Alchemy User Library

Over the last year a large number of presets, samples and utilities have been created by KVR users, and all of these files are now available from the User Library of your Camel Audio support account. After logging in you can download the files in RAR format and use the add-on bank installer to put the files in the proper location for use with Alchemy.

Sharing Your Presets with Other Alchemy Users

If you have created presets that you'd like to share with the community, please upload a zip file containing your presets and any samples not included in the Factory library via your Camel Audio support account. You will find a link at the top of the User Library page for uploading the file or files.

We will verify that all of the presets load correctly, ensure they are sorted in to proper categories, and will make a RAR file available from the User Library for other registered users to install using the Alchemy add-on bank installer. Although we will regularly check for new uploads, but please send an e-mail to support@camelaudio.com after you have uploaded a file to ensure we are aware of your contribution.

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The following text is from the sound design guidelines in the Alchemy manual. We've decided to publish our internal SD guidelines here, and hope they might be useful for those of you making and sharing your own sounds.

We'd certainly recommend that anyone considering releasing a commercial soundbank for Alchemy gives these a once over, and especially anyone who would like to have their presets considered for an official Camel Audio Alchemy add-on (we are always on the lookout for talented sound designers).


PRESET DESIGN GUIDELINES

In terms of the criteria we're using to choose presets, its hard to be specific. However, we're most interested in musically useful, playable sounds rather than entire songs in one preset or incredibly odd sounds. Having said that, remix pad variations can be more unusual. We are keen on having new sounds, especially ones which use features which are unique to Alchemy (such as presets using the morph modes and additive synthesis) - we don't just want to recreate classic sounds. We'd like sounds that are suitable for use across many genres - including current dance music and sounds suitable for use in film and TV soundtracks.

You are free to use sample content from the Alchemy library, or self created samples. If you do decide to supply us with sample material (whether in wav or aaz format - from a legal standpoint its the same), we will ask you to sign a contract explaining that you take legal responsibility for declaring that the samples are your own work and do not in any way use any copyright material. (You may not sample any copyright material, which includes all sample libraries. You can sample virtual and real instruments if the product does not use samples and you don't sample other peoples presets). The contract will mean that if someone were to attempt to sue for damages due to copyright material being used, it would be you who were legally liable. Please don't take risks!


Every preset submitted needs to fulfill the following criteria:

1) Keep preset names short and meaningful
The names should not be more than 28 characters long and ideally shorter. Names should use only upper and lower case letters and spaces. Each word should start with an upper case letter. Try and give patches names that suit their sound or evoke a sense of what the sound might be like, rather than calling them something like 'bitmappad23'.

2) Patches should be the right volume
When playing the preset hitting six notes at once at full velocity (or the number of voices, if fewer) should not cause the output to go above 0dB. Aim to average around -2dB. Within these guidelines you should try to makes presets as loud as possible. If the volume of the different snapshots varies a lot due to the synthesis parameters (eg. comb filter cut and res being modulated), then you should overcome this by setting knob 8 to volume, and tweaking the volume for each snapshot.

3) Make sure all perform controls are assigned and conform to the guidelines
if you are a sound designer creating presets for others to use, it is recommended that you follow the same guidelines that were established for Alchemy's factory presets. Here is a summary of those guidelines:

* Make sure that all perform controls are assigned to something and have suitable names. Control names should be no more than 10 characters long, and each word should start with an upper-case letter.

* The 'Auto Assign' feature (accessed via the Perform section's FILE button) often gives the best starting point; but creativity — including the assignment of knobs to multiple parameters and the use of ModMaps for custom scaling — is encouraged.

* There is a standard Perform layout, and sound designers are urged to follow it. Occasionally, a preset design is driven by some concept that requires special performance controls. (For instance, if you create a preset that distributes four different drum sounds across the keyboard, it might be important to designate two knobs per drum sound for tone controls.) But in the vast majority of cases, the standard layout should be followed as closely as possible:

- Knobs 1-2 are for timbre, pitch, other Source parameters. There is a degree of flexibility with these two controls, but if there are assignments for Source parameters, this is the primary place they should be.

- Knobs 3-4 are for filter cutoff and resonance. This pair of controls should be the primary place users go to tweak filtering. If your preset design doesn't involve a filter, considering adding one in its fully open state in the Effects stage; then users get your intended design plus the option to apply filtering, and with minimal CPU cost.

- Knobs 5-6 are for effects levels or other effects parameters. It's always good to allow users to tailor the effects levels to suit their needs.

- Knobs 7-8 are for controlling a preset's rhythm or movement. There is a degree of flexibility with these two controls, but they are often assigned to LFO or Arpeggiator parameters, or to anything that causes or influences movement in the sound. Alternatively, Knob 8 may be assigned to Master Amp or Master Volume in order to allow the level of each Remix snapshot to be kept in balance.

- XY square 1 is for morphing among Sources. If more than one Source is used, this XY control is the place to assign control of morphing or crossfading. (If not, the assignment of this square is flexible.)

- XY square 2 is flexible. It is often used for control over additional effects parameters, or for features that are unique to a particular preset.

