a silly question about VSTs

[Guest]

Just getting into music production and eying some nice VST bundles I'd like to own. Just 'like to' right now because some are very expensive. I see bundles offered, 50G sound. Okay-so how does this work...does one store all that on their hard drive? I bet there are cloud services available? (I personally am not one to live in the clouds.)

How does this work?

Thanks.

[muzines]

Very vague there - yes, you download whatever software you've bought, and install it on your system. Some sample libraries etc are quite large, so where you put the content depends on a number of factors...

[Guest]

Can bundles be stored on external hard drives? Is there a lag time in accessing? I don't mean to ask dumb questions...I got into this on a whim and know nobody else who creates music in this manner. I would like to eventually purchase a collection but need to find out about the mechanics first. I cannot find this information anywhere; it's like all I've read assumes I know all this!

Thanks.

[muzines]

You're asking this in very general terms. Different plugins, libraries, companies all handle this differently. The ones that let you install things on different drives usually give you the option to choose where to install things during the install process.

If you let us know which "VST Bundle" you're thinking of buying, we might be able to provide you with more definite answers. Or maybe contact the company selling whatever collection you're referring to and asking them?

[CS70]

Just getting into music production and eying some nice VST bundles I'd like to own. Just 'like to' right now because some are very expensive. I see bundles offered, 50G sound. Okay-so how does this work...does one store all that on their hard drive? I bet there are cloud services available? (I personally am not one to live in the clouds.)

How does this work?

Thanks.

Keep in mind each VST is its own little program - the standard is only about how it communicates with a host program (the DAW).

So VSTs can be as different as Word and Excel - so long they pass sound from and to the DAW, they will still be VSTs. In Windows, to be clear, they simply are DLLs.

In general terms, like any other little application, a VST will be stored someplace where the OS can see and dynamically load it - typically the disk, yes. And the DAW itself needs to know where they are, so every DAW has some facility for configuring which places (directories) to look into when it starts to make or update a catalog of available VSTs.

Some VST plugins may decide to use other files - for configuration, for presets, for sound samples that they use etc.

It really depends on the plugin. Say a simple "gain knob" plugin (i.e. a small application that increases or decreases the amplitude of the audio signal that it's passed by the DAW) will likely have no other files than itself.

A MIDI programmable drum sequencer will come with several gigabyte of drum sounds, plus other several megabytes of MIDI loops ready to load up.

They are applications, so programmers can do what they want.