Always use generic controls for specific plugin

#1

Is there a way to edit a specific plugin always with generic controls?

Although Ardour is my main DAW, I also have Mixbus installed on my machine, for some projects that require it.
The problem is, along with the installation of Mixbus comes a GUI for the ACE Compressor, which is now used by Ardour as a default. I personally like the generic controls more for that specific plugin, so everytime I want to tweak it I have to go right click → “Edit with generic controls”, which is tidious so I wonder if there is a way to always use the generic controls for the ACE Compressor in specific.

I can vaguely remember (can’t find it right now) there was a setting to use generic controls for all plugins, but that’s not what I want. I just want the generic controls default for specific plugins.

Is that possible or is there a reasonable workaround to automate this. All my attempts to use LUA so far failed but maybe someone knows a way to get it working this way.

#2

Alt + double click on the plugin is also an option.

#3

When you install Ardour (from ardour.org) the installer asks if you want to install the custom GUI for the ACE plugins.

You could:

  1. reinstall and answer “no”
  2. examine the .run file to check what files bring those GUIs in
  3. search this forum, because IIRC Robin already answered that, pointing to the place where the GUI is installed—Edit: it should be ACE plugin GUI how to change [solved] - #5 by x42

HTH

#4

Thanks for your replies, I think the Alt + double click solution will do the trick for me.
Although I would like to have a solution that doesn’t require a modifier key reinstalling the plugins without GUIs or disabling them in their installed folders is too hacky for me.

  1. I’m not familiar enough with the topic so I might edit the wrong files and introduce unnecessary instabilities
  2. when I then want to use the GUIs for whatever reason I can’t really go back without going through another hacky process

But anyways, nice to know that it’s possible and thanks for your replies.

#5

The compressor GUI is probably called XT_CC.so , presuming you’re on Linux, so if you search your computer for that file and move that and its accompanying XT_CC_plugin.ttl to some backup folder you should get the generic controls for the ACE Compressor.

It could possibly be in your ~/.lv2 folder or /usr/local/lv2 or something like that.

#6

The ACE GUI is called a-Comp_gui.so in Ardour. It gets installed in /opt/Ardour-8.12.0/lib/LV2/Harrison.lv2.
There is also XT_CC.so in that directory, but that would be for the Harrison XT compressor, not the gui for the ACE compressor.

The OP seems OK with the -click method to use the generic GUI, so perhaps a moot point, but the first step to making any permanent change would be to verify whether the ACE GUI was installed with Ardour, Mixbus, or both to make sure to remove the right file or files.

#7

You used to be able to set Ardour’s generic GUI as the default in Preferences, something which I prefer 100%, but alas this seems to have been removed some time ago.

I doubt there’s much demand to re-add the option either so us Ardour-generic-GUI-lovers will just have to make do with the Alt + Double-Click action, which isn’t the end of the world I suppose.