I stand by my post above, but this is a fair point. In retrospect, its something that is probably worth really thinking about when starting out.
There is a divide between making good sound and making good music, imo.
It a little like the difference between being "a good artist" and "making good art". I can tweak synths for hours and end up with not even the beginning of a track, and be happy.
Like, I would rather make one bad track a year than ten that are great and sound like someone else, but I can see how that is crazy.

I didn't mean a preset sound but a preset pattern, ie. sounds & notes & rhythms & bells & whistles...

Anyway, I only listen to bands who build their own synths and wind their own guitar strings. For my own music I use presets or the randomize button.

Think I'm gonna add some of the good old "human trumpet" sounds from the Tonehammer library.

I really wanna try that now actually...then start pissing in it after its halfway flushed for a super build up!!!
But I really hate just sitting there and programming patches and stuff and then saving them for a session later. It's much worse when I'm making a song and then I start tweaking a patch and then I look at the clock and realize i've been fiddling for an hour or two and forgot to finish the song I was writing.

Shouldn't that be:

using presets = bad sound designer
programming from init = good sound designer

or

using presets = someone who can't be arsed to design a sound
programming from init = someone who can be arsed to design a sound

I see concerts all the time where the keyboardist loads up a rhodes preset, then proceeds to tear up the place with his musicianship.

Creating patches has nothing to do with being a good musician…although a good musician can potentially make quite playable patches.

You might find it helpful to break up sound design sessions from song-writing sessions. I like to "assemble a band" of core instruments before I start laying stuff down. That way when I do lay down some tracks I can move quickly without stopping to program sounds. Also it makes sense to practice designing lots of sounds so that you can come up with something useful quickly, as sometimes it's more helpful to design a sound in context.

nobody gives a f**k about using presets or not except synthesizer-users in forums.

FTFY

I'm a preset whoooreeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

But I have to say if you want to learn sound design, presets are essential. Once you know what does what and why, you can make them yourself.

Robert Henke (Monolake) just put it in way better words than I ever could in this interview:

"I have a strong aversion against preset 'content', and the first thing I do when I get a new synthesizer is to get rid of the factory presets. I want to explore the machines by myself. Only at a later stage do I flip through the presets, to see if I overlooked something essential. Then, I go back to only using my own presets. I can afford that style of working since no one is sitting behind me and telling me that he wants that hip sound from artist X on his commercial. For me, creating sounds is a huge part of what I enjoy when working with electronics: being able to define my own timbres."

*exactly* how I feel about presets

Again: It's completely OK when someone uses presets, but sound design is 99.9989869% of the fun for me so it would be complete nonsense *for me* to use presets

Cheers
Dennis

Wow, good quote.
*Exactly*, +1

Of course, you can be a good musician without programming patches. Especially if you're good in playing some acoustic instruments.

So maybe you could substitute the word "musician" with "producer"...as from a producer I'd expect at least some average knowledge about sound design. But if you use presets as a sound designer, then I think you've got the wrong job...

They're very essential for learning sound design, at least for me as a musician with much interest in sound design. What I find also very useful is the "randomize" function on some synthesizers, especially on those from HG Fortune. You click at it and then you find a absolutely new sound, and you can tweak them further.

But not to forget my favorite quote (it's from the Dance Music Manual by Rick Snoman):

"As always, experimentation is the real key."

I stopped deluding myself I can make decent patches years ago so a preset lover here, there are some seriously good soundbanks about now

With all the easy user modulations that can be done now on a lot of synths only the devoted few could identify it as a preset but they should be making music so serves them right