Plugins

From CockosWiki

(Note: the difference between plugins and effects has been debated, see http://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=28163 and http://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=27882, I think the situation is unsatisfactory and need to be resolved, but at the moment the differences between various types of plugins/effects is unclear. Thus, you should also see http://www.cockos.com/wiki/index.php/Effects_in_Reaper)

A plugin is a piece of software that can extend Reaper in some way. Either it adds user commands to Reaper, such as the SWS Reaper extension plugin (http://www.standingwaterstudios.com/reaper/), or it can add functionality to track and media manipulation, such as allowing you to generate or manipulate audio. In technical terms, a plugin is a dll-file that is loaded when Reaper initializes, or when you ask Reaper to.

Reaper is supplied with an extensive amount of plugins, some which implement Reaper's inherent functionality. These are stored in the REAPER\Plugins directory. In addition you can download numerous free plugins from the web; you can many by searching for "VST" or "VSTi" (preferrably together with the word "free"). For a discussionon free effect/plugins, see http://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=563&highlight=effects.

Reaper has its own plugin directory, as mentioned above, REAPER\Plugins, but you can also tell Reaper to look for plugins in additional directories. This you do under Options | Preferences | Plugins | VST. Note that the plugins that are in REAPER\Plugin and look like reaper_*.dll are automatically found by Reaper. If you put your own plugins there, for Reaper to find them you either have to rename them to something of the reaper_*.dll form (not recommended) or set the VST plugin path to point to REAPER\Plugins. It is strongly recommended that you put your own plugins in a different directory and point Reaper to it. One effect of putting your VST plugins into the REAPER\Plugins folder is excessive startup time; Reaper then scans through all your VSTs on startup. If you put the VSTs elsewhere, only newly added ones will be scanned by Reaper on startup. Saves lots of time if you have many VSTs.