Patch ratings scale

[aMUSEd]

Many plugins now have a patch rating system - usually going from 0-5 (except annoyingly NI and Bitwig who have decided that you only need a like or don't like - going the dumbed down iTunes route)

What levels in your heads do you give these ratings? For me it's

0 - Uninteresting or sucks
1 - May be usable
2 - Not bad (probably usable occasionally)
3 - Good
4 - Great
5 - Fantastic

[exmatproton]

Many plugins now have a patch rating system - usually going from 0-5 (except annoyingly NI and Bitwig who have decided that you only need a like or don't like - going the dumbed down iTunes route)

What levels in your heads do you give these ratings? For me it's

0 - Uninteresting or sucks
1 - May be usable
2 - Not bad (probably usable occasionally)
3 - Good
4 - Great
5 - Fantastic

?? People still work with rating systems for patches? Lol...wouldn't thought that.

I think -/+ is enough, to be honest, if i would use patches.

[aMUSEd]

hehe evidently you are one of the people they dumbed it down for

I prefer nuances - it's impossible for me to rate things by either like or dislike - most are somewhere in between

[jancivil]

The only time I've looked at ratings was in Kore. I have not loaded many Koresounds at all that weren't mine.
There have been a few, and if I thought, I may very well want to call on this thing in future, I named its bank CIVIL which is not the biggest bank in there, you know. And here, I maybe distinguished between my own patches, 3, 4, or 5 stars, rarely so poor as 3. "Old Suitcase" was what, Reaktor Spark and it's in CIVIL because it's a 5 stars kind of deal, strictly. If I'm stuck for designing something my own self I will venture outside CIVIL, ie., in the dark. I never will have come up with "Old Suitcase" in Reaktor Spark tho.

[jancivil]

I use Skanner a lot. Every preset I ever loaded in that was fantastic. I save what I used in the Cubase project. My method here, a slight refinement beyond just loading the project (I tend to make very useful project names) was to save a particular Skanner.ens which will or course load with that snapshot, project name or aspect appended to 'Skanner' maybe corresponding with a folder name.

The synth I can imagine more actively parsing presets for is Monark. I have little-to-no idea what to expect from most of the names in it. I guess I disregard a lot of what I've seen as Koresounds by the information in Kore. Thing Is I don't have very many synths. For years it was all Absynth for me and most of that time it was in Kore; all of that programming was my own. I didn't do anything but Absynth for months, way back in A3, 2006, and I'll start with one of those, which I named to where I know what's going on.

[exmatproton]

hehe evidently you are one of the people they dumbed it down for

Excuse me????

I don't use presets...no dumbing down necessary.

[LGK_Dude]

hehe evidently you are one of the people they dumbed it down for

Excuse me????

I don't use presets...no dumbing down necessary.

So you've never made a patch from scratch for a project, and realized it didn't quite fit as you expected, but it was still a good patch, so you saved it as... a.... wait for it..... preset?

As for the OP, I find custom tags in conjunction with raiting to be better than ratings alone. I do a similar scale, but I always find it hard to rate on just a 1-5 system, as a patch that might not be usable in my current song and might rate a 1, might fit surprisingly well in a different context. A simple "like/dislike" is too limited for those who really care about organizing their sounds and for efficiency when working - but it does take forethought to create and manage the database so I can see why its not for everyone. But it should be an option on all synths IMO. The synth that has implemented this the best so far is Omnisphere, but even here it could use some improvements.

BTW, for others like exmatproton who are wondering, yes there are people who use patch rating systems & tags to organize their sounds. Normally these are people who need to compose music fast for a multitude of different genres, so its helpful for them during downtime to prepare and organize their pallet of sounds because there is simply no time to spend hours browsing or creating patches when the project hits. For those who create all their own sounds from scratch before beginning a song, I can see where patch rating might not be as necessary, as you will be creating new sounds from scratch as needed. I wonder though, even in this context if setting up some startup presets to quickly get you in the ballpark of the sound you are interested in, and these could be organized by tagging / rating - i.e. this is my saw lead starter patch, my square bass starter patch, this is my synth pluck starter, etc - and ratings could be used to indicate what level of "doneness" it is.

[exmatproton]

hehe evidently you are one of the people they dumbed it down for

Excuse me????

I don't use presets...no dumbing down necessary.

So you've never made a patch from scratch for a project, and realized it didn't quite fit as you expected, but it was still a good patch, so you saved it as... a.... wait for it..... preset?

