Noel Borthwick [Cakewalk]

Kylotan
But for me the main issue I have is that of tracking new plugins...

Yeah I agree that the ability to see newly discovered plugins and those not already in layouts would be handy. We have those as FR's I think.

And...yeah...I hadn't read the whole thread yet.
 
So...let me make just one more plug for this feature.
 
+2

I like this idea too. Just out of curiosity, what "unreds" them? Do they unred the next time you load the program, or do you have to do something manually? IOW how does the program decide they're not "new" any more, and how is this indicated?

The way I do it in my CupCake (search the forum for it) is to save a current list on program exit and compare with what's there on load/next scan (with option to not save current list on exit).

The other alternative is what has been mentioned already - the ability to sort plugins by installation (or first-scan) date. That way, even if it's been a couple of restarts since they were first found, I'll still see them at the top of the list and will know they are a candidate for being added to my custom menus.

If there is any way to have plugin diagnostics/logs via the plugin manager that would be nice. In these forums (and no doubt others) we ask people to rule out dodgy plugins if they have an issue. If we are lucky there will be a message in the windows event viewer. It may be a restriction of VST (and certainly third party code) but I wonder if more could be done to diagnose plugin issues.
 
The added bonus is it might help cakewalk technical support.
 
Another thing would be to wrap the plugins in some sort of virtualization so if they crash cakewalk won't.

Anderton
I like this idea too. Just out of curiosity, what "unreds" them? Do they unred the next time you load the program, or do you have to do something manually? IOW how does the program decide they're not "new" any more, and how is this indicated?

How 'bout, you highlight all the registered plugins that are in the currently open Plug-in Menu Layout at least once?  That way, anything you haven't dealt with will be (what...lowlighted?).

I'll add one suggestion, which should be simple. Allow only one instance of the Plug-In manager to open at any one time. You can currently open multiple instances of it, which I can't think of how that could be useful. If the Plug-In manager is open, and you try to open it again in Sonar, just give me an error so I can go find it or kill it, rather than just opening a second instance. Thanks!

brconflict
I'll add one suggestion, which should be simple. Allow only one instance of the Plug-In manager to open at any one time. You can currently open multiple instances of it, which I can't think of how that could be useful. If the Plug-In manager is open, and you try to open it again in Sonar, just give me an error so I can go find it or kill it, rather than just opening a second instance. Thanks!

Much like drummaps UI should be, it should be a dockable.

To the person above,who was having issues with the naming of the 3 Kontakt dll versions, whenever i install Kontakt and new dll versions are put out there, I always go in through the Plugin-Manager.
 
(Edited below to fix wording a bit)
 
Once in the list of VSTi instruments, I scroll down to the 3 Kontakt entries, and click once on the 1st one, to highlight it.  This also will display the and pull up the Properties of each of those 3 Kontakt dll versions, and from the Details you can see the number of outputs, which is what makes each of those different.  I then click OK to get back to the main Properties window, and at the top of that window is a text box with the ability to type into it to alter the plugin's name.  I then will rename each of the Kontakt dll versions with an indication of how many outputs each has, so that when they display, in any program, you can see which one is which.
 
I happen to name mine: Kontakt 5 - 08 Outs, Kontakt 5 - 16 Outs, and Kontakt 5 - 64 Outs.
 
The above has always worked for me, and is how I intend to continue, since it works well for my needs.
 
Hope that helps, 
 
Bob Bone
 

brconflict
I'll add one suggestion, which should be simple. Allow only one instance of the Plug-In manager to open at any one time. You can currently open multiple instances of it, which I can't think of how that could be useful. If the Plug-In manager is open, and you try to open it again in Sonar, just give me an error so I can go find it or kill it, rather than just opening a second instance. Thanks!

I've just tested this (on Platinum) and can only open one instance, whether I open it directly or via SONAR, or a comibation of the two (ie. open one directly, open SONAR, open PIM from within SONAR and the one I originally opened is brought into focus).
 
I do agree that opening multiples at the same time could be...confusing, shall we say!