The Plugin Manager provides a convenient interface to various operations on plugins and is the primary troubleshooting tools when something goes wrong with plugins. It works on both physical plugin files and the plugins index.
For each type of a plugin (e.g. VST3 or LV2) there are pre-configured paths where these plugins are located. Every time Ardour runs, it re-scans plugins in these paths and recreates an index — a kind of inventory of available plugins. Whenever you open the Plugin Selector dialog, Ardour reads the list of available plugins from that index and displays them for you to pick.
Re-scanning paths is important because it's common for plugins to change on the disk (e.g. when you installed a newer version) or get removed (when you don't need a plugin anymore). Sometimes plugins get corrupted due to a hardware failure. Indexing them often helps identifying issues early on, and the Plugin Manager helps reviewing the general state of affairs with plugins.
| Status | Ardour will displays the status of every plug-in file. See below for more information |
|---|---|
| Ign | Do not load this plugin file at all |
| Fav | Set or unset the Favorite status for a plugin |
| Hide | Load this plugin file, but do not show it in the Plugin Selector |
| Type | The name of the API this plugin has been built with: VST2, VST3, AU, LADSPA, LV2 |
| File/ID | Displays the file name for LADSPA, VST2, and VST3, as well as the ID for LV2 and AU |
| Name | User-visible name of the plugin |
| Creator | Developer of team of developers who created the plugin |
| Tags | Metadata that classifies the plugin by type, e.g. 'instrument|synth' or 'analyser' |
The Status field specifically has the following options:
| OK | The plugin file has loaded without any issues and the information in the cache about it is up to date |
|---|---|
| New | The plugin file has just been discovered and successfully loaded for the first time |
| Updated | The plugin file changed on the disk, the plugin cache has been updated accordingly, the plugin file loaded successfully |
| Concealed | VST2 if corresponding VST3 exists. same for LV1 when LV2 exists |
| Error | There was a problem loading the plugin file |
| Stale | A VSTx/AU plugin changed on the disk but hasn't been re-scanned by Ardour yet |
| Incompatible | Scan the plugin failed. Typical reasons are 32/64-bit mismatch, attempt to load a .dll on Linux or a .dylib on Windows |
The Plugin Count section in the sidebar provides basic information on available plugins: how many plugins of every supported type are available through Ardour in total, how many failed to load, and how many are missing.
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