Audio plug-ins: is there any way to list by vendor?

I've started to experiment with audio plug-ins in Fairlight and have run into a problem with how these are organized and displayed in Resolve.

I would like to see the plug-ins organized by vendor or product suite, e.g. "Apple built-in", "MuseFX", "Acon Acoustica", but I have been unable to make this work.

As it stands, under the Effects->Audio FX pane in Fairlight, I see 3 sections:

Fairlight FX
VST Effects
AU Effects

"Fairlight FX" holds the built-in Fairlight plug-ins. No problem with this.

Under "AU Effects" I see what I assume are built-in effect that come with macOS, which have names such as "AUGraphicEQ", "AUBandpass" etc. In the Audacity editing app, these appear to have an "internal name-space" such as "appl/aufx/bpas/Apple: AUBandpass", so I assume these are part of macOS

I also have a couple of 3rd party plug-ins that I installed as AU plug-ins.

Under "VST Effects", I see 3rd party plug-ins that I have installed as VST or VST3.

Unfortunately, these are all mixed together from multiple vendors in a flat hierarchy and it is not clear which vendors they come from. There doesn't seem to be any way to create a folder hierarchy in Resolve or to rename the plug-in.

I have tried to create aliases to the plug-ins and put these into a separate user folder (e.g. ~/Audio/PlugIns) and then add this folder to the Resolve audio-plugins path, but this does not work.

Is there any solution to this, or do I just have to live with the flat plug-in organization that Resolve gives me?

[UPDATE] I also have Logic Pro, but haven't used it for anything more than a couple of tests. This has a plug-in manager that has a separate section that displays plug-ins by manufacturer.

In the effect selector in the channel strips, it shows the built-in Logic effects, and then below an "Audio Units" menu that has a multi-level menu divided as "<manufacturer>-><effect>", which is exactly what I would like to see in Resolve. e.g.

Audio Units->Acon Digital->Acon Digital Multiply
Audio Units->Apple->AUGraphicEQ

For some reason the VST3 plug-ins that I have installed under /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/VST3/MuseFX do not appear to show up in Logic. [EDIT: it looks like Logic does not support VST3, so that would explain that!]

I assume that the AU version of all plug-ins is equivalent to VST3 in features and is possibly a better option for macOS, so this doesn't seem to be an issue.

If anyone knows how to get a menu that allows me to select effects in Resolve as "<manufacturer> -> <effect>", I would be grateful if you could tell me how!

I don't know if there's a way to organize by manufacturer, but I organize them by type (EQ, Dynamics, Reverb, Vocal, Channel, etc).

You can access this in preferences under Audio Plugins, and can add any plugin to several categories by holding down the Cmd key (on a Mac).

In addition to this, you can add your most often used plugins to the top of the plugin menu by opening Effects in the main Resolve Fairlight window, and clicking on the star beside the plugin name in the list.

Hope this helps,

Thor

Is there any solution to this, or do I just have to live with the flat plug-in organization that Resolve gives me?

In typical Resolve fashion, you have to deal with the limited option it gives you. The best you can do is manually organize all of your plugins yourself. I've never bothered with this. I have a handful of audio plugins in my favorites folder and that's about it.

The much easier method for me is to open Reaper and use its far superior effects manager to find the plugin I want, then come back to Resolve and search for the exact name of the plugin.

Here is Reaper's effects manager:

Reaper Plugin Manager.png (108.96 KiB) Viewed 562 times

While Reaper has a "Developers" folder that is organized by developers, I typically don't use it because the search function also allows you to search by developer name. I typically know the name of the developer but not the plugin name (companies often give their plugins very weird non-descriptive names), so when I type in the name of a developer all of their plugins show up in the search result and it is much easier to find what I'm looking for.

The categories on the left side also work as filters to limit the search results. If you select VST3 and then search it will only show results for VST3 plugins instead including other plugin formats like VST2, VSTi, etc. You can also filter by developer and then search only that developer, which is typically not needed because most developers don't make THAT many plugins (with the exception of Chris from Airwindows ), but it's still cool you can do it. Reaper is so awesome!