As for the OP, I find custom tags in conjunction with raiting to be better than ratings alone. I do a similar scale, but I always find it hard to rate on just a 1-5 system, as a patch that might not be usable in my current song and might rate a 1, might fit surprisingly well in a different context. A simple "like/dislike" is too limited for those who really care about organizing their sounds and for efficiency when working - but it does take forethought to create and manage the database so I can see why its not for everyone. But it should be an option on all synths IMO. The synth that has implemented this the best so far is Omnisphere, but even here it could use some improvements.

Well, no. I've always made stuff from scratch, to be honest. If i do/try a new synth i make patches and save them (send a couple try-out patches to the u-he patch page for instance). But i never use 'old' patches in a new track...That's not what a synth is for (imho ofcourse).

I don't buy soundsets, nor do i use build in presets. Well, maybe once or twice (as literally as possible). But never after i carefully setup a rating system and what not...that's just not the way i do things.

[LGK_Dude]

Well, no. I've always made stuff from scratch, to be honest. If i do/try a new synth i make patches and save them (send a couple try-out patches to the u-he patch page for instance). But i never use 'old' patches in a new track...That's not what a synth is for (imho ofcourse).

I don't buy soundsets, nor do i use build in presets. Well, maybe once or twice (as literally as possible). But never after i carefully setup a rating system and what not...that's just not the way i do things.

That’s fine, we all have our way of working, and if its working for you that’s great! However to reply to the OP with "?? People still work with rating systems for patches? Lol...wouldn't thought that." is presumptuous, egotistical to assume everyone works the same way, and "LOL'ing" implies belittling those who do not. Perhaps you didn't mean it this way, but this is how it came across to me.

[ras.s]

aMUSEd,

consider that you can tag all presets in Bitwig any way you want. For example, add the tag "5" to the sounds you consider fantastic; you will immediately find them under that tag. The fastest way to tag a patch is to right-click it on the right hand side browser and choose to edit file metadata. Conveniently numbers will be at the top of the list of tags. Alternatively you can put those sounds in a collection named Fantastic and find them there.

The whole tagging and categorisation thing almost, almost, makes me forgive them for not letting users save patches as FXP-files. The browser's pretty quick to get around, you can for instance search for "tag:5 bass" and it will bring up all the sounds you've tagged with the number and that match the word bass, be it a category or part of the name.

I typically tag/categorise according to the type of sound, some characteristic or the emotion the sound evokes, so stars aren't that important for me.

[exmatproton]

Well, no. I've always made stuff from scratch, to be honest. If i do/try a new synth i make patches and save them (send a couple try-out patches to the u-he patch page for instance). But i never use 'old' patches in a new track...That's not what a synth is for (imho ofcourse).

I don't buy soundsets, nor do i use build in presets. Well, maybe once or twice (as literally as possible). But never after i carefully setup a rating system and what not...that's just not the way i do things.

That’s fine, we all have our way of working, and if its working for you that’s great! However to reply to the OP with "?? People still work with rating systems for patches? Lol...wouldn't thought that." is presumptuous, egotistical to assume everyone works the same way, and "LOL'ing" implies belittling those who do not. Perhaps you didn't mean it this way, but this is how it came across to me.

Fair enough. Didn't mean it that way at all. Didn't mean to come across condescending.
Just didn't think anyone would actually use those systems. A well, it shows how unwordly i am, apparently.

[iPlogger]

I haven't really figured out how to use every level. I will have 5 be fantastic, and basically a sound that is very much in my general style. 4 is great and maybe a little less usable, but one I don't want to forget about. 3 is a 'has potential' category. This could be that with some editing it can really be just right for me.

I don't use a 2 or 1 for the reason that I just can't give a low rating. I've thought patches were completely useless until I discovered how well they fit for a particular song. Maybe I should rate these a 2. My problem is, obviously, by not rating, I don't always know if I've gone through all of the sounds.

A 2-part rating might work nice. With Lightroom (photo editing) you have stars and also colors that represent categories. Omnisphere has a system where you can create a project and rate patches for THAT project. Your project could be musical genre, a full album or whatever you want.

[fluffy_little_something]

I suppose rating only makes sens with factory presets or third-party sound sets as obviously I find all of my own patches good. So, when rating other people's patches, I think a favorite feature is enough, especially if that means one can hide all non-favorites.