Lemon wiki

Your plugins

Lemon Studio runs your CLAP, VST3 and VST2 instruments and effects, with their own windows and saved settings. Its built-in instruments and effects work the same way and need no installing.

It can’t load 32-bit plugins, plugins built only for Intel Macs on Apple silicon, or Audio Units.

Add a plugin

Press F8 for the plugin palette.

Type in the search box. It matches a plugin’s name, vendor, category and format.
Use the pills to narrow the list to Instruments or Effects, and to sort it by Type, A-Z or Vendor.
Click a plugin, or press Enter for the highlighted one. An instrument goes to the bottom of the instrument rack, and an effect goes in the selected mixer track’s first empty slot.

Shift+click adds a plugin and keeps the palette open for another. The palette also opens from the + under the rack, from ADD ▸ More plugins… and from an empty mixer slot, listing only what fits there. You can also drag a plugin in from the browser’s Plugin library.

Scan for plugins

Lemon Studio looks in each format’s standard folders when it starts, in the background. Each file is tried in a separate process, so a broken plugin can’t take the app down.

Choose OPTIONS ▸ Manage plugins to open the Plugin manager in Settings.

Add folder… adds your own folder. It’s searched with its sub-folders, for every format. Untick a folder to skip it.
Scan for new plugins looks for what’s changed, and Rescan all tries every file again. The palette’s Scan button and ADD ▸ Rescan plugins (fast) do the first one too.
Rescan plugins with errors tries failed files again. The table’s Status column shows what went wrong with a file.
Combine formats of the same plugin lists a plugin once when you have it in several formats, in your Preferred format.

Favourites and hiding

In the Plugin manager’s table, click ★ to make a plugin a favourite: it comes first in the palette. Click Show to hide one from the palette. A hidden plugin still loads when a project uses it.

Add to favourites in a plugin window’s menu and Favorite in the browser set the same star.

Presets

The Presets box is in the plugin window’s title bar. Click it for the list, or step through presets with its arrows or the wheel. The same list has Save preset as…, Import preset…, Rename preset…, Delete preset… and Browse presets.

Import preset… reads .vstpreset, .fxp and .fxb files, and a bank gets a folder of its own. You can also drop a preset file on a plugin window, a rack row or a mixer slot.

To compare two settings, use A/B compare in the window’s menu: Copy to B keeps a copy, and Swap A / B swaps to it and back. The copy is gone when you close the project.

If a plugin crashes

On Windows, a plugin that crashes is stopped instead of closing Lemon Studio. Its slot passes the sound through and a message tells you what happened. Save your project and restart to use that plugin again.

The same protection on macOS and Linux is newer, and on macOS a crash in a plugin’s own window still closes Lemon Studio. Keep backups: see Project files.

Delay compensation

If a plugin reports a delay, Lemon Studio makes up for it on every other path through the mixer, in playback and exports. You don’t need to do anything. See the mixer.

Good to know

The arrow at the left of a plugin window’s title bar opens its menu: Detach gives it a window of its own, and Show all parameters lists its parameters in the browser. Each one has a right-click menu for automation and MIDI learn….
Scaling in a mixer slot’s menu sizes a plugin’s window, from Main up to 200%.
Auto-bypass when silent in the same menus stops running a plugin while it has nothing to do. The sound doesn’t change.
TOOLS ▸ Set keyboard focus of all plugins to ▸ Disabled stops plugin windows from taking your typing, on Windows and macOS.
In CLAP and VST3 plugins that offer a menu on a control, Create automation clip is in it. See Automation.