Maybe a bit of a newbie question.
What is the best way to set Ableton up for using VSTs and Packages?
I have a couple of machines and would like to mirror setups, one has an external SD hard drive , I use some orchestral plugins/collections - which take up a fair bit of storage.
Any advice on trying to set up for efficient running and mirroring is much appreciated
Best way to set up for VSTs & Packages
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jestermgee
- Posts: 4500
- Joined: Mon Apr 26, 2010 6:38 am
Re: Best way to set up for VSTs & Packages
Assuming you are asking to share the drive between machines and have everything accessible when you connect the drive to either machine in the same way?
Are both systems the same OS?
Do you have sufficient installation licenses for the instruments/effects for the number of machines you have? You mention "couple of machines" so this is 2 machines or more? Some VSTs only offer 1 system at a time. Most decent ones allow 2 or more.
The recommendation is to always install software and the actual DLL files to your system drive and then choose to install the content library to the ext hard drive. The main reason to install the DLL to the OS drive is sometimes if you need to do an update to a VST if you update on one system but not the other the dll may be problematic if it appears on the system which has not yet updated for it.
You would need to do the installation of all this on both machines. It depends on each VST, some will allow you to install the DLL then link to a library, others (NI I am looking at you) require you to download and install the entire content library even if it exists already in the target directory.
For Lives own content library/packs and samples you just need to have the folders on your drive and point Live to the location.
Do things slowly and after each install I would do a test and make sure it works on each system.
If you are on Windows you will have to take note of the fact the USB drive path could change if you connect multiple drives in different orders that can make things difficult. There is software out there that can reserve a drive letter for a specific drive and that is what I would recommend. I believe Mac does not have this kind of issue as it uses volumes and not drive letter associations.
The
Are both systems the same OS?
Do you have sufficient installation licenses for the instruments/effects for the number of machines you have? You mention "couple of machines" so this is 2 machines or more? Some VSTs only offer 1 system at a time. Most decent ones allow 2 or more.
The recommendation is to always install software and the actual DLL files to your system drive and then choose to install the content library to the ext hard drive. The main reason to install the DLL to the OS drive is sometimes if you need to do an update to a VST if you update on one system but not the other the dll may be problematic if it appears on the system which has not yet updated for it.
You would need to do the installation of all this on both machines. It depends on each VST, some will allow you to install the DLL then link to a library, others (NI I am looking at you) require you to download and install the entire content library even if it exists already in the target directory.
For Lives own content library/packs and samples you just need to have the folders on your drive and point Live to the location.
Do things slowly and after each install I would do a test and make sure it works on each system.
If you are on Windows you will have to take note of the fact the USB drive path could change if you connect multiple drives in different orders that can make things difficult. There is software out there that can reserve a drive letter for a specific drive and that is what I would recommend. I believe Mac does not have this kind of issue as it uses volumes and not drive letter associations.
The
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Caleb Stone
- Posts: 10
- Joined: Fri Nov 10, 2017 12:55 pm
Re: Best way to set up for VSTs & Packages
Thanks, I'll have a look at the set up on each machine and do as you say.
Cheers
Cheers