Preset manager (but not BigTick Zen)?

[Tagirijus]

Hi there,

I am aware that there is BigTick Zen. What I do not like about it though is the subhosting.

My personal wish:
There is FX Console for Adobe After Effects, made by Videocopilot. This little preset-alike-thing looks really great and minimalistic. It's a bummer that it's After Effects only.
I would imagine a similar minimalistic tool, with great search and database capability, but with a very basic database structure. Maybe just a folder structure with preset-files, you could just drag into your software, which could handle this file type. And the additional possible tags saved in .ini files, named like the preset file. Maybe even the capability with audio-previews from .mp3 with the same name as the preset file ... or something like this.

Anybody knows alternatives to BigTick Zen or had ever planned coding something on its own? I am just a hobby coder, but I am very close starting my owwn project ... but it would be horrible probably. So I wanted to ask, before I start something like this.

Best,
Manu

[yellowmix]

The subhosting has to do with the way some VST plugins (don't) report presets. By subhosting the plugin, BigTick (and software like it like Akai VIP) can read the parameter states directly.

Native Instruments gets around this by having developers and preset makers provide "NKS-ready" files, which Komplete Kontrol and their other products can pick up. But not all synths have these, and you're beholden to Native Instruments' metatag conventions and hardware.

So there is currently no unified solution that provides 100% automatic coverage.

The best you can do is commit to NKS and make the files yourself, or use a subhosting solution like Zen or VIP, which can automatically read parameter state if the plugin doesn't report the presets properly. Or lobby your DAW developer to put in such a function (since it's hosting VSTs anyway). Or you could code software that would automatically search for VSTs, load them, and read all the presets and convert them to FXP or something you could load into your DAW, maybe play a few notes and record the output, etc..

[sjm]

My biggest gripe with Zen is that it's incredibly instable and will brick my PC when downloading presets after a while.

As yellowmix says, you need to have some way to deal with those synths that have their own preset management system that isn't exposed. That's where the hosting comes in. It also solves the problem of actually opening the synth when you select a preset, and switching between synths as your browse presets. That's the whole power of Zen at the end of the day. Otherwise, how do you audition a preset without loading the synth?

The other thing you describe (a folder like structure with preset files) is how FL Studio handles this already. If that's what you want, maybe you can find a way to batch save all a plugin's presets as FST files in your personal directory structure. Then you can just use the browser to load them. In theory (it might get a bit messy), you can treat tags as sub folders and you can have the same preset in multiple folders. So you can put "BIG BAD PAD" in the "breathy", "pad" and "synthetic" folders. You won't of course be able to do logical searches in FL Studio ("pad" AND "breathy") though.

Because of architecture you are working with, you will have to compromise somewhere. Either you will need to tag your preset files at the file level (there are loads of utilities to tag files) and search outside of FL Studio, and drag the presets from the search results. Or you need some sort of VST host that actually loads the plugin and can handle all the different preset formats and lets you audition them. I don't see how you are going to be able to tell FL Studio to add a new channel to the rack with plugin XYZ and preset ABC without some sort of manual interaction. That's where the ability to export the presets in Zen is useful: audition the presets across all your synths until you find something you like, then export the preset and load it in the project.

It might be easier if you only want a better preset browser for single plugins, rather than being able to browse across multiple plugins. I don't know what options the FL SDK offers - you'd have to check - but if you can somehow hook into something ike the wrapper settings, you might be able to extend it to include a tagged browser for that particular synth. I know that some FL extensions have done things like hook into the mixer faders, so I'm assuming that you can integrate on a deeper level than you could with a VST. Obviously a solution like this would be FL Studio only.

[Tagirijus]

Hey people, thanks for your replies already.

To get one thing clear: I am not talking about automatic database creation or similar. I really would like to have a very simple and plain database-like thing, holding the preset-file with user defined tags. If no tags will be given the search system should only search for filename instead - something like this.

I am using FL Studio by the way. I know its browser and this is also just file search. A tagging on the filename level is a nice idea, but yould be to clumsy. Also I would love a system, which would show the search results filtered. In FL I have to press F3 to jump to the next found item. In this way I also could use the Windows explorer and be faster, hehe.

Looking forward to new replies.

[sjm]

I think you need to specify what you want to be able to do.

Browse presets across multiple synths? A tagged browser for presets per synth? Until you can define what you want in 1 sentence, you don't know what it is you are looking for. What's the high concept (beyond non sub-hosted preset browser)? What is the actual problem (beyond the sub-host issue) that you are trying to solve?

(and yeah the browser solution is far from ideal, just bouncing out some ideas)

[Tagirijus]

Thanks for your reply. Let me try to make it more clear:

In the end I am just looking for a tool, which can search through (tagged) files in general. I am not looking for a specific tool for just synths, effects or similar. I just want to have a tool let me search through a folder of files - but files I could tag somehow. And overall: a very slim tool. Maybe just looking like FX Control from Videocopilot. So: not the Windows Explorer for example.

[sjm]

I can't recommend you a file tagger, but I'm sure Google can. I have used some in the past, but that was so long ago, I can't remember the names, couldn't tell you if they work on modern computers or anything much. Sorry about that. Maybe someone else can. You probably also want the ability to drag search results as file links into FL, so make sure it's a bit like Windows Explorer in that way...

Going slightly off tangent, I do think that the ability to tag presets in FL (in its own browser pane and with an expanded preset browser in the wrapper or something) would very nice. Especially with an online system for sharing tags and ratings (like Zen), so I don't have to tag everything myself. FL is already the host that Zen needs to be in order to provide some of its functionality; if the DAW provides this functionality, you don't need a middleman.

There's nothing like Zen out there and free that I know of, hence this topic being of interest.

[Tagirijus]

Thanks for your reply again. And by the way: the tool does not have to be free.

Let's see if others have some ideas. And of course: if I should come up with something, I would share it.

[Tagirijus]

I found out that there are some programs like "Keystroke Launcher": Launchy, Wox and Keypirinha. Some of them allow users to develop plugins and right now I try to dig into Keypirinha, which seems to be most promising (since it allows drag and drop feature for found entries). Unfortunately I am having a really hard time understanding the API of the plugin development, phew. Till now it even seems that it would not be possible to start a playback of an audio file, when just selecting an entry (or even executing it). Quite problematic. Maybe this information still helps others who are on a similar way like me.

Edit:

Forgot to mention the link: http://keypirinha.com/