I would imagine the situation would be exactly the same as with other forms of copyrighted content. If I have a copyrighted book in some format, then it's fine to support that format (eg the format the book is stored in isn't protected by copyright, apparently), but this doesn't invalidate the copyright of the content stored in the format.

So if a sound designer designs some sounds for synth X, then the developer of unrelated synth Y is allowed support loading patches in the format understood by synth X, but if the sound designer then licenses his sounds for use in synth X specifically, the customer would be violating the license terms by loading them into synth Y.

However.. the interesting question is really whether such license terms would be valid (eg does some interoperability clause or similar somewhere invalidate them).

A preset transcoder sounds interesting. Could be nice for synths with similar architectures.

Or when the target synth has a much larger architecture. Like in my MKS-80 to Poly-Ana example. Totally do-able! (It's just a hell of a lot of WORK! )

Well even if the architectures would match perfectly, it would probably not sound exactly the same anyway. But I don't necessarily see that as a downside, on the contrary it might just give a new dimension to existing patches you've got laying around.

There is a couple of Virus banks translated to Zebra by Hans Hafner. Wonder if they were translated by hand or using some sort of translation-tool?

I keep meaning to write (or try to) a converter, as far as possible, from Nord Modular patches to Sonic-Core Scope and/or others... mostly because I have Scope, and want all the Nord patches, without converting them by hand

As far VST patches, whenever a host allows you to save a patch (preset) in their own format, they're effectively reverse-engineering anyway. The same applies with Kore (was it that ?) morphing between patches. Conversion is just another variant.

Personally, I'd love to see one. I suspect many sound-designers *wouldn't* as they possibly rely on selling the 'same' patches for different synths Obviously, there's more to just the parameters to create a sound, but it would certainly be interesting to see how similar some synths sound on some patches.

Definitely something to play around with though.

Bring it on

You might do better and quicker to just pick the 1000 best patches and convert them by hand, it'll probably take less time, have better end results, and you wont have 900 duplicate mediocre patches diluting the overall quality.

That's my guess anyway.

IMO a company that makes its sysex format public is similar to the case of any other public API. Synth makers have an interest in making the sysex format public and let software developers use it so that patch editors/DAWs/programmers/etc. can support their synth and I think another program interpreting their sysex to play similar sounds would be just another similar case.

Who owns the rights of the factory patches themselves is an orthogonal issue and also interesting. Often the patches are created by third parties and I have no idea what kind of agreements are typical between the sound designers and the synth manufacturer. And obviously manufacturers want musicians to use the patches in their music and even create derivative patches based on them. I suspect it may be a bit of a grey legal area.

Both issues may depend on the licesing terms, but I've never signed a license agreement when buying or setting up a hardware synth, and I don't remember manuals going into this kind of details.

'pick the 100 best patches' you mean?

In any event.. who is going to be the judge of sound design? What patches are amazing to you might be useless to me and vice versa. The ability to convert on the fly means no one has to play judge. Freedom is a good thing.


Urs, if you want to load my free Synth1 bank into another synth, by all means go for it. I'd enjoy hearing what those sounds are like in another product. Just as long as no one else takes credit for the sound design, what is the harm?

Its also my perception of things. Take the case of samples, wich also come in a certain format, you can use them in your music but not resell them as it, or to be used in another format/host etc. The same applies to presets, wich are a mind creation, and therefore are protected as such, at least in France. I've been approached several times by sample packs makers to get the autorisation to use my presets, wich I always politely declined. I know a company who recently got 370 000$ by an US court from a Chilian guy who had pirated their sample collection.

Presets are the property of the sound designers, or of the companies that have bought them to sound designers, and get a licence to use them in their synths.

At Xils-Lab for example, opposite to some companies, we pay our sound designers, and then build our own sound libraries with the bought presets. Anyway Xils preset format is proprietary, and the architecture of the synths beeing nowhere near like simple, so .......

I see borrowing presets from other companies, who have paid to them, and therefore have added a value to their products, and for their customers, as stealing. And even if the thing was legally doable ( But anyhow I think is technically questionable for various reasons ) I would stil consider it like thievery, and not defendable from a moral POV.

( Needless to precise that I'm primarily a sound designer, and that I also defend the right of my pairs )

How much do you have to change a preset before it becomes your own? Could someone just tweak the volume knob and claim them as their own? With 32 bit floating point parameters, you could change every parameter by a few fractions of a percent and would rarely hear any change. It would be an easy matter to make a copyright-eliminator that just ever so slightly tweaked every value.

I see presets as valueless, other than they give people more reasons to buy the instrument and more enjoyment from it once they have.

(I feel totally different about sample sets.)
Last edited by AdmiralQuality on Fri May 11, 2012 12:53 pm; edited 1 time in total

when testing a synth last year (maybe year before actually) testers were told that a preset (by company or testers) had to have at least 12 diff settings to params to be a 'new' preset (thats what i recall, numbers may be different, maybe more, but i think it was 12)

i think unless you are making a 1:1 emulation of a synth (or at least a synth with the same parameters), the imported files wont be much use.

Some devs already have sysex import, Discovery is an example, and FM8 and other FM synths.

It also raises the point of all the recent analogue 'emulations' with presets that match the originals... are they already 'stealing' ?

If I take a synth, and manually recreate a sound I have on another synth without referencing the original parameters, there's obviously no contention. Does knowing the original parameters change that ?

This, of course, is the same way that certain parts of the world introduced crazy things like software patents: "If we've done something, you're not allowed to without paying us, even if you can work it out yourself".

Would sound designers say they 'own' creativity ? What about prior art, and can they honestly say they're not making derivatives ?

Obviously an endless discussion, with no satisfying conclusion for everyone, which is always the way when money is involved.

I'd still like to see patch conversion though

do you ever legally own software??? if the seller states that a preset bank can only be used in a certain synth, is that legally binding?

i dont mind personally, if i have a sold a bank, they own it as far as im concerned, they can load it into anything, as long as they dont sell the original bank as their own.

ther are ppl who buy banks and rename and sell as their own anyway, ebay has millions of them.