Zen features requests

[pwal]

meh meh meh

well give us some clues, to help you - eg, what happens when you run the standalone zen?
just moaning is rubbish, although i never watched the videos either

[asseca]

Maybe what you mean is, you can't see the tags if they are outside of the visible part of the scrolling tags list ?

Yes, that's what I'm talking about - tags not being visible without scrolling. My Category and Timbre lists are bigger than their respective windows - in order to see all tags that might be associated with a patch I have to scroll. Things can get confusing where patches are being filtered by one or more active tags and where one or more of those tags is not visible without scrolling.

Most of my patches have quite a few tags associated - not just one each from category and timbre as in your example above. Some have a couple of tags under Category and three or more under Timbre. My Timbre list now includes 24 tags - twice the size of the window!

ATM there is a setting in zen.properties:presetDatabase.autoSort: false. When this is set to true, all associated tags would be visible at the top of the list.

Maybe this "autoSort" should be directly accessable on the GUI, which would then allow instant switching between old-fashioned alphabetical order/most used.

Even better might be to give "autoSort"-tags 3 settings:

1. full alphabetical order
2. most used
3. most used alphabetical

The advantage of the 3rd option (for me) is that I can find an item much easier when a list is in alphabetical order, while it would push the unused items to the bottom of the list - both parts of such a list should be ordered alphabetically ...[/list]

[Kriminal]

meh meh meh

ive given plenty of info to the dev, i dont see what its got to do with you.

[pwal]

meh meh meh

i've given plenty of info to the dev, i dont see what its got to do with you.

[Big Tick]

Maybe this "autoSort" should be directly accessable on the GUI, which would then allow instant switching between old-fashioned alphabetical order/most used.

It is - on the configuration page.

[crimsonwarlock]

FR: an overall volume setting for the standalone mode (so it can go into the settings window for the standalone version). It's pretty loud in comparison to my other host programs.

[crimsonwarlock]

OK, I was just thinking about this:

ZEN has great potential for sound designers. So maybe it should get some specific functionality for those (maybe this functionaliity could be linked to a designer key). What I'm thinking about is that I would like to simply use ZEN standalone as my host for sound design. So I would need the option to not only 'add' a preset from a synth but also to 'update' a preset from a synth, as I almost always finetune my sound after the initial design. Currently I must use another host and save my sounds to an FXB-file first. It would be great if I could sidestep all that and just store 'work in progress' presets directly into ZEN.

There is the issue that 'updating' presets could potentially change existing presets, but I have a solution for that: have a system tag 'Draft' (like the 'new' tag) that can only be set on local presets that are not yet in the database. That way 'downloaded' presets can not be changed but local presets can. Having a specific tag for this that can be set on and of will help indicating which presets are not yet 'ready'. Maybe lock a preset that is tagged as 'Draft' so it can not be uploaded might be very handy as well to prevent accidental uploading of unfinished work.

[Big Tick]

Crimson, you don't need to go through the fxb file thing, you can import the presets directly from the synth into Zen. It's true there is no "update" feature for now, but if you haven't published the preset, you can always remove it and reimport it.

Good call on the "draft" system tag. There will definitely be more features for users with a designer key, since, remember, at some point you will also be able to sell your presets through Zen.

[crimsonwarlock]

Crimson, you don't need to go through the fxb file thing, you can import the presets directly from the synth into Zen. It's true there is no "update" feature for now, but if you haven't published the preset, you can always remove it and reimport it.

I figured as much But it is somewhat of a workaround of course and doesn't give me some organization as to what presets are done or not.

Good call on the "draft" system tag. There will definitely be more features for users with a designer key, since, remember, at some point you will also be able to sell your presets through Zen.

I know, although I'm planning to do quite a few banks for several synths that are all free so I won't sell anything, just giving back to the community and developers that give us all those great instruments for free

But for me ZEN is definitely the way to go for distributing presets. I posted about that in the Logana soundbank topic as well

[hakey]

I had been thinking along similar lines. I'm always tinkering with my patches, and I'd quite like to somehow be able to update my public ones. Obviously, in the unlikely event that someone had used one of my patches in a project, this could cause problems - so how about some way of flagging up when a new version of a patch is available?

And thinking of the social aspects of Zen, it might be nice to be able to flag up modified versions of other Author's patches too?

[Big Tick]

I figured as much But it is somewhat of a workaround of course and doesn't give me some organization as to what presets are done or not.

Well, you can also add your own "draft" user tag. Then you can display the ones that are good to go, using shift-click on "draft".

But for me ZEN is definitely the way to go for distributing presets. I posted about that in the Logana soundbank topic as well

Thanks for this - I really appreciate that you are seeing beyond the current version, with its obvious limitations and instabilities.

[Big Tick]

The sync engine is able to update presets, however there is no UI for it.

In most cases it will be safe to replace the preset data with the updated one. For people who have used the old preset in a project (I can actually track that), it is mostly a matter of defining what to do.

crimson / wakey, how many revisions of your presets are you typically doing ? If this number is small maybe it is better to keep all versions in the system, maybe with a different display for presets with several revisions.

[crimsonwarlock]

For me one initial version and two revisions tops. I would say that 70% is good to go right away, 25% needs some work and 5% I hit a third time just because I think of something that REALLY will make it better. And I think 5% is actually a high estimate

As for published patches, I would say just release updated versions as a 'new updated' patchbank. As ZEN checks to see if an identical preset is in the database there is no problem to have the initial published version and the updated version both in the database.

[hakey]

I know, although I'm planning to do quite a few banks for several synths that are all free so I won't sell anything.

In an idle moment I was wondering whether it might be possible to use Zen to set up a donate to charity link? My Synth1 bank has been downloaded nearly 800 times, yet only a dozen or so people have bothered to express any thanks for it (of course, it might just be that it's not that good ). I have another another full bank, but I'm loathe to just give it away to the unappreciative freeloaders . It'd be nice if I could ask for a trivial (a couple of quid or, a 'pay what you think it's worth') donation to charity in order for people to be to receive a bank, and I don't think that doing so would be to act against the spirit of freeware.

Though I get the feelings that it's probably a bit too early days to do this kind of thing with Zen?

And I agree that Zen is a great way to publish patches.

[aMUSEd]

In an idle moment I was wondering whether it might be possible to use Zen to set up a donate to charity link? My Synth1 bank has been downloaded nearly 800 times, yet only a dozen or so people have bothered to express any thanks for it

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