I cannot express enough how massive the canyon is between using Reaper and using Resolve. In Reaper I can tell that a lot of thought and care went into HOW to best implement their features, in contrast to Resolve where it feels like they do the absolute bare minimum just to add it to their "feature list" and then move on to the next thing without finishing what they started.

I don't know if there's a way to organize by manufacturer, but I organize them by type (EQ, Dynamics, Reverb, Vocal, Channel, etc).

You can access this in preferences under Audio Plugins, and can add any plugin to several categories by holding down the Cmd key (on a Mac).

In addition to this, you can add your most often used plugins to the top of the plugin menu by opening Effects in the main Resolve Fairlight window, and clicking on the star beside the plugin name in the list.

Hope this helps,

Thor

Thank you for the suggestions!

Is there any solution to this, or do I just have to live with the flat plug-in organization that Resolve gives me?

In typical Resolve fashion, you have to deal with the limited option it gives you. The best you can do is manually organize all of your plugins yourself. I've never bothered with this. I have a handful of audio plugins in my favorites folder and that's about it.

The much easier method for me is to open Reaper and use its far superior effects manager to find the plugin I want, then come back to Resolve and search for the exact name of the plugin.

Here is Reaper's effects manager:

Reaper Plugin Manager.png

While Reaper has a "Developers" folder that is organized by developers, I typically don't use it because the search function also allows you to search by developer name. I typically know the name of the developer but not the plugin name (companies often give their plugins very weird non-descriptive names), so when I type in the name of a developer all of their plugins show up in the search result and it is much easier to find what I'm looking for.

The categories on the left side also work as filters to limit the search results. If you select VST3 and then search it will only show results for VST3 plugins instead including other plugin formats like VST2, VSTi, etc. You can also filter by developer and then search only that developer, which is typically not needed because most developers don't make THAT many plugins (with the exception of Chris from Airwindows ), but it's still cool you can do it. Reaper is so awesome!

I cannot express enough how massive the canyon is between using Reaper and using Resolve. In Reaper I can tell that a lot of thought and care went into HOW to best implement their features, in contrast to Resolve where it feels like they do the absolute bare minimum just to add it to their "feature list" and then move on to the next thing without finishing what they started.

Thanks for your detailed reply. I like the look of the Reaper plug-in manager, but it looks like my options are limited in Resolve. I can probably work around this with the use of favorites or adding specific plugins to a new category.

I’m still deciding whether Fairlight will be “good enough” for my post production needs, which is currently just experimenting with dialogue editing a sound design for short indie films (with near zero budget). I’ve tried Logic Pro, but it feels much more music oriented, but have heard good things about Reaper, apart from the need for 3rd party solutions to import/export AAF files. Pro Tools is too expensive to justify for my current usage.

What would you say are the main advantages of Reaper over Fairlight for audio post for film? Fairlight v20 has some pretty interesting AI tools, and a usable set of effects for sound restoration (e.g. Voice Isolation in the Studio version is good, but you can obviously also buy 3rd party plugins that are probably better). I don’t want to switch platform only to find a different set of limitations!

What would you say are the main advantages of Reaper over Fairlight for audio post for film? Fairlight v20 has some pretty interesting AI tools, and a usable set of effects for sound restoration (e.g. Voice Isolation in the Studio version is good, but you can obviously also buy 3rd party plugins that are probably better). I don’t want to switch platform only to find a different set of limitations!

I'm primarily a musician, so recording/editing/mixing music is more my area of interest in Reaper.

I really don't like using Fairlight for anything. When I edit music for videos I do all of that in Reaper first and then export to Resolve. I only use the audio from video clips in Resolve because I do prefer to work on audio and video together instead of hopping applications, so I do it begrudgingly and I certainly do not actually enjoy using Resolve/Fairlight for audio. Resolve also forces a lot of page hopping for many tasks, which I also don't like about Resolve. Reaper not supporting AAF or OMF is one of the very, very few complaints I have about Reaper (I can count all of my complaints about Reaper, both big and small, on one hand) and I'm aware of third party applications that can do it, but I haven't tried them.

