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 Xenakios Reaper extension plugin (http://sites.google.com/site/xenakios/), 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 alos 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 plugisn 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. I suggest you put your own plugins in a different directory and point Reaper to it.