What is the recommended way to handle Plugin User Settings [solved]

Audio Plugins
1

My plugins use user settings to handle some persistent stuff like window size and certain controller mappings that are not expected to change when another preset is loaded.
Would it be a good idea to use a second AudioProcessorValueTreeState for the purpose? (while the first one holds those parameters that are included in presets)
I would love to use the serialization feature of the AudioProcessorValueTreeState to just dump my settings into a file.
Thanks for any input!

2

I’ve found the ValueTree to be great for this! Haven’t really thought of using the AudioProcessorValueTreeState, but I guess there could be benefits in that?

I have a class ConfigManager that holds the ValueTree and saves changed settings to xml file while managing the file io-lock. I’ve then have virtual ConfigOption, which is inherited for the actual settings:

class ConfigOption
{
public:
    ConfigOption(ConfigManager &manager);
    virtual ~ConfigOption() {};

    /** Returns the default value for the config entry. */
    virtual var getDefaultValue() = 0;

    /** Returns tag to use with config manager. */
    virtual const String getOptionTag() = 0;

    /** Gets entry state from manager. If state value not initialized, initialize and return default value.
    You may override this if additional functionality is needed for specific option. */
    virtual var getOptionValueFromState();

    /** Saves entry state to manager.
    You may override this if additional functionality is needed for specific option. */
    virtual void setOptionValueToState(var value);

protected:

    ConfigManager& manager; 
};

This way I can create “handles” to the user settings I need to access, and the ConfigManager takes care of thread locking etc.

I’d be very interested to hear, what sort of systems other people might be running. :slight_smile:

3

If anybody is interested: I have now found a solution to my problem.
It is available from my github page.

PresetVsUserSettings

This example illustates some modifications I have made to the AudioProcessorValueTreeState class.
There are now two groups of Parameters that are handled differently:

  • Preset Parameters - The state of these is saved with the preset.
  • User Settings - Their state is loaded from a settings file when the processor is created. The file is saved whenever a user setting is changed and also when the processor is destroyed. It is recommended to disable host automation for this parameter group.

I purposely created the user settings as Parameters. This way both preset parameters and user settings are published to the host and can be modified through the host interface (if present).

1 Like