Reaper doesn't have any AI tools, but it supports ARA2 so you can use other AI tools directly inside of Reaper. Steinberg SpectraLayers is one example, which has way more restoration/isolation tools than Resolve (and better) and it works directly inside of Reaper. I have quite a few tools for AI stem separation/isolation and I found Resolve to be the worst out of all of the other tools I have, so I never use Resolve for this. One of my go-to's is actually the free Ultimate Vocal Remover as it gives access to a lot of algorithms and you can use them in combination to get the best results. I have barely scratched the surface of all the algorithms it has. It's crazy that this is free.

For me, Reaper is better than Fairlight in every possible way. I love the editing/mixing capabilities and the customization options so I can set it up to work comfortably for me. There are more options for fade/crossfade curves in Reaper, a great crossfade editor, you can see the waveforms of both clips in crossfades, etc. Reaper doesn't delete clips when they overlap each other so moving clips around is much better (this is a massive complaint I have about Resolve), Reaper also doesn't delete crossfades when you move a clip even one frame (another massive complaint I have about Resolve), etc. I would be here a while listing off all the things I find better in Reaper, but long story short... everything!

If you want to try out Reaper, there is a fully functional demo version that never expires. That is the best way to see if it'll work for your needs. Reaper is my favorite editor I've used. I switched to Reaper after 18 years using Samplitude, and I couldn't be happier. On the flip side, I switched to Resolve from Vegas Pro and I've had very mixed feelings about it from the beginning. I'm finally at a point of looking to leave Resolve completely, but Fusion is proving to be the difficult part to replace. For both video and audio editing that's no problem, I loved Vegas way more than Resolve.

I feel your pain with the plugin organization in Fairlight—it’s confusing! Wish there was a way to sort by vendor like “Apple built-in” or “MuseFX.” By the way, just like the smooth experience of an S21 Ultra refurbished, UI should be seamless too!

I would say that Reaper is more of a music production tool rather than audio post. I've tried it more than once and hated it. Probably I'm biased as I've used Pro Tools for 30 years.
I've done some simple post in Fairlight and have had no problems with editing or automation. The only thing I really dislike in Fairlight is the audio routing.

What would you say are the main advantages of Reaper over Fairlight for audio post for film? Fairlight v20 has some pretty interesting AI tools, and a usable set of effects for sound restoration (e.g. Voice Isolation in the Studio version is good, but you can obviously also buy 3rd party plugins that are probably better). I don’t want to switch platform only to find a different set of limitations!

I'm primarily a musician, so recording/editing/mixing music is more my area of interest in Reaper.

I really don't like using Fairlight for anything. When I edit music for videos I do all of that in Reaper first and then export to Resolve. I only use the audio from video clips in Resolve because I do prefer to work on audio and video together instead of hopping applications, so I do it begrudgingly and I certainly do not actually enjoy using Resolve/Fairlight for audio. Resolve also forces a lot of page hopping for many tasks, which I also don't like about Resolve. Reaper not supporting AAF or OMF is one of the very, very few complaints I have about Reaper (I can count all of my complaints about Reaper, both big and small, on one hand) and I'm aware of third party applications that can do it, but I haven't tried them.

Reaper doesn't have any AI tools, but it supports ARA2 so you can use other AI tools directly inside of Reaper. Steinberg SpectraLayers is one example, which has way more restoration/isolation tools than Resolve (and better) and it works directly inside of Reaper. I have quite a few tools for AI stem separation/isolation and I found Resolve to be the worst out of all of the other tools I have, so I never use Resolve for this. One of my go-to's is actually the free Ultimate Vocal Remover as it gives access to a lot of algorithms and you can use them in combination to get the best results. I have barely scratched the surface of all the algorithms it has. It's crazy that this is free.

For me, Reaper is better than Fairlight in every possible way. I love the editing/mixing capabilities and the customization options so I can set it up to work comfortably for me. There are more options for fade/crossfade curves in Reaper, a great crossfade editor, you can see the waveforms of both clips in crossfades, etc. Reaper doesn't delete clips when they overlap each other so moving clips around is much better (this is a massive complaint I have about Resolve), Reaper also doesn't delete crossfades when you move a clip even one frame (another massive complaint I have about Resolve), etc. I would be here a while listing off all the things I find better in Reaper, but long story short... everything!

