Introduction

VeeSTeeEx is an extender for VST 2 plugins, which adds sophisticated preset management to them.
Which means that – besides standard functionality like loading and saving of banks and presets – VeeSTeeEx offers to import banks and presets into its database.
This way you can have all presets available for a VST 2 plugin easily and fast accessible with the built-in ‘Preset Picker’.
But working with thousands of presets wouldn’t be fun without the possibility to quickly filter presets by let’s say category, rating or search functionality.
Therefore VeeSTeeEx comes with clever tagging functionality and easy as well as complex filtering options.

How does it work

VeeSTeeEx works by wrapping VST 2 plugins.
Instead of loading the original VST 2 plugins into your host, its ‘VeeSTeeExtified’ versions need to be loaded.

How to install

To ‘VeeSTeeExtify’ a VST 2 plugin, you need to wrap it with VeeSTeeEx.
Because this is not a standard installation thing, VeeSTeeEx doesn’t come with an installer, but instead a little bit of manual work needs to be done for each VST 2 plugin for which you want to get the extended preset functionality.
Wrapping a VST 2 plugin is done by copying the VeeSTeeEx-*.dll to the folder where the VST 2 plugin to be wrapped is located.
Make sure you use a VeeSTeeEx-32-*.dll to wrap a VST 2 plugin in 32 bit and VeeSTeeEx-64-*.dll to wrap a 64 bit VST 2 plugin.
And then renaming of that copied VeeSTeeEx-*.dll needs to be done with a simple rule:
Give it the name of the original VST 2 plugin and add ‘Ex’ to it (before the extension ‘.dll’!).

3 examples:

  1. You want to wrap VST 2 plugin ‘Charlatan’ (by ‘BlauKraut Engineering’) in 32 bit flavor:
    Original VST 2 plugin in 32 bit flavor is called ‘Charlatan.dll’.
    Thus you would copy ‘VeeSTeeEx-32-*.dll’ to the folder where ‘Charlatan.dll’ is located and then rename ‘VeeSTeeEx-32-*.dll’ to ‘CharlatanEx.dll’ in that folder.

  2. You want to wrap VST 2 plugin ‘OB-Xd’ (by ‘Datsounds’) in 64 bit flavor:
    Original VST 2 plugin in 64 bit flavor is called ‘Obxd64.dll’.
    Thus you would copy ‘VeeSTeeEx-64-*.dll’ to the folder where ‘Obxd64.dll’ is located and then rename ‘VeeSTeeEx-64-*.dll’ to ‘Obxd64Ex.dll’ in that folder.

  3. Expert example:
    You already renamed 64 bit version of VST 2 plugin ‘Synth1’ (by ‘Daichi Laboratory’ aka ‘Ichiro Toda’), version 1.13 beta 3,
    from ‘Synth1 VST64.dll’ to ‘Synth1 1.13 beta 3 VST64.dll’ to be able to distinguish that versions from other versions of this soft synth you use in your digital audio workstation (DAW).
    This means your original VST 2 plugin is called ‘Synth1 1.13 beta 3 VST64.dll’.
    Thus you would copy ‘VeeSTeeEx-64-*.dll’ to the folder where ‘Synth1 1.13 beta 3 VST64.dll’ is located and then rename ‘VeeSTeeEx-64-*.dll’ to ‘Synth1 1.13 beta 3 VST64Ex.dll’ in that folder.
    Note, that the blanks in the filename and everything else need to be exactly the same, only ‘Ex’ needs to be added before the ‘.dll’ extension.
    Info:
    There is one exception to this ‘exactly’:
    VeeSTeeEx will be graceful when it comes to lower vs. upper case:
    So, in that last example the VeeSTeeEx-64-*.dll could also be renamed to ‘synth1 1.13 Beta 3 vst64eX.dll’ if you really would like to do so…

Important: New as of version 1.1.0:

VeeSTeeEx now comes in 2 flavors:
One, where it reports the unique ID of the wrapped plugin to the host (that's what all previous 1.0.x versions did) - and
one, where it reports a real unique ID to the host.
The first flavor is indicated by an '-O-' in the file name (e.g. 'VeeSTeeEx-64-O-R-1.1.0.xyz.dll')
The second flavor is indicated by an '-U-' in the file name (e.g. 'VeeSTeeEx-64-U-R-1.1.0.xyz.dll')

Think of the first flavor as the Original flavor and of the second flavor as the Unique flavor.

