Most people have a lot of plug-ins, but we tend to use a select few of them over and over.

There is a preference in Pro Tools for “Default EQ and Dynamics” and this puts 1 EQ and 1 Compressor at the top of your insert select menu.

However, there’s another way to add as many plug-ins as you want to both RTAS/TDM and Audiosuite menus, and you can save yourself a lot of time by creating easy access to these plug-ins via the top level of these menus. Here’s how.

Access the Audiosuite or RTAS/TDM menu as if you were going to open a plug-in. Find the plug-in you want to add to the top level of the menu, and Command-Click (mac) / Control-Click (pc). This will place it at the top level of the plug-in menu. Command or Control-click the plug-in again to remove it.

Note: This only works if you are using anything BUT “Flat list” for the plug-in menu organization.

On a related note, remember that you can assign any keyboard shortcut to launch an audiosuite plug-in via the keyboard preferences in Mac OS X. See this post for details. (although remember, if you are making a keyboard shortcut to launch an audiosuite plug-in, don’t use a shortcut that includes the command key, because that will trigger the audiosuite plug-in to be added to or removed from your shortcut menu, rather than launching it)