There is an issue with accessing VST3 presets in Ableton Live 11. Unlike VST2 plugin presets, the presets are not shown in the Ableton rack, nor can they be found manually in the browser.

So if the plugin doesn't have it's own built-in preset browser, there seems to be no way to open presets.

For example: most of the Plugin Alliance range of plugins don't have a built-in preset browser.

Has anyone found a walkaround to load up presets in VST3 plugins that don't have a built-in presets browser?

I'm running Ableton Live 11.0.11 on Windows. Anyone who runs a newer version of Ableton: has this issue been fixed?

 

Unfortunately not to my knowledge. It is a bit of a pita for sure.... hell, in Ableton, the Plugin Alliance stuff has pull down plug in presets for PA stuff (IN the plug in, not down below), but NOT in au, just vst 3 ... I'm not sure if that's across other daws (need to check)... but it's unfortunate that with all that moved forward, that certain things are getting a little more keystroke or navigation intensive...

 

The VST3 presets are all here now:

C:\Users\YourName\Documents\VST3 Presets

C:\Users\YourName \Documents\VST3 Presets\Plugin Alliance

In the attached picture you can see where the presets for the plugin Alliance AmpegB15N are.

 

Yup, that's where they reside now (and how they did for the most part on macOS/OSX before), Plugin Alliance's site has a link to download the presets for all their offerings that have them, and instructions should they have not been put in place properly upon installation or people want to make sure if they have all of them etc...

here:

https://www.plugin-alliance.com/en/downloads/presets.html

and as they say:

"Ableton Live users: Plugin Alliance factory presets do not appear when using Audio Units format plugins in Live. Since this issue only affects the Audio Units format, we recommend that Live users use VST instead."

(and I don't know whose issue that is, if it works on Logic or other daws allowing au's on macOS etc, I'm gonna have to check, as I can't see why Ableton would have an issue implementing that, but it could be something weird with PA au plugs perhaps... dunno...).

https://support.plugin-alliance.com/hc/en-us/articles/9760040661661-My-Presets-are-missing

I think a lot of the rub here for some people, or what I read a lot in the issues people have been complaining about with presets in Ableton in particular is that they were used to vst2 presets that would appear in the dropdown of the plugin in the Device View previously as @Hazen mentions..., and now they do not with vst3's.

which I'm not sure why, as I imagine it isn't a limitation of the vst3 spec (not that dev's adhere to it sometimes, or all the time etc, and it has been modified, or rather, added to/appended, since it's announcement around 2008 etc... ) .. I would hope it would be something Ableton could fix perhaps on their end with certain things if it's from their end as some other things are (again, I'm gonna have to check with au v vst3, but we do know that Ableton kinda ignores some pretty important things that vst3 plugs support in, say, plugs requiring sync and pdc on a channel etc and causing obvious issues, and they kinda give a crap 'workaround' or ghost people on that when asked about it and why their workaround is crap... so it goes.

and obviously they have been a bit capricious of late regarding their 'browser' and whatnot, and sometimes it's simply not as quick as older versions or workflows to get to where you want, unless one spends the time doing their setup and template browser and all that... it's getting better with newer versions etc, and there are actually some really cool things you can do with the new browser in 12, but still... even they can't seem to make up their mind ffs lol.... and sometimes you can burnt setting it up by their rules just to have them change or modify the rulebook...