MPowerSynth improvements & feature requests

[MeldaProduction]

For the record, there was more than 2500 presets, about 1000 didn't survive . And considering how complex is a "preset" in MPS, that's a lot...
And also for the record, Zentralmassive is one of the guys creating and sorting the presets . He did a great job, I think the presets are very good actually. Not all of them for everything of course...

[woodsdenis]

Fair enough , official request for a lock on the Quality setting which would override the individual patch settings.

[ZentralmassivSound]

http://www.zentralmassiv-sound.com
great commercial EDM sounds.

Thanks Denis for you kind words

Oh there should be a sticky on the forum for commercial and free sound sets for this.

This sounds like a good idea

[BasariStudios]

Good presets sell synths, most buyers really don't know or care about the inner workings or any of that.

Well that was more true 10 years ago then it is today. 10 years ago i was the only guy in my community
who knew Synths and knew hot to program, everyone else was a musician...now with the internet and
tutorials boom things changed a lot. Synth features and complexity now are almost always taken into
an account when reviewing or buying.

Not all of them for everything of course...

Cannot be truer then this. No 2 guys will like the same preset.

[woodsdenis]

Good presets sell synths, most buyers really don't know or care about the inner workings or any of that.

Well that was more true 10 years ago then it is today. 10 years ago i was the only guy in my community
who knew Synths and knew hot to program, everyone else was a musician...now with the internet and
tutorials boom things changed a lot. Synth features and complexity now are almost always taken into
an account when reviewing or buying.

Not all of them for everything of course...

Cannot be truer then this. No 2 guys will like the same preset.

Mmm you may be right IDK, one thing I'd for sure there is a greater demand for 3rd party patches for synths these days then there ever was before, I think maybe we get a slightly tainted view here as by definition posters here are for direct support or nerdy guys like us

I will still say that the presets should be further trimmed down by at least 50%. 800 really good presets is enough really. Go the u-he route and get your signature sounds from the pros and rest are the best of the rest. Different strokes etc.

[MeldaProduction]

I cannot agree with that - just check the presets - take one song and go through them, you'll most likely quickly find something you'll like and go through stuff you don't like. But then you get another song and those "bad presets" will suddenly become good ones... It's always matter of situation. There are presets that will inspire you to make a new song. And there are presets, that would sound completely unusuable, but then in a context of specific song... It's really blindfolded to say "trim the presets" just because there's many of them. It's on the contrary - the more you have the better assuming they are good and believe MPS presets are good (and I have quite a few people who agree ).

There's nothing worse than wanting a "synth" and then going through dozens of them, I like to have one that has enough power to deal with all situations .

[woodsdenis]

I cannot agree with that - just check the presets - take one song and go through them, you'll most likely quickly find something you'll like and go through stuff you don't like. But then you get another song and those "bad presets" will suddenly become good ones... It's always matter of situation. There are presets that will inspire you to make a new song. And there are presets, that would sound completely unusuable, but then in a context of specific song... It's really blindfolded to say "trim the presets" just because there's many of them. It's on the contrary - the more you have the better assuming they are good and believe MPS presets are good (and I have quite a few people who agree ).

There's nothing worse than wanting a "synth" and then going through dozens of them, I like to have one that has enough power to deal with all situations .

Its a kind of circular discussion because I don't disagree with some of your points, any sound may or may not have value at some point , it doesn't necessitate in being in there just because it may be of use sometime in the future.

That being said there are very good presets in there no question, but for example I have come across a few ones that have the quality set to maximum for no good reason,no modulation assigned etc, not unusable sounds but seem like filler. All presets should have multiple mod sources assigned even for the most basic things, bearing in mind that this beast is the king of modulation control. I am only really bringing this up because I think this may deter a lot of buyers, it didn't deter me at all, I am not typical and as a user of quite a lot of your plugins I expected the mod madness

Maybe I am way off line but I would think the "average" buyer would go to the first bank and expect to be wowed by the first half a dozen in each category. The signature sounds if you like. Maybe I am mistaken and really don't want to be a downer on a terrific synth so I won't go on,
But please put a Quality lock switch on it

[MeldaProduction]

Got your points . But well, sometimes I think not having any modulation is kind of a good thing - e.g. subbass. Simply thing I need all the time, yet when I open most synths I cannot find a good one. Moreover there are more ways to do "modulation" - FX section provides lots of it. Just the filter ADSR + tremolo is another one .

