I have moved Halion libraries to an external SSD some time ago. Today I have opened Steinberg Download Manager and saw updates to sounds. I have installed these updates.
I can see now that some libraries are installed to the default location (/Libraries/Application Support on macOS) and some are still on the external SSD (probably, they were not updated).
This happened to libraries “Halion Sonic Factory Selection” and “Sonic Selection”.
Screenshot is attached. You can see on the screenshot that some libraries are now in the default location /Library/Application Support, some are (I don’t know why) are in the Downloads folder (/Volumes/T7-APFS/Extra/Downloads/Steinberg) and some are in the location where I moved them before (/Volumes/T7-APFS/VSTi/Steinberg).
I have also just noticed that there is a setting in the Steinberg Library Manager that sets the Default location, and I have set it to the external SSD (/Volumes/T7-APFS/VSTi/Steinberg) long time ago. Apparently, Download Manager does not react to this setting, so there is a mismatch between these two apps.
If the Download Assistant was a human being he/she would be fired.
Avoid like the plague and download directly from Steinberg’s Support/Downloads page.
Just use Explorer or Finder to move the .vstsound files from wherever they are to wherever you want them. Double+Click on any of the .vstsound files and it will launch the Library Manager which will then register every sound library it finds in that location plus any sub-folders.
Not in my experience. It has always downloaded stuff into whatever location I have it set to download stuff into. Never once has it done anything different.
Experience is all we have make our judgements. As always, Your Mileage May Vary. I’m not disagreeing with you, but in MY own experience, and judging by the experience of @dmitry-kabanov, the Download Assistant doesn’t always work as expected. And in my personal experience, it has never worked as expected, and let’s face it, it’s a simple enough task.
EG As I’m writing this, I opened the DA:
@raino I just pressed “Move” inside the Library Manager for these two librarys (Factory Content and Sonic Selection), and it seems that it worked. Managing each single file with an undecipherable name is too much micromanagement for me.
I will agree partially with @Googly_Smythe. I will not stop using it but I would say that the usability of these infrastructural programs is very-very far from perfect. I hope that technical staff from Steinberg checks this forum from time to time. I work as a software developer and I struggle with these programs every time I use them. And yes, the Download Manager could be a bit faster, in spite of being written presumably in Java.
Just two things out of top of my head:
I had to modify some XML file to change the download folder path to an external SSD as I have decided that I don’t want to keep ~30GB of downloaded files from Steinberg on the internal SSD (apparently, software developer do not think about people using laptops with crazy expensive storage).
I have two libraries, LoFi piano and Novel piano, that I have obtained at the same time from Steinber (they were giveaway sometime in 2021). LoFi piano appears in the list of my products, but Novel piano does not. Somehow, it is still in the library manager.
Regarding the above bug, I think, it would be better if just every library has an associated path and always updates its files in this path. Then the Download Manager just asks for a folder path once, and then the Library Manager keep it.
Yeah, that is the way to do it if you’ve only got a couple of libraries to register. But for a large number it’s easier to register them in bulk like I described. Also you don’t need to know which libraries aren’t already registered, they can be mixed in with the registered libraries and it will all sort out.
That sounds odd. I use an external drive for all my downloads, including Steinberg stuff and I just selected the path like normal.
The Download Manager & Library Manager really are 2 separate tools for different tasks. The only thing the Library Manager really does is take stuff from the internet and download it to where you want on your Computer, it doesn’t care how the stuff it downloads gets used. It’s the moving company. And the Library Manager has nothing to do with downloading anything. It’s job is to keep track of where your content is stored - which may be in a single central location or scattered across multiple drives. There have been requests over the years to combine them into one unified tool.
@raino I have downloaded a lot of stuff to ~/Downloads, and then I have decided that keeping 30+ GB of some unused stuff on an internal SSD is too much waste. As there were no way to move downloads in the Download manager (I haven’t found, at least), I had to move manually and modify the XML file.
I didn’t get it about the libraries. Halion Factory and Sonic Selection are spread in 30-40 .vstsound files. For me, it was easier to press Move two times.
You can point the Download Assistant to a different directory on some external disk, via the Settings menu and it doesn’t touch your ~/Downloads anymore.
