Old 12-14-2019, 03:36 PM   #1
lowellben
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Default Reaper 6 Category Mix Up

Hi. I've noticed that when I rescanned my plugins today, Reaper chooses to put the weirdest and stupidest plugins in some of the folders.

Did the algorithm change?? Please, I'm serious. Like, the "mastering" category? How does Reaper choose what to automagically put in there when it scans my plugins? I didn't do a thing to add any plugs to it. It has things like flanger, tape delay, and modulation effects. Tons of plugins, there's like 30 plugins in mastering alone!!

Also, in ROOM there are 20 plus reverbs right? In REVERB category, literally just the Rea-verbs plugins. I mean, what is going on? Why are all my reverbs in ROOM and reverbs is empty? There's a lot of these hiccups, I'm just listing two.

In SPATIAL there are low fi FX and tape saturation.


Can someone tell me how to either disable this default category nonsense or tell me how I can fix it so Reaper does not put anything in these categories that I don't put myself?

The real problem is Reaper 6 is not consistent. You're probably thinking, hey Lowell, why not just delete the plugs, move what you want in them, and be done. Great. I did that. But every X updates, every X boots, every time I install a new plugin (NOT re-scan), the default categories glitch out again and I have to sift through dozens of miscategorized plugins - AGAIN.

That's why it's a problem. Can someone please help me?
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Old 12-14-2019, 03:39 PM   #2
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I've always assumed that it's just picking up metadata from the plugins.
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Old 12-14-2019, 05:11 PM   #3
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Lokasenna View Post
I've always assumed that it's just picking up metadata from the plugins.
That sounds good on paper but I can't imagine tons of companies putting wrong metadata in their plugins to this degree. Some of these category choices are comical. Is there anything we can do to continue using categories but not have to sift through Reaper's decision to put X plugins in Y category? I'm not lying when I say dozens of plugins mis-categorized. Seriously. Maybe Reaper has a bug in parsing the metadata rather than the metadata in the plugins themselves?
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Old 12-14-2019, 05:56 PM   #4
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I just hide the VST folders thing entirely, and the only categories I see are: All Plugins, New, Recently Used & FX Chains, followed by folder groups I create myself. I couldn't make sense of how Reaper attempted to categorize plugins, did not try very hard to learn, and actually forgot that this option even exists.

To me it's worth it to just have your own folders so you can be 100% in control of exactly what plugins are placed where. And the search feature is wonderful, IMHO the saving grace of Reaper's FX bin layout.

I'd be happier if you could have a Windows-style directory for FX, similar to the way you can index track templates using folders and subfolders.
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Old 12-14-2019, 06:05 PM   #5
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this feature never worked well for me from the start.
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Old 12-14-2019, 06:42 PM   #6
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Thanks for the feedback guys It looks like I have to abandon categories. There is definitely something wrong with this, I am 99% sure it's a bug and not a DLL specific issue. There's just too many for that to be the case.

Time to make folders I guess. Yay
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Old 12-14-2019, 06:44 PM   #7
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The VST folder is just a hack Cockos put together - the search box is worth getting used to
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Old 12-14-2019, 06:48 PM   #8
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I just found this in the VST spec - to me, it looks like "Mastering" is actually correct according to the specification. Just a terrible name for that category.

Code:
enum VstPlugCategory {
  kPlugCategUnknown = 0,    // 0=Unknown, category not implemented
  kPlugCategEffect,         // 1=Simple Effect
  kPlugCategSynth,          // 2=VST Instrument (Synths, samplers,...)
  kPlugCategAnalysis,       // 3=Scope, Tuner, ...
  kPlugCategMastering,      // 4=Dynamics, ...
  kPlugCategSpacializer,    // 5=Panners, ...
  kPlugCategRoomFx,         // 6=Delays and Reverbs
  kPlugSurroundFx,          // 7=Dedicated surround processor
  kPlugCategRestoration,    // 8=Denoiser, ...
  kPlugCategOfflineProcess, // 9=Offline Process
  kPlugCategShell,          // 10=Plug-in is container of other plug-ins  @see effShellGetNextPlugin()
  kPlugCategGenerator,      // 11=ToneGenerator, ...
  kPlugCategMaxCount        // 12=Marker to count the categories
};
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Old 12-14-2019, 06:50 PM   #9
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Lokasenna View Post
I just found this in the VST spec - to me, it looks like "Mastering" is actually just a terrible name for that category.

Code:
enum VstPlugCategory {
  kPlugCategUnknown = 0,    // 0=Unknown, category not implemented
  kPlugCategEffect,         // 1=Simple Effect
  kPlugCategSynth,          // 2=VST Instrument (Synths, samplers,...)
  kPlugCategAnalysis,       // 3=Scope, Tuner, ...
  kPlugCategMastering,      // 4=Dynamics, ...
  kPlugCategSpacializer,    // 5=Panners, ...
  kPlugCategRoomFx,         // 6=Delays and Reverbs
  kPlugSurroundFx,          // 7=Dedicated surround processor
  kPlugCategRestoration,    // 8=Denoiser, ...
  kPlugCategOfflineProcess, // 9=Offline Process
  kPlugCategShell,          // 10=Plug-in is container of other plug-ins  @see effShellGetNextPlugin()
  kPlugCategGenerator,      // 11=ToneGenerator, ...
  kPlugCategMaxCount        // 12=Marker to count the categories
};
probably something they whipped up in an hour max. I think Justin would be more a search kind of guy
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Old 12-14-2019, 06:54 PM   #10
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Eddy View Post
probably something they whipped up in an hour max. I think Justin would be more a search kind of guy
I think you're missing the point - that list isn't from Reaper. VSTs list one or more categories, and those are the options the vendor can choose from. Dynamics processors go under "Mastering", according to the spec, which we can all agree is nonsense.
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Old 12-14-2019, 06:57 PM   #11
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Lokasenna View Post
I think you're missing the point - that list isn't from Reaper. VSTs list one or more categories, and those are the options the vendor can choose from. Dynamics processors go under "Mastering", according to the spec, which we can all agree is nonsense.
Um, wow. I can't believe you found that thank you! Total nonsense lol I got flangers and rotary FX in mastering, duplicate compressors in mastering, dynamics, AND spatial!? It's just a shitshow. I'm not going through 30+ mis-categorized plugs per category to just use the categories feature.

