Okay, so I'm making #ElectronicMusic and as with every #hobby, there's an expense and thousands of companies vying for your hard earned cash. You can absolutely argue that #AudioPlugins are an extremely frivolous thing to buy because stock #DAW devices are so good these days and I'd agree with you, especially (for me) in the case of #Bitwig Studio 6.1. That said, they don't cover every eventuality and there is probably a plugin for exactly that.

Outside of the DAW there's a massive headache waiting for anyone who has more than a small handful of plugins. I've somehow amassed about 670+ of the buggers and that *IS* ridiculous. Imagine keeping them all up-to-date manually. Yeah, that. There's a myriad of ways, branded managers and installers, direct downloads, and even manually dropping files into folders. This is a nightmare and there really hasn't been an app that attempts to at least make this problem easier to manage. Enter: #PluginHub https://www.pluginhubapp.com

I caught this app on a random YouTube recommendation and saw an interview with the developer, Zach. The app seemed like a no brainer for me, so I installed it and when the demos had run, I instabought it for the very reasonable $29.99 for a two seat (!) licence. Zach offers very generous options for for studios, education, etc.

The aim of the app is to catalogue your plugins and flag any that need updating and helps you get those updates done by pointing you to the sites, downloaders and managers you need to use in order to keep your stuff up-to-date. Obviously not every brand and plugin is covered here and that is one of the things Zach is actively working on with plugin companies themselves. It is basically a very neatly laid out plugin database and version comparator. Simple idea, not so simple in execution. Cat herding would be more rewarding, I'm sure!

The app is new and has some minor bugs, but nothing major and nothing that makes it not useful in the extreme, day one.

I chatted with Zach back and forth over email regarding a bug I was experiencing, not so much a fault of PluginHub, but a slightly botched update by a vendor's updater app itself! He is super happy to hear about bugs and issues, is very responsive and friendly to boot. He is actively working on the app for #macOS exclusively at the moment (SORRY!) but a #Windows version is in the pipeline with #Linux under consideration.

Anyways, not an ad lol, just a very happy and excited user, knowing this will be useful for many #Musodon peeps recording in the box, using plugins.

#ElectronicMusic #Music @electronicmusic #Ableton #AbletonLive #Reaper #LogicPro #ReasonStudios #VST #VSTs #VST3 #AU #CLAP #AAX #FenderStudioPro #FLStudio #ProTools #Cubase