How to hide unwanted plugins

How to hide unwanted plugins

If you have a plugin that you never use (and who doesn’t!), then you can disable it in the Plugin Manager by selecting the plugin and clicking the “Enabled” switch to disable it such that it will no longer show up in any plugin menus.

Plugin Manager with AU, VST3 and VST plugins in Gig Performer 4, audio plugin host for live performance

If you have a large number of plugins and you have them in multiple formats (VST, VST3 or AU) you may want to reduce the number of available plugins to make it easier to find what you want. One way to do this is to use the Quick Insert dialog filter to restrict the view temporarily (e.g, see this example where we only want to see phaser plugins in Audio Unit format)

Quick plugin finder allows you to easily filter out and find the desired AU, VST3 or VST plugin in Gig Performer

However, if you only want to work with a particular format (by the way, this is not necessarily a good idea as unfortunately some plugins work better in some formats than others) you can restrict the view on a more permanent basis using the Plugin Manager. Take a look at the following view of the Plugin Manager showing a small number of the plugins available on one particular computer.

The Plugin Manager in Gig Performer 4 on Mac; it manages AudioUnit (AU), VST3 and VST plugins.

There are two things to notice here.

1) You can click on any column header to sort the plugins by that column. For example, clicking on Manufacturer will sort the list by the Manufacturer

AudioUnit plugins (AU plugins), VST and VST3 plugins arranged by the Manufacturers name in Gig Performer 4

2) There’s a column called “Enabled” that can be used to totally hide plugins (by disabling them).

So for example, if you prefer to only use VST3 plugins, do the following:

a) Sort the list by Format and select the ones you don’t want (select the first one, scroll down, hold the Shift key and select the last one)

AudioUnit plugins (AU plugins), VST and VST3 plugins arranged by the plugin format in Gig Performer 4

b) Right click on the selection and select “Disable” from the popup menu

Plugin Manager contextual menu allows you to enable/disable plugins, set loading type and more.

Now, all the plugins you selected will be disabled and will no longer show up in the popup menus nor in the Quick Insert Dialog

The screenshot shows that VST plugins are disabled, and hence not shown in the Quick Plugin Finder window

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Related topics:
Important workflow tools and tips (User Manual)
Tips and Tricks (Community)
Learn many tips with the Shift key (Blog)



Scaling Curves


Scaling curves allow you to control the shape of the output of a widget or convert an incoming note velocity to a new velocity. Various predefined curves are available and they can be tweaked as necessary. You can also just draw your own curve as well to achieve the effect you require.

 

MIDI File Player Plugin


You can load up to 128 MIDI song files in a single plugin instance. Switch from one song to another, mute tracks and/or change their channel numbers. Tempo can be controlled by individual songs or you can use the global tempo and tap tempo to control the BPM interactively.

 

Favorites and Presets


Create a sound by placing and interconnecting your desired plugins, such as a synth, some effects and perhaps a mixer. Select them all and then save the selection as a named favorite. The favorite will subsequently show up in all plugin insert menus, making it easy for you to recreate that configuration whenever you need it again. This feature is also very powerful for creating your needed sounds on your studio computer and then transferring them to your touring laptop.

 

Probabilistic Sound Designer


Parameters you select in an open plugin are captured into the Probabilistic Sound Designer dialog window. When you click Randomize, you're only adjusting those selected parameters. Each entry in the PSD dialog has a curve but unlike widgets where the curve controls scaling, in the PSD the curves are used to define the probability of particular values being selected. Make sure the filter cutoff never gets too slow so as to block all sound. Perhaps adjust the max range of the VCA attack parameter so that the sound doesn't have too much delay. Constrain the octave ranges of the oscillators, perhaps ensuring that 1/3rd of the time we select 8' and 2/3rds of the time we select 4'. The possibilities are endless.

 

More Widgets


Numerous new widgets are included in Gig Performer - a new sustain pedal, plastic knobs, drum pads and more colored sliders. Shapes can be colored with different borders and fill colors and morphed from rectangular to circular. Your creativity is now the limit to creating fabulous front panels in Gig Performer.

 

MIDI Message Helper


Select MIDI devices by name. Choose the MIDI message type and adjust the appropriate parameters for the specific type

 

  

Layout management


Gig Performer supports arbitrary resizing. Layout your widgets the way you want - resize the main window and the widgets will grow or shrink as necessary to maintain the same interrelationships. No matter what size screen you have, your front panels will still be neat and usable.

 

Undo Support


If you move your widgets around and/or resize them, or even delete them by mistake, the Undo facility will correct your mistake. Minor moves to a widget by mistake will no longer spoil your design

 

Plugin Channel Count


Some plugins support a large number of outputs and they depend on the traditional channel strip to control how many ports should be available.   When you only need a stereo pair, it is convenient not to have a large horizontal block. In Gig Performer, the number of available ports  is controlled by the channel count override, which can be applied to individual plugins and will be remembered when the gigfile is reloaded or if the plugin is saved as a favorite.

 

Input muting and output fading


Rather than a single audio length tail, Gig Performer 4 gives you the ability to control input muting and output fading separately. Input muting controls how much time it takes for audio input to be silenced when you leave the rackspace. Output fading controls how much time will be taken for audio to fade out when you leave the rackspace.

 

Faster Plugin Finder


Instead of searching through menus of perhaps hundreds of plugins (you know who you are!), the Quick Plugin Finder makes it easy to find the plugin you need by simply typing partial strings. For example, as shown here, to find the Modartt Pianoteq 7 plugins, it's enough to type pia mod 7 (in any order, by the way)  to restrict the list of available plugins to those matching your query. The Quick Plugin Finder also knows about manufacturers, presets and favorites.

 

  

Touch Friendly Input


Any entry field can be changed by either dragging your mouse (or finger) up or down, or by using the large popup touchpad where you can just tap on the squares to enter a value. The large popup keypad also does validation so you can't enter an invalid value. You can also just tap the BPM field to pop up a larger view where you can quickly change tempo, tranpose, trigger Tap Tempo and enable Ableton Link, the last allowing you to synchronize Gig Performer with any other application that also supports Ableton Link.

 

New Tuner Display


The tuner view makes it easy for guitarists to quickly check and adjust their tuning. You can toggle into the tuner view from any other view and toggle right back as soon as you're done. All output will be silenced automatically while you're in tuning mode. You can adjust the concert reference pitch from its default of 440 Hz to suit your own needs. The tuner view fills the entire screen so you can easily see it from a distance.