It's too bad because categories could be mega powerful if it actually was fine tuned a bit.

Where did you find that vst internals info? Is it posted online?
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Old 12-14-2019, 07:00 PM   #12
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Lokasenna View Post
I think you're missing the point - that list isn't from Reaper. VSTs list one or more categories, and those are the options the vendor can choose from. Dynamics processors go under "Mastering", according to the spec, which we can all agree is nonsense.
Exactly, they hacked something together using what was available and left it at that. Works ok, search works, done.
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Old 12-14-2019, 07:01 PM   #13
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@lowellben did you try right-clicking the categories?
You can remove and rename categories

I had analysis and analyzer. I renamed analyzer to analysis and got the combined lists.

you can remove single plugins from categories.

It's not that bad.

I DO think making your own folders and smart folders is the better way to go long term.
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Old 12-14-2019, 07:03 PM   #14
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Total nonsense lol I got flangers and rotary FX in mastering, duplicate compressors in mastering, dynamics, AND spatial!? It's just a shitshow.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Eddy View Post
Exactly, they hacked something together using what was available and left it at that. Works ok, search works, done.
It's not reaper's fault if the plugin companies use templates for their plugins or don't check the metadata for every version.
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Old 12-14-2019, 07:05 PM   #15
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It took a little bit because Google kept trying to give me articles on how to improve search engine optimization on Wordpress sites, but:

Google for "vst spec category": http://jvstwrapper.sourceforge.net/vst20spec.pdf

Search for "category" in that:
specify a category that fits your plug. see VstPlugCategory enumerator in aeffectx.h (p52)

Google for "affectx": https://github.com/obsproject/obs-vs...der/aeffectx.h

List is near the bottom.
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Old 12-14-2019, 07:06 PM   #16
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Quote:
Originally Posted by EpicSounds View Post
It's not reaper's fault if the plugin companies use templates for their plugins or don't check the metadata for every version.
It's also not Reaper's fault what Steinberg decided to name the category. There's no way for Cockos to look at a plugin and decide what category it "should" be in even if they wanted to make up their own.
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Old 12-14-2019, 07:08 PM   #17
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Quote:
Originally Posted by EpicSounds View Post
@lowellben did you try right-clicking the categories?
You can remove and rename categories

I had analysis and analyzer. I renamed analyzer to analysis and got the combined lists.

you can remove single plugins from categories.

It's not that bad.

I DO think making your own folders and smart folders is the better way to go long term.
I addressed this exact angle in my OP. The problem is, again, once I set things up the way I want them by doing what you say -- removing, clearing, moving around, renaming, etc -- the original Reaper categories AND their preferred locations RETURN. Over and OVER. Every time I install a new plugin. And yes, I install a few plugins every few months to try them out and stuff and each time BOOM I lose all my custom category changes. So, no. It's bad. Sorry, it is.

If I see mastering or spatial one more time I'm going to lose it lol.
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Old 12-14-2019, 07:09 PM   #18
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Lokasenna View Post
It took a little bit because Google kept trying to give me articles on how to improve search engine optimization on Wordpress sites, but:

Google for "vst spec category": http://jvstwrapper.sourceforge.net/vst20spec.pdf

Search for "category" in that:
specify a category that fits your plug. see VstPlugCategory enumerator in aeffectx.h (p52)

Google for "affectx": https://github.com/obsproject/obs-vs...der/aeffectx.h

List is near the bottom.
Excellent thanks!
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Old 12-14-2019, 07:17 PM   #19
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It's definitely in the VST SDK for setting category/subcategory.. but I always assumed that with plugin developers having control over what they put, there isn't really going to be any standard in how one manufacturer categorizes something, vs. another... which means some stuff might be categorized a little questionably. AFAIK, Steinberg creates all the categories. They have a bunch that make sense, then for some reason they seem to have catered to a couple of the big plugin makers, as you can request new categories if they don't exist.

I usually have a good idea what I'm looking for, so I just use "All" and type in what I want. But if I'm just thinking "hmm, I could use a spatial plugin of any sort", my list is probably going to be shorter than it should be if I pick just that category. It sucks.

You can create your own categories too, so that might be an idea for better organization of stuff you actually use, even though it's some work.
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Old 03-10-2021, 06:15 PM   #20
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Sorry to bump the topic but I have the exact same issue and feel the pain of the OP.
I've created a bunch of nice custom categories and moved all the VSTs I use in those, and regularly the VSTs change categories by themselves and it is very annoying...

So I'd love to have an option to disable the automatic categories.
Just ignore the plugin's metadata and put them in the "no category" category and let me choose where it goes !
At least don't change the category of the ones I've set myself.
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Old 03-10-2021, 06:41 PM   #21
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I've just made smart folders, and some other customized folders. It's a huge help for long sessions when you want to pick a reverb or pick a compressor and don't want to search through 70 million plugins or randomly type letters whilst high
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Old 10-17-2021, 12:34 PM   #22
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The 'categories' heading in the FX Browser.. Is this just picking up data from the plugin itself?
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