The LMMS application is fairly self-contained, but there are many pre-defined areas that LMMS looks to for its resources.
When we open up LMMS for the first time, we can see where LMMS is looking for its resources by opening the Edit menu and selecting Settings, followed by clicking on the folder icon on the left-hand side of the menu:
This will show us where LMMS is currently pointing to for its resources.
Here's where all those paths are looking:
- The WORKING directory is where our projects and presets for software instruments are stored.
- The VST PLUGIN directory is where our installed third-party VST plugins are stored.
- The ARTWORK and BACKGROUND ARTWORK directories are where we can put custom artwork for changing LMMS' appearance. There are several users on the Internet who have developed custom skins to make LMMS more attractive to the eye.
- The FL STUDIO INSTALLATION directory is only for Windows users who already have the Fruity Loops application installed on their computer. If it's on the computer, LMMS can access its FLP files for importing into an LMMS session.
- The LADSPA PLUGIN PATHS directory is where LADSPA plugins are located. LADSPA stands for Linux Audio Developers Simple Plugin API. Yeah, it's a mouthful, but there are a lot of LADSPA plugins that we can get from the Internet and incorporate them into our studio. They're made by a loving community of developers.
- The STK RAWWAVE directory contains raw wave files and samples.
- The SOUNDFONT directory can use soundfont files for sampled instruments. Soundfont files are single documents that are a container of sound files used in simple sampler architectures.
With the exception of the WORKING directory, we can use all of the other directories in their current locations to get up and running.