As for "Quality lock" - what do you mean by that exactly? Like keeping the quality unchanged for presets? Why?

[woodsdenis]

Got your points . But well, sometimes I think not having any modulation is kind of a good thing - e.g. subbass. Simply thing I need all the time, yet when I open most synths I cannot find a good one. Moreover there are more ways to do "modulation" - FX section provides lots of it. Just the filter ADSR + tremolo is another one .

As for "Quality lock" - what do you mean by that exactly? Like keeping the quality unchanged for presets? Why?

The Quality Lock is useful for keeping all the presets in a "draft mode" if you were for example using a few instances as it would cut down on cpu usage. When it comes to render you just turn it off, similar to UHE Diva.
I could spend hours with this thing modulating fx parameters is mind-blowing and mind boggling.

[MeldaProduction]

Hmmm, ok, we'll see . The oscillators are actually not taking that much...
And thank you!!!

[DIGIFEX]

Well, concerning the preset discussion, let me say the following:

I'm a musician in first place (though having some technical background since early hardware synthdays). And I always like skipping through some presets to get an overview of what a synth can do. I therefore like they way Linplug is doing it: You'll always find a bank called "Demo" in there synths which is something like "the creme de la creme" of the whole list of presets. AAS does it in a similar way. So if you are going to test the trial version the "Demo" bank is loaded immediately. Of course it's always nice if the Demo bank shows off lots of the sonic potential that a synth has.
It's always difficult to tell what users are expecting in a Demo preset bank though. I purchased some synths with massive sonic potential over the years but what I found in the presets was often endless emulations of classical analogue techno trance like stuff, trying to get the most stellar supersaw sound available. But I personally don't buy synths like MPS for recreating classic sounds (though it may certainly be capable of doing that). I'm looking for something new. My suggestion would be to release commercial soundests based on special topics made for different types of users (Experimental, Ambient, Dance, etc.). You could then complement your personal library as needed.

It's difficult to say if a synth will sell if the presets are good. Sometimes I wonder why a synth is doing quite well though I personally think the presets are absolutely boring (Vember Audio's Surge would be an example for that; and if you judge the MPS interface as ugly, have look at Surge).
But in other cases it seems as if presets made by professionals can help a lot. I remember when Synthmaster 2.5 was on sale in beta version some time ago. So I was going to try it and found out that the Interface was quite ugly to my eyes. The presets also sounded quite dull at that time and so I decided not to buy it. But as you may know they added some new preset stuff done by professional sound designers in the final release, it got a 10 star review in Computer Magazine and went up like a rocket. In the end it's the same machine nobody cared about two years ago.

[MeldaProduction]

Hmmm, demo bank, interesting idea! After all the top level folder is initially empty... Will think about it !

[BasariStudios]

Hmmm, demo bank, interesting idea! After all the top level folder is initially empty... Will think about it !

A like that too, you take the best Presets into one bank, i think this is done on Blue 2 too.

[woodsdenis]

Hmmm, demo bank, interesting idea! After all the top level folder is initially empty... Will think about it !

A like that too, you take the best Presets into one bank, i think this is done on Blue 2 too.

The top preset layer of u-he synths do this too.

[ZentralmassivSound]

Small remark about the preset quality lock: I think it is also mentioned in the documentation that you can use low quality settings for creative effects. "Highest" and "Extreme" are much better than anything on the market, but "Low" is noticeably lower than the usual quality of other synths. Especially in combination with distortion/saturation effects "Low" can produce a really nice and uniquely sounding tad of dirt. I deliberately used "Low" for at least one preset, if you set it to High or Extreme, the sound just gets all clean, it loses all the dirt and sounds totally different.

So, just a thing to keep in mind when using such a lock in the future, in 98% of all cases higher osc quality will be better, but in 2% it might not be (numbers made up of course, YMMV )