Managing DX plug-ins
I posted this earlier in the X1 forum relating to issues with certain versions of the Sonitus Delay plug but thought it maybe more useful here.
Many DX(i) plug-ins ship with various versions of Cakewalk software and they are sometimes seen as mysterious things. Distinct from VST(i)'s they are not controlled by the Cakewalk plug-in manager, although they show up there, no amount of scanning or rescanning will make them show up or disappear. DX files have to be registered on the system before they work, a process that is normally handled automatically at install time.
There may be occasions however where you are sick of the sight of a long list of plug-ins you never use when it comes to selecting one you use often, or you may even come across a third-party DX plug you need to install manually.
What would help then is a good way of registering or unregistering them from the system. Here's a simple method I use to keep control of them.
In notepad create a new text file, type in;
regsvr32 %1
save this file out as
reg.bat (make sure notepad doesn't add the .txt extension to that, rename if needed)
Make another text file this time type in;
regsvr32 /u %1
Save this as
unreg.bat Place these 2 files (reg.bat, unreg.bat) into a useful place your 'Shared Plugins' folder I find is a good place because I remember what they are for then, but anywhere that suits you will be fine (Do NOT use the vstplugins folder, this is for DX files only remember!).
Now you can just drop whatever DX .dll, .ocx or .ax file onto either batch file to register or unregister it from the system. So say you only ever use the Sonitus Delay (
you can check the location and the name of the actual file to drag and drop in plug-in manager by selecting it from the DirectX Audio Effect (DX) or DirectX Instruments (DXi) lists) just drop the whatever DX plug-ins one at a time on the unreg.bat file to simplify the plug in list in Sonar etc. Whether you then delete the actual file(s) is entirely up to you but having them unregistered on the system does no harm at all and they are easy to re-instate then without going through the software's full install routine to put them back.
Then if you wanted to re-instate say the Sonitus Verb for example just drop its .dll file on reg.bat and it will re-appear on the plug-in list next time you start Sonar without any need to scan your plugs.
Yes you can do this easily by typing the commands and file name in the command line but having the drag and drop batch files makes it easy enough to actually bother doing. And I like to run a clean and lean ship.
I've not tried this on 64 bit systems or Windows 7 yet but I can't see why it wouldn't work there too, but XP and Vista 32 bit it works like a charm.
post edited by Jonbouy - 2010/12/24 08:36:28