Why is plugin management so terrible on Windows?

Discuss music production with Ableton Live.
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josefreak
Posts: 66
Joined: Fri Jun 07, 2019 8:16 pm

Why is plugin management so terrible on Windows?

Post by josefreak » Tue Jan 24, 2023 4:03 pm

It seems like every time I update to a new version of Live, my plugins don't appear in the Plugins group in the browser. This is just getting a bit ridiculous. Did something change again? The only way I'm able to load all my plugins on Windows, is if I create shortcuts to folders and put them in the folders that Live scans. Haven't we all been asking for a better way to point to plugin folders for 10 years? Why do they still have this limited set of folders that they scan on Windows? Most plugin vendors these days have their own installers that allow you to install them anywhere you want. I like to be able to install software on any drive that I want. We shouldn't be limited to where stand-alone software can be installed, yet Live has this old fashion way of just scanning the standard folders. I wish Ableton would get out of the dark ages and just let us add folders to the scan list like other daws. Geeze! Now I have to spend time debugging this issue.... again (yes, they had a defect not too long ago where they didn't scan folder shortcuts)

DunedinDragon
Posts: 104
Joined: Thu Jul 22, 2021 5:46 pm

Re: Why is plugin management so terrible on Windows?

Post by DunedinDragon » Wed Jan 25, 2023 10:31 pm

I've also never had a problem with plugins just using the standard VST2 and VST3 directories. I've even added a custom one for the Toontrack EZKeys which works fine and Ableton has always loaded all of my old plugins from back in the days of using Sonar Platinum just fine as that's where Sonar stored them as well since that's the normal convention. Most of the time I seldom worry about it since the vast majority of my plugins are managed by Kontakt and Native Access.

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