Browser for Folder dialog box.
3. Choose the folder you want to add, and click OK.
4. Repeat steps 1 and 2 to add any additional folders you might want to scan.
The new folders appear in the VST Scan Folder(s) list, along with any folders that were already in
the list.