If you want to try out Reaper, there is a fully functional demo version that never expires. That is the best way to see if it'll work for your needs. Reaper is my favorite editor I've used. I switched to Reaper after 18 years using Samplitude, and I couldn't be happier. On the flip side, I switched to Resolve from Vegas Pro and I've had very mixed feelings about it from the beginning. I'm finally at a point of looking to leave Resolve completely, but Fusion is proving to be the difficult part to replace. For both video and audio editing that's no problem, I loved Vegas way more than Resolve.

Thanks for your feedback. I think I should give Reaper a try and see what the experience is like for audio post. There ara a lot of differing opinions and fierce defenders of preferred platforms, so I expect a lot of this comes down to familiarity and personal opinion about “how things should be done”. It can’t hurt to try it first hand.

I would say that Reaper is more of a music production tool rather than audio post. I've tried it more than once and hated it. Probably I'm biased as I've used Pro Tools for 30 years.
I've done some simple post in Fairlight and have had no problems with editing or automation. The only thing I really dislike in Fairlight is the audio routing.

That’s an interesting observation- I thought the same of Logic Pro, which I also have. That said, I haven’t tried to use Logic for anything serious, so I don’t know how easily it adapts to audio post for film. One big limitation is that it does not allow for import of 32-bit float audio files, which is what I tend to use for production recording (unless I know this will not be accepted by other people in the post production team).

What do you find limiting about Fairlight routing compared to Pro Tools? I don’t have any experience with Pro Tools, so don’t know what I might be missing! My limited knowledge on the subject would assume that I need multiple FX sends on each track, and an ability to create new buses and route channels or other buses to these. Fairlight does this adequately, so I’m not sure what else I would need?

I would say that Reaper is more of a music production tool rather than audio post. I've tried it more than once and hated it. Probably I'm biased as I've used Pro Tools for 30 years.

I'm curious what you didn't like about Reaper for post. I could certainly see certain aspects being a deal breaker for post, such as no native support for AAF/OMF, and Dolby Atmos also isn't really supported either, which could be an issue for professional film work. Were your issues with Reaper due to lacking support for different formats like this or was it problems with features/workflow/etc?

Thanks for your feedback. I think I should give Reaper a try and see what the experience is like for audio post. There ara a lot of differing opinions and fierce defenders of preferred platforms, so I expect a lot of this comes down to familiarity and personal opinion about “how things should be done”. It can’t hurt to try it first hand.

You're welcome. Yes, definitely give Reaper a try for yourself because everyone is different and has different needs. It still baffles my mind the number of feature requests for Resolve that seem like common sense no-brainers to me, but then others say "no" to them. Different strokes I guess.

I have very little complaints about Reaper, lacking support for AAF/OMF is a big one as that makes it hard to integrate with other editors (like Resolve). The other major, major critique I have about Reaper is that you can't double-click (or right-click) on parameters to type in precise values for all of the parameters. Fiddling with knobs can be quite annoying, especially for level matching, mirroring panning, etc. I do have the HeDa Track Inspector, which helps at the track level... but still isn't exactly what I want and it doesn't work on clip-based parameters, or on effects controls like blend, etc.

Those are really my two major complaints about Reaper. Everything else is minor stuff, like the default theme is extremely "meh" and it took me a while to find a theme that made me stop immediately looking for another one. Once I found the Peace theme by Ice Cold Milk, my search ended. I love this theme.

They stopped developing it, but another user on the Reaper forum (sockmonkey72) made some additional updates to it.
https://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=266755

I'll preface by saying I've been using reaper for last 15 years, so yea I pimp reaper. That said, a daw is a daw (pushing ones & zeros). Its all about required tools, workflow, and personal preference.

In response to one user, yea, Reaper is used in post. It's actually used in just about everything now (game sound design, post, mix, master, live mixing, etc). Fact is reaper is by far one of the lightest, most configurable daws to date (bone stock). Throw in you download & add SWS extensions for another bazzilion functions, and, Reapack where you can download thousands of custom anything & everything. Reaper is all about making it yours, your needs, your workflow, etc.

However, to many "stock" Reaper looks like a$$ compared to other daw GUI's. It's been a point of contention forever. Reaper has a learning curve & time spent customizing it and that also turns off many new users who aren't tech types. Meaning, the guitarist who just wants to jack in and play.

