In Preferences, open the VST Effects tab and browse to the location of your folder containing VST plugins. Multiple folder locations are supported. As seen, here are some of my iZotope RX4 VST plug-ins.

My VST folders are are blank. The instructions for installing the plugin are these:

"On Windows, most hosts have their own VST plug-ins folder. So if you are using Windows and your host does not recognize FabFilter Pro-Q 3, you need to locate the proper plug-ins folder for your host first (it is usually shown in the Preferences or similar dialog)."

The problem is locating the proper plug-ins folder. C:\Program Files\FabFilter has a listing of the plugins, but no plugins folder. I don't know what the default Vegas plugins folder is, since the field is blank.

 

Have you used the search field at the top RH corner of the Windows Explorer window to search for FabFilter on your computer?

The VST3 version of FabFilter might be stored under the C:\Program Files\Common Files\VST3 folder which is where my few VST3 and ARA plugins automatically end up. If it is there, hopefully it contains the VST2 version inbuilt.

Dexcon -- That's where they were. They don't show up in the plug-in manager, however. Is there something I need to do to enable them?

 Is there something I need to do to enable them?

Yes. Use the VST Effects as both I and wwaag mentioned earlier, but point the Alternate VST folder to that VST3 folder under the Common Files folder. Then just hope that those plugins are also VST2 enabled. If they are just VST3, then it is likely that they won't open on Vegas Pro's timeline.

BTW, Vegas Pro 19 is being released next month. Let's hope that VP19 will be compatible with VST3 as a new feature as some have requested as a feature request for a couple of years.

And just a thought, when installing the FabFilter plugin from its .exe file (or similar), was there an install option asking which formats you wanted installed such as 'VST2, VST3, AAX and so on'? If yes, was VST2 (or just VST) selected?

Success. I installed both VST3 and VST2. So I simply pointed Vegas to the VST2 folder and everything is there. Thanks so much for the patient help!

 Is there something I need to do to enable them?

Yes. Use the VST Effects as both I and wwaag mentioned earlier, but point the Alternate VST folder to that VST3 folder under the Common Files folder. Then just hope that those plugins are also VST2 enabled. If they are just VST3, then it is likely that they won't open on Vegas Pro's timeline.

BTW, Vegas Pro 19 is being released next month. Let's hope that VP19 will be compatible with VST3 as a new feature as some have requested as a feature request for a couple of years.

And just a thought, when installing the FabFilter plugin from its .exe file (or similar), was there an install option asking which formats you wanted installed such as 'VST2, VST3, AAX and so on'? If yes, was VST2 (or just VST) selected?

There is no point in selecting the VST3 plugins folder. Plugins are either VST3 or VST2. There is no such thing as VST2 - enabled VST3 plugin. But a lot of installers let you install both versions.

Path for installing VST3 plugins is fixed. It is a part of the vst specification and cannot be changed. Maybe the idea was to avoid the confusion when locating the plugins.

VST2 plugins can be installed pretty much anywhere. But then you need to point the host to the plugins folder.

VST-2 plug-in <.dll> files can usually be moved to an existing VST folder to make things somewhat more organized if they were installed elsewhere (which happens occasionally.