I am building a custom plugin / instruments collections.
Drag and drop the VST and VSTi in the folder structure i created.
Is there a way to sort these in alphabetical order once they are inside a collection (folder)?
If not can you make this an option in the next Cubase 15 Pro?
I make my custom lists by copying the main library, which is sorted, then subtracting the plugins I donāt want. Much easier that way.
I donāt think there is anything once youāre inside a folder, but, if youāve sorted by plugin name, you can drag and drop multiple plugins within one go, so the ones you selected could already be in alphabetical order. I think if you sort by other criteria (vendor or FX type), the plugins may also be in alphabetical order within the main sort category).
That said, while Iāve occasionally used this multi-select for this reason when Iāve got some new plugins with multiples from the same vendor, Iāve mostly just manually dragged individual plugins where I want them within my personal categories as Iāve gotten fairly hierarchical in my categorizations, and most of the time Iām only having to change things when I am adding new plugins, which arenāt likely to have potential for dragging and dropping multiples within the same category (an exception being Waves, where they tend to have 2 or more instances of each plugin, for example for mono, stereo, and mono-stereo, and sometimes ones within and without sidechains, too).
Thank you for your response and suggested workarounds.
Would still like to see a sorting feature, even within folders in the next cubase update.
I am a plugin addict
so too many vst and vsti to handle manually.
LOL on the plugin addict. I am as well. If you want some documentation on that, see:
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But the ātrickā on that front for me, after the first, somewhat painstaking, time of building a custom menu (when I already had thousands of plugins carried over from my decade and a half with SONAR), has been to religiously add each new plugin to my menus as soon as Iāve installed them.
The feature of Plugin Manager that can hide any that arenāt in the active menu, along with the being able to sort by developer/vendor, tends to make it pretty quick to add new batches of plugins, even if a particular product includes a bunch of new ones.
Also, in some of those cases where a product includes a bunch of new ones (e.g. an update to Ozone Advanced, where they have new plugin names that include the version number every time they do an update, instead of just using the same plugin name), I may be wanting to remove plugins from my menus in the same areas where Iām adding the new ones, both to make the menus less unwieldy and to avoid accidentally using older plugins instead of the latest versions.
Another (painstaking) approach:
Leave all plugins in one dedicated folder called āunapprovedā and try them one by one and see if they are worth it to be kept. Only then transfer them to a category of your choice (e.g. Spring Reverbs). If you donāt want to delete any of the unapproved ones put them all in a dedicated folder to rest.
Youāll be amazed how many unnecessary plugins keep you from making fast and educated decisions. It takes months to get there but itās worth it.
Anyhow, you do you - thatās just what I did.
This is kind of a āwhatever works for you (i.e. any individual)ā thing, but I have to say that, for me, this approach would be much more painful than the upfront categorization I do each time I add a new plugin. In particular, having, to use your example, all the spring reverb plugins in a (potentially massive) āunapprovedā folder would make it very difficult to audition the various spring reverbs in the context of a project to see which one(s) work best because plugin names arenāt always (are often not) sensible.
This may be a little less true with spring reverbs in that I think quite a few do actually have āspringā in the name somewhere, so using Cubaseās plugin search capability might help there, matching Magna Springs (Waves), SpringBox (PSP Audioware), and Rev SPRING-636 (Arturia), though it would miss Nexcellence (PSP Audioware ā they describe it as āa rich-sounding, spring reverb emulation inspired by and modeled after classic ānecklace-typeā reverb unitsā). It would also miss the reverbs that emulate multiple types of reverbs, including spring reverbs (though I typically donāt add those to my spring reverb subcategory of reverb anyway; there are only a few types of products that I put in multiple categories).
But, if I look at my current Exciters category, this is what I see, with the highlighted majority not using the word āexciterā (or even a portion of the word) in the plugin names:
I realize I can sometimes get to analysis paralysis with choices, but, just as an example in this category, I do actually end up using different exciters for similar functions on different projects, trying the various flavors out to see which works best in context. (In the past, Iād have also had PSP MixTreble in this list, but they donāt have a VST3 version, and that was one of my most painful cuts when I decided not to use VST2 plugins in Cubase 14 as it is one Iād used quite a bit.)
This is one reason I kind of hate creative plugin names.
In fact, it was mostly that sort of thing that led to my initially painstakingly setting up detailed, hierarchical menus. I found Iād sometimes totally forget to try out a plugin that might actually be perfect for a specific use simply because Iād totally forgotten what its name was (or maybe saw a plugin name but couldnāt for the life of me remember what its function was).
Hi @rickpaul ,
yes, thatās just my way to do it.
I should add that I not only tested each plugin - I also compared the plugins and documented the process which really helped me.
You are right, though. Plugin names can be misleading. Moreover, one plugin might fit into more than just one category. Thatās when I simply duplicate them into multiple folders if they serve more than just one purpose. If plugins have a querky quality to them I keep them, too.
Over this process, I got rid of literally hundreds of plugins that came with bundles, I bought years ago, or free plugins that were once helpful but are not required any longer.
Again - thatās just my way to handle an abundance of plugins. Doesnāt mean itās for everyone!
Each to their own ![]()
