Zen

[crimsonwarlock]

When your Zen downloads Krim's public preset, it detects that it is a duplicate of a local preset. Any tags you had set for the local preset are applied to the public one, and then the local preset is removed.

I was expecting it to work along those lines, thanks for the confirmation.

[Kriminal]

Also, anyone with a designer key can import, say, Tim Conrardy's presets and tag them as his. But, believe me, at some point (and probably very quickly) someone will notice.

No doubt Tick has made contingency plans for this - I guess banning the offending user and removing all of their uploads.

Exactly. The last thing I (we all) need is issues with people uploading illegal content.

Tim has a zip file on his site that contains FREE patches/banks, is it not possible to upload those and tag them as Tims? seems fair enough to me...

[Kriminal]

so, if im understanding you correctly, i need a designer key to get my own presets into the database? (assuming it stops crashing first of course)

Only if you want to publish them and share them with others.

ok, so maybe when the next update is done i'll ask for a key. (assuming ive figured out how it actually works, so far i seem to be having lots of 'user error' probs alongside the bugs, which makes Zen very frustrating at the moment)

[hakey]

Will it be possible for an author to limit access to a given patch/patchbank to certain users?

Yes, this would make sense as a platform with "social" features: you could have public groups, private groups, and decide which groups are allowed to download which presets.

Great!

Another question/suggestion re social features: might it be possible to search for users who's list of patches tagged 'favourite' correlated most closely with mine, and then view the rest of their favourited patches?

[crimsonwarlock]

Tim has a zip file on his site that contains FREE patches/banks, is it not possible to upload those and tag them as Tims? seems fair enough to me...

That is what I'm planning to do for the synths that I use. And not only Tim's banks but also others where the designer seems to be MIA.

[hakey]

That is what I'm planning to do for the synths that I use. And not only Tim's banks but also others where the designer seems to be MIA.

Tim Conrardy's patches are a special case, but shouldn't it really be for an author to decide whether or not their patches are uploaded, even where the patches are freely available elsewhere and where that author might not be contactable for now?

Many plugin designers don't allow their freely available plugs to be re-distributed and I guess some patch designers might feel the same about their creations?

A slightly related idea - how about the ability to append a creative commons license to a patch/patchbank?

Or maybe I'm just being overly pc about things?

[crimsonwarlock]

Some suggestions to the tags (I added those locally so I can use them):

- Main-category: Choir (not every 'voice' sound is a choir sound)

- Sub-category: Nature (in addition to acoustic, electric and synthetic)

- Sub-category: Poly (as opposed to 'Mono')

- Timbre: Mellow (as opposed to both 'Bright' and 'Noisy')

- Timbre: Chorus (in addition to clean and distorted)

- Timbre: Slow (in addition to bowed, percussive and plucked)

EDIT: forgot one...

- Sub-category: Orchestral (in addition to ambient and acoustic)

... and another one:

- Main category: Bells (seems an obvious one that's missing)

[Big Tick]

Tim has a zip file on his site that contains FREE patches/banks, is it not possible to upload those and tag them as Tims? seems fair enough to me...

Of course it's ok. What is not is to upload them and tag them as yours.

Tim Conrardy's patches are a special case, but shouldn't it really be for an author to decide whether or not their patches are uploaded, even where the patches are freely available elsewhere and where that author might not be contactable for now?

In theory you are right, practically, since they gave the presets for free in the first place, I think it is safe enough to tag them properly and upload them (it gives the author exposure). If it is explicitly specified that the preset is not to be redistributed, I would contact the author and ask for permission.

[Big Tick]

Another question/suggestion re social features: might it be possible to search for users who's list of patches tagged 'favourite' correlated most closely with mine, and then view the rest of their favourited patches?

Well, once the information is there, the sky's the limit when it comes to correlating data across users. So, yes. I will have to add something in the license agreement about private data collection, though.

[Big Tick]

- Sub-category: Poly (as opposed to 'Mono')

Just curious, why do you need this when you can search for ("not mono") ?
At the moment there is only mono, so that presets without the tag are implicitly poly. It might not be true, but at least it leaves no room for doubt or inconsistent tagging.
With a "poly" tag:
- What are presets with neither tag supposed to be ?
- What about presets with both tags ?

[crimsonwarlock]

In theory you are right, practically, since they gave the presets for free in the first place, I think it is safe enough to tag them properly and upload them (it gives the author exposure). If it is explicitly specified that the preset is not to be redistributed, I would contact the author and ask for permission.

I totally agree. And most banks we are talking about are already being redistributed through many channels: KVR, Rekkerd, Patcharena and even through bundled packages (in the case of Synth1 and Oatmeal for example). As long as it's handled with proper attribution (which ZEN takes care of with the designer tag) I see no real problems.

- Sub-category: Poly (as opposed to 'Mono')

Just curious, why do you need this when you can search for ("not mono") ?
At the moment there is only mono, so that presets without the tag are implicitly poly. It might not be true, but at least it leaves no room for doubt or inconsistent tagging.

Tbh, I haven't found out how to search for 'NOT tagname', but to me it's much more straight forward to have a tag for each option and select what I want instead of having to de-select (somehow) what I don't want. From my pov having a poly tag is as straight forward as it gets. So I'm tagging all my poly sounds now

Also (thinking of it) it works much better for seeing what a sound is about: when you are browsing patches the tags show a lot of 'information' about that patch. So if there is only a 'mono' tag and it's not set this can mean two things: it's a poly sound, or it's a mono sound but nobody tagged it yet as such

With a "poly" tag:
- What are presets with neither tag supposed to be ?
- What about presets with both tags ?

If both are tagged then one tag is wrong, if none are set then it still has to be tagged

[hakey]

Tbh, I haven't found out how to search for 'NOT tagname'

I discovered this by accident: Shift>Click the tagname in question - scores a line through that tag.

Re: suggestions for new tags - if, as it now seems, Zen's going to move towards fully user customizable grouping and tagging, is there any need to request additions to the current fixed tag system? I suppose it won't do any harm, but if it's all going to be changed anyway...

[Big Tick]

It's going to be changed, yes, but existing tags will be preserved. So it's probably better to tag the presets correctly right away, so that we don't have to deal with duplicate tags, or tags with different spelling...

[crimsonwarlock]

It's going to be changed, yes, but existing tags will be preserved. So it's probably better to tag the presets correctly right away, so that we don't have to deal with duplicate tags, or tags with different spelling...

That was my intention with posting my suggestions

[Big Tick]

Another idea regarding multi-user interaction: collaborative presets creation, which wouldn't be too hard with private groups. So 2 designers could get together in a private group, and work together on presets before publishing them to the world.