where are my synths?
Recently I have been loading a few new VST Instruments into N, but they aren’t there. A couple of my demo versions of expesive stuff appears (ones associated with independent running programs like Reason and Vokater), but the ones that are VSTi exclusive are not showing up in the instruments list. Any ideas?
Fish
In version 3.3 they should be placed in the folder simply titled, plugins.
Robert
Unfortunately, the answer is a bit more complicated. The good news is that it’s an easy problem to solve as soon as you can ascertain the facts on your machine. Most likely, you now have TWO locations for VST plugins, and you need to have just one. All you need to do is put them all together and make sure all VST host programs know where to look.
Your registry keeps track of a “VST folder”, where all programs will look for VST plugins (including VSTi plugins). If n-Track is the first VST-using program on your computer, it sets this registry to point to the n-Track “plugins” folder (actually, I think it’s called “Vstplugins”). If you loaded some other VST program that sets this, n-Track honors that (I believe – I’m pretty sure I’m doing this now).
Unfortunately, for some strange reason (mostly that programmers mess up), different programs can get stuck looking in different places.
One way of solving this is to first, see where n-Track is looking. You can find out from “Preferences -> Paths”. If the space for VST folder is blank, then n-Track is looking in the aforementioned “Vstplugins” directory (“Program Files
Track Studio\Vstplugins”). Look in that folder and see what plugins are there. You can usually guess from the “.dll” file names.
If its pointing somewhere else, it’s because some other program was loaded that clobbered n-Track’s registry setting and forced everyone to look where IT wants to put VST plugins, without being nice and copying all the existing ones there. Most likely, this is the case, and you’ll find the new plugins where n-Track now points (since it honors the registry) and old plugins in n-Track’s directory. Just copy all the files from n-Track’s “Vstplugins” folder into the current one (wherever n-Track points).
If that doesn’t work, try searching for file names of VSTs whose file names you happen to know. Just make sure all VSTs are in the same folder, and that n-Track’s “Paths” entry points there.
For registry nerds, the reg key is “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\VST”. Some programs don’t play well with others and override it. I’ve had this problem myself, though I don’t remember the offending program.
HTH
Jeff
I’ll double check this when I get back home, but I believe that the Vstplugins folder I use is the one I have them in (I use my old folder left over from the version 3 install), but the program could have been reset to look at n v4’s folder. I’ll double check. But I’m pretty sure that the vokator plugin I installed is in that folder as well, and it appears. Unless it installed to both places… hmm… 
I’ll double check. If it isn’t that, are there other ideas?
fish