Hey, if Logic was still on PC, I'd use it for it's midi editor (my fav). Point is, you can do anything in Reaper (it's lightweight & consistently rock solid).

I'll post a few links regarding Dolby & Reaper (there are other options, but this one is free).

EAR Production Suite Plugins and extensions for Audio Definition Model (ADM) workflow in Reaper:.
https://www.realinks.net/links/ear-production-suite/

EAR Production Suite Download:
https://ear-production-suite.ebu.io/

The reason I like Pro Tools routing is its simplicity. If I click on a track Input or Output box I get these choices. Click on one and I get all the interface I/O, both mono and stereo, and just click the one I want. Or if I select Busses, again I get them all shown and just have to click on the one I want. No need to go to a separate Patch menu.

Channel Output.jpg (537.4 KiB) Viewed 162 times

I get 10 Inserts per track for plugins. I also have available 10 Sends with all the same routing options.

Send Output.jpg (626.9 KiB) Viewed 162 times

Each has its own fader and metering and is fully automatable. It will also appear as a miniature in the channel.
Not related to Reaper, 4 years ago just for fun I created the same timeline in both Fairlight and PT. I know which one I prefer.

Broughton Crossing in Both Fairlight and Pro Tools.jpg (547.13 KiB) Viewed 162 times

Just like Resolve, I use PT on three screens.

Just like Resolve, I use PT on three screens.

Very nice setup! Is this a BlackMagic control surface or something else?

This is a totally different rig for my PT. The control surface is an original, built like a tank, Mackie HUI controller for Pro Tools from 1997.

06A.JPG (849.04 KiB) Viewed 138 times

My Resolve setup is far more humble.

Current Resolve Setup.jpg (261.26 KiB) Viewed 138 times

The main difference is up until I retired in 2016 paying clients paid for the PT setup. I paid for Resolve.

Thank you for your explanation Charles. I mostly use Reaper from the music side but I'll try to address your points.

The reason I like Pro Tools routing is its simplicity. If I click on a track Input or Output box I get these choices. Click on one and I get all the interface I/O, both mono and stereo, and just click the one I want. Or if I select Busses, again I get them all shown and just have to click on the one I want. No need to go to a separate Patch menu.

In Reaper, you don't have to open the patch menu, that is only one of the options for routing. If you click on "Analog Input" in the mixer you get your input options, if you click on the "Sends/Hardware Output" you get a popup dialog where you can choose to send to another track, hardware analog output, and hardware MIDI output. And for sends, you can drag and drop from one channel to another right from the mixer, so you don't even need to open the popup dialog. Then you have other options like the routing matrix to assign multiple tracks quickly, track wiring, etc. Reaper's routing is crazy flexible. Another awesome thing with Reaper is that it doesn't distinguish between audio tracks, MIDI tracks, busses, etc. it just has a "track" and you can do anything with it. You can put audio and MIDI on a single track, then route other channels through it as a bus, and then use it as a Folder Track placing child tracks inside of it, etc. Routing is an area where Reaper really shines.

Another thing that Reaper does (I'm not sure about Pro Tools) is allow you to sidechain different effects on a single channel from multiple channels. For example, you could use two compressors on the background music and then duck the music differently for dialog and for sound effects. This is one of the things I mentioned in my request thread for VST sidechaining in Resolve (and I got the idea from Reaper) and Resolve does do this now too, which is very nice.

I get 10 Inserts per track for plugins. I also have available 10 Sends with all the same routing options.

You get unlimited plugins per channel in Reaper and each channel can handle 64 audio channels/sends.

Each has its own fader and metering and is fully automatable. It will also appear as a miniature in the channel.

Plugins and sends are also fully automatable in Reaper and the sends have miniature faders in the mixer to adjust levels. Plus there is an additional pop out panel with more options for the send like panning, making it mono, inverting polarity, etc. The only thing I believe it doesn't have is a meter for each send. It's possible someone has made a script for it (there are some incredible scripts for Reaper out there), but I'm not aware of one.

One more point on Reaper's automation is the Automation Items, which puts automation curves into items (clips) that can be easily moved around, duplicated, instanced, stretched, etc. and it is amazing!