5. Finding your existing third party plugins

Load up the MP Host Single FX plugin and click on the Controller Icon button. 

The window of the MP Host plugin will open. Right click on the empty area. 

Click on the PLUGIN LIST button.

The first time you do this, it will display a message that MPH is "Reading Installed Plugins". Depending on how many plugins you have, it will take a few seconds to complete. 

The MPH scans quickly your installed plugins in the standard VST and VST3 folders, even if you have them in other sub-folders. 

The MP Host does not scan in depth the plugins at first. To save time and not having to wait for the dreadful scanning process, the MP Host reads and display just the filenames of plugins in their folder at first and fully scans a plugin once you choose to load/use the plugin.

On Windows the path scanned for VST2 is     
C:\Program Files\VSTPlugins & C:\Program Files\Steinberg\VSTPlugins 
and for VST3 is C:\Program Files\Common Files\VST3

The Plugin List will show all the plugins installed on your computer, however you should use this to load up a plugin and create an MP Host preset where it will load the plugin, its state, the mappings and background images. See MPH Presets

Plugins not shown in the Plugin List

For Windows, if VST2 plugins are not shown in the plugin list see this article.

For Mac, if the Plugin List does not show all the plugins you have installed, you may need to reset the permissions as shown in this article or check that these were not added in the ~/MP/Host/Plugin-Exlude-List.txt.

Category, Manufacturer and Version columns 

When you first scan (Quickscan) the plugin list, you will see that the Category, Manufacturer and Version columns will not have any data. These columns will be filled once you open a plugin for the first time, or right click on a plugin and select Scan.

Until installed plugins are opened once or perform a right click > Scan, will be displayed in the plugin list of both MP Host types (instruments and effects).

You will notice instruments and effects are shown in the same list, until you open or right click > Scan them for the first time. When you scan an instrument while in MPH FX you will see the plugin be removed from the list. It will only now appear in the MPH Instrument Plugin List. 
The same applies to audio FX while in MPH Instrument.

Loading an incorrect type of plugin

If you try to load an instrument plugin in the MPH FX you will get a pop up window saying that you are trying to load the wrong type. The same will occur if you try to load an audio effect plugin in MPH Instrument.

Waves Plugins Waveshells

Waves plugins because they are bundled in a shell, do not have this option. Instead, you have to find the Waveshell in the list and right click > Scan. The MPH will scan the Waveshell and populate the list with the Waves plugins included in the bundle shell. You have to scan each Waveshell.

If there plugins missing (VST2/3) after you scan the Waveshells, check the Plugin-Exlude-List.txt file (see next section). Delete the Plugin-Exlude-List.txt file from the ~/MP/Host folder and scan the Waveshells again. The missing plugins should appear in the plugin list after you press the Quickscan button.

If you have installed a new or older Waves package of plugins and plugins are missing, make a backup of the host.properties file and delete it. Then open again the MP Host so that a new one is created. Then select your target monitor and scan for plugins again, including the Waveshells.

For plugins not showing up in the MP Host on MacOS also check this article.

Excluding Plugins from the list

When you right click on a plugin, you also have the option to add it to an Exclude list, which is a text file placed in the MP/Host directory. 
This excludes plugins which will not be scanned next time you perform a Quick Scan. 

If you want to remove plugins from the Exclude list, you can delete them from the ~MP/Host/Plugin-Exlude-List.txt. 
If you want to delete them all in the exclude list, you can just delete the Plugin-Exlude-List.txt file.

Waves plugins also don’t have the option to be added to the Excluded list because they belong in a shell.

When you Install new plugins, perform a quick scan so that MPH can locate these plugins.

If a plugin causes the MPH to crash during right click > Scan, it will be added automatically to the Plugin-Exlude-List.txt file. This includes Waves plugins as well during scanning Waveshells.

On Waves v15 on Windows, delete/move the GrandRhapsody.bundle folder from C:\Program Files (x86)\Waves\Plug-Ins V15 before scanning the Waveshells, as this is not compatible with the MP Host. you can place it back after scanning the Waveshells with the MP Host.

Searching for plugins

Searching for plugins is easy. You can just type in the bar on top of the list and it will search the manufacturer and plugin name once you press enter. The Manufacturer column will only be searched if a plugin has been opened at least once, or has been scanned using right click > Scan.

Moving Plugins

Moving plugins to other folders on your computer, after these have been scanned by the MPH, will cause the plugin list not to find these plugins. In this case you will need to perform a quick scan again. This will also cause existing presets to stop working, because the presets will be pointing to the previous location of the hosted plugin. You can edit the preset files in a text editor and replace the pluginPath field with the correct one.

Reporting Issues with Plugins

If you would like to report plugin-specific issues please submit this form 

If your DAW crashes (for any reason) and causes the MPH to exit abnormally, the next time you open it you will need to click the Control & Display button twice instead of once (or the Plugin Holder area in the Multihost) in order to display the MP Host in the controller’s touchscreen.