You might consider to try using the Unique flavor, if you mainly work with Presonus Studio One or Native Instruments Machine II
resp. with any host which has a problem with differently named plugins which report the same unique ID to it.
In fact I think everybody could work with that unique flavor also in other hosts, unless maybe you want to collaborate with others
who do not have ‘VeeSTeeExtified’ versions of the plugins used in your project, where a possible advantage of the original flavor could be
that the host then might be able to automatically find the original plugins by their unique IDs, where on your side you used the original flavor
of VeeSTeeEx to wrap them.

How to start

Instead of loading the original VST 2 plugin into your digital audio workstation (DAW), just load the wrapper.
E.g. Load ‘CharlatanEx’ instead of ‘Charlatan’ or ‘Obxd64Ex’ instead of ‘Obxd64’ or ‘Synth1 1.13 beta 3 VST64Ex’ instead of ‘Synth1 1.13 beta 3 VST64’.

Now the fun begins

When you open the GUI of the wrapped plugin, you will see an area on top of it which is not there for the original VST 2 plugin.
On this area you’ll see (by default) 3 menu buttons called ‘Bank’, ‘Preset’ and ‘Menu’.
There will also be a ‘Bank’ (or ‘Filter’) display area and a ‘Preset’ display area, both of them accompanied by related ‘Previous’ (‘<’) and ‘Next’ (‘>’) buttons.
This area gets added by ‘VeeSTeeEx’ and will later on in the manual be referred to by the name ‘Pilot’.
The Pilot’s look can be changed in many ways (currently only by manually editing a XML file) to fit the look of the wrapped VST 2 plugin.
See ‘Styling the Pilot’. And when you click on the ‘Preset’ display area, then the ‘Preset Picker’ window will open.
This Preset Picker window comes in 2 flavors:
a) The ‘Internal bank view’ and
b) the ‘Database presets view’
The main purpose of the Preset Picker is to quickly select a preset to be used by the wrapped VST 2 plugin.

How to get presets into database

To have presets available in the ‘Database presets view’ of the Preset Picker they first need to be imported.
Importing works by selecting 1 or many original bank or preset files for the wrapped VST 2 plugin (‘.fxb’ files for banks, ‘.fxp’ files for presets)
from the Windows file explorer which will open after you click on the corresponding menu entries:
‘Bank’->’Import banks…’ for importing ‘.fxb’ bank files resp.
‘Preset’-> ’Import presets…’ for importing ‘.fxp’ preset files.
Another way to be even able to import bank AND preset files all at once is to use drag’n’drop a selection of ‘.fxb’ and/or ‘.fxp’ files
from the Windows explorer while the Preset Picker is in ‘Database presets view’ AND ‘Maintenance mode’ is checked.
For more details see: Import
Once you imported presets – or you use an already offered ‘.VeeSTeeExPresets’ file for the wrapped VST 2 which might be available for download
e.g. here: https://www.kvraudio.com/product/veesteeex-by-zonderp-productions/downloads then you can just start to find and select them in the Preset Picker.

How to tag database presets

Tagging is an important feature of VeeSTeeEx.
You can rate presets as well as assign them to authors and to specific built-in categories, expressions and genres.
But that's not all:
You can also add additional categories, expressions and genres as well as even add completely new tag groups with according tags.
And then tag the database presets with those.
For more details see: Tagging

The Pilot

The 'Pilot' is the area which VeeSTeeEx adds at the top of GUI of the wrapped VST 2 plugin.
It allows for quick selection of presets and access to VeeSTeeEx specific functionality via menu buttons
For more details see: Pilot

The Preset Picker

The 'Preset Picker' is the window which opens when you click on the preset name area of the 'Pilot'
It allows to quickly select a preset and to do stuff like tagging and filtering of the database presets.
It comes in 2 flavors:
a) Internal bank view
b) Database presets view
For more details see: Preset Picker