- The Attack/Decay/Sustain/Release knobs are master envelope controls. They should normally control the full range of the corresponding parameters in AHDSR 1. (The 'Auto Assign Empty' feature can take care of this for you.) If you are using an MSEG rather than an AHDSR in the role of master envelope, these controls may be left unassigned.

* The ModWheel should be linked to the most playable performance control. The Remix Pad key-switching Octave should be set to 'Off', so that this feature doesn't interfere with normal playing across the entire keyboard. And on the Arp page, the arpeggiator's Latch mode should be set to 'Off'.


4) Make sure the perform remix variations are assigned and of the right volume
All eight remix snapshots should be assigned with different settings. All settings should be of approximately the same volume, in line with the volume guidelines above. Once again 'auto assign' is a good starting point, but please check its assigned appropriate values.

5) Preset categorization
Create a folder which has your name in Alchemy\Presets and create a folder with the same name as that used in the factory for any presets you create (Bass, Brass, Drums, Guitars, Keys, Loops, Mallets, Organs, Sound Effects, Soundscapes, Strings, Synth Leads, Synth Pads, Vocals, Woodwinds). You can select your presets by clicking on the button to the left of the preset type dropdown.

6) Samples
If using your own samples outwith the Factory content, you have 2 options. Please EITHER use 'Save Consolidated' for any presets which use your own samples (this will include any needed samples alongside the preset) OR (and this is the preferable option) put all your used samples into Alchemy/Samples/User/<your name>.

7) Ensure presets are in tune
Please ensure all presets are in tune (ie. A3=440Hz).

8 ) Make sure the patch sounds best at the expected note on the keyboard
If a patch needs to be played lower than standard to sound best and this would not usually be expected please use the transpose function. Ie. If its a bass, one would expect to play it an octave or two down, but if its an effect, for example, one would not expect to have to play it at the bottom note on a keyboard.

9 ) Keep CPU usage as low as possible
On an Intel 2.0GHz machine with 1GB of ram, no preset should take more than 50% of the CPU, when playing the number of voices set in the patch, up to a maximum of six notes.

If a preset uses too much CPU, work through each the following recommendations, in each case listening to the preset to check that the quality of the sound has not been significantly worsened - if so, skip onto the next step.
-1) if using 'Acoustic Reverb' with quality higher than 50%, turn it down to 50%
-2) reduce polyphony (Suggested max poly for high CPU patches: Brass/Guitars/Keys/Mallets/Organs/Strings/Synths/Vocals: 8, Soundscapes/Drums: 3, Bass/Loops/Sound Effects/Leads/Woodwinds: 1)
-3) go through all source filters and see if you can notice a signficant difference if the filter is turned off, if not turn it off
-4) turn stereo off for all sources which use additive or have source filters
-5) if using a filter with 'HQ' in the name, swap to the version without 'HQ'.
-6) if using additive/VA, use fewer oscillators (listen to each source and gradually turn down the number and see where it starts to make a big difference to the sound. Make sure its a multiple of 4 (eg. 4, 8, 12, 16..))
-7) if using additive with sine shape and more than 4 oscillators and symmetry is around 50%, set symmetry to exactly 50% and do not modulate any of the following with anything including perform controls: symmetry, master coarse or fine pitch, the sources coarse or fine pitch or additive pitch knob. If you do this, it will use 50% the amount of cpu.
Cool if using granular, turn grain density down if using more than 4 grains
-9) turn stereo off for all sources
-10) reduce release time if more than 2s
-11) if using acoustic reverb and quality is higher than 35% reduce it to 35%
-12) if using granular and stretch=100% try setting it to sampler instead
-13) if in xfade mode, use equivalent morph mode instead. This makes a large difference for additive and spectral modes.
-14) use fewer effects
-15) use fewer sources

10) Preset should not reference more than 60MB of samples/aazs
Preset shouldn't use more than 60MB of data, otherwise they take too long to load as there is no disk streaming. Generally you shouldn't have no worry about this as almost all our SFZs refer to a maximum of 15MB of samples.

If you're lookingfor some fresh Alchemy patches check out my new website www.patchpool.de
There is a page where I post Alchemy patches from recent projects - hopefully as donationware.

I uploaded some VA presets in "Banks & Patches" at KvrAudio. A few strings and pads. These are from my Trance-bank what I'm making.

http://www.kvraudio.com/banks.php?s=one&id=1184

Here are 10 cinematic pads. The zipfile is too big to upload on Kvr, so I uploaded the archive to my server.

The presets are pretty raw because they need some fine tuning and normalisation, but you can work with them. I'm planning to make more...

http://www.yuroun.nl/presets/cinematic.zip


Btw, the samples are custom made especially for these presets...

Just downloaded the demo, presets available seems a bit mean, so nice for people to make more presets.

ME

Quite a few fresh Alchemy presets are available on my website www.patchpool.de -> Alchemy
Donationware...

and with that PNG imported into additive with Sin-Vocal, sym= - 60, NOsc = 60, Pitch = 12345-1346 at 100 percent and Amp = Octaves at 100 percent...with the ethnic bagpipe tuning to get that bagpipe patch I made.

best thing I can think of other than actually sharing the preset.

I posted this on Camel Audio's Facebook page. Though not sure if all is on there.