How do you organize your sounds in Native Instrument Synths?

[LGK_Dude]

Coming from Spectrasonics instruments which have AMAZING browser / rating / tagging systems, I'm finding it extremely difficult to organize my sounds in NI synths. How do you guys deal with it?

For example, in both FM8 and MAssive I see "ratings" columns but for the life of me I cannot figure out how to actually rate a sound! Same goes with the "colors" tab. Absynth seems to be void of any type of rating system at all!! Sure, I can add patches to "my favorites" but that will become unwieldy very fast. Is this really the only way to organize sounds in NI synths?

Anyone have any advice? How do you keep your library organized / accessible?

Thanks in advance for the help and reply. Very much appreciated.

[4damind]

I have my libraries and own programmed sounds on a shared place (for all presets/synth not only NI). With NI it's easy because they have a option to set/add additional places which can be scanned. With other synth it's a bit more complicated (for this I use often "hard-links" on Windows).
I don't use tagging for own sounds, I give them a name like "pluck XYZ" or "bass YYZ". For sound designers interested to sell sounds it makes more sense to give all sounds all attributes. But for the own usage I make it as easy as possible.

I cannot remember about a rating column in Massive.. if there is such option I would never use it. IMO it makes no sense to rate a sound and give them a tag like "good" or "bad".

[aMUSEd]

Coming from Spectrasonics instruments which have AMAZING browser / rating / tagging systems, I'm finding it extremely difficult to organize my sounds in NI synths. How do you guys deal with it?

For example, in both FM8 and MAssive I see "ratings" columns but for the life of me I cannot figure out how to actually rate a sound! Same goes with the "colors" tab. Absynth seems to be void of any type of rating system at all!! Sure, I can add patches to "my favorites" but that will become unwieldy very fast. Is this really the only way to organize sounds in NI synths?

Anyone have any advice? How do you keep your library organized / accessible?

Thanks in advance for the help and reply. Very much appreciated.

Well NI did have a fantastic system that Spectrasonics and Camel probably took ideas from when they created their own browsers called Kore. It had all the things you want and more (still better even than Omnisphere's browser). The problem is NI never 100% implemented the great ideas they had in Kore in the Kore based browsers of their other instruments, possibly because they intended people to use Kore as the central database for all NI sounds, so while they did (including Absynth) have ratings, attribute based tagging, batch renaming of banks and even colour coding the implementation was clunkier than it was in Kore. But then when they dumped Kore they took a step backwards and even went to the extent of further crippling the browsers in their other synths to remove any remaining Kore-like qualities (basically to make it more like Maschine's browser which is useless). So everyone else learnt from Native Instruments but they were incapable of learning from themselves - how's that for irony

So I still use Kore of course and all my presets are nicely organised. Nothing can replace it for me so far.

[dreamkeeper]

It's quite simple: With NI synths, all attributes are saved within the patch. So to change one, you need to re-save the patch to some user location - saving to the factory folders isn't allowed (which is a requirement of the OS).

Absynth and Massive has of course the rating too. You may have the rating column hidden in the browser, so right-click the header and select the columns you want.

Regarding favourites: You can create subfolders if you want.

[aMUSEd]

It's quite simple: With NI synths, all attributes are saved within the patch. So to change one, you need to re-save the patch to some user location - saving to the factory folders isn't allowed (which is a requirement of the OS).

Absynth and Massive has of course the rating too. You may have the rating column hidden in the browser, so right-click the header and select the columns you want.

Maybe you are still using the earlier Kore based versions, but since the Kore debacle NI have removed this functionality from their browsers. In Absynth there are no longer ratings or colours at all, in Massive and FM8 they are visible in the browser, they just don't do anything and can't be changed (which is pointless). NI basically sabotaged these browsers just to make everything fit Maschine even though Maschine was never meant to be a preset librarian and no one is going to buy it just for that purpose.

[dreamkeeper]

Hm, I thought I have the current version of Absynth, as it has already the Maschine format. So they took that away between 5.1.0 and 5.1.1? Not good... Thanks for the correction.

[dreamkeeper]

IMO it makes no sense to rate a sound and give them a tag like "good" or "bad".

Actually I find rating very useful. When making my own patches, I always use it as a measure of how close I got to my intended goal (the last one, as this may change while working on the patch). For factory presets, it's a measure of how much it inspires me. YMMV

[4damind]

IMO it makes no sense to rate a sound and give them a tag like "good" or "bad".

Actually I find rating very useful. When making my own patches, I always use it as a measure of how close I got to my intended goal (the last one, as this may change while working on the patch). For factory presets, it's a measure of how much it inspires me. YMMV

For me a sound must work in a track, together with other sounds. So it depends always of the song and I must have the track and the idea to say if a sound is good or bad (for this track). Very often mediocre patches which I would rate very low (if you hear them without a context) are working perfect in a song
But this of course a different story if you are more into sound design and compare own patches to other patches and tag the replicas with "good" or "better" as the original.

[dreamkeeper]

For me a sound must work in a track, together with other sounds. So it depends always of the song and I must have the track and the idea to say if a sound is good or bad (for this track). Very often mediocre patches which I would rate very low (if you hear them without a context) are working perfect in a song

Yes, I figured that you meant it this way, and I agree.

But this of course a different story if you are more into sound design and compare own patches to other patches and tag the replicas with "good" or "better" as the original.

Well, it doesn't have to be about replicas of other sounds (something I'm not interested in anyway). At the end of the day, if I'm satisfied with a patch, it'll get a high rating - maybe I should have put it this way.

[LGK_Dude]

I have my libraries and own programmed sounds on a shared place (for all presets/synth not only NI). With NI it's easy because they have a option to set/add additional places which can be scanned. With other synth it's a bit more complicated (for this I use often "hard-links" on Windows).
I don't use tagging for own sounds, I give them a name like "pluck XYZ" or "bass YYZ". For sound designers interested to sell sounds it makes more sense to give all sounds all attributes. But for the own usage I make it as easy as possible.

I cannot remember about a rating column in Massive.. if there is such option I would never use it. IMO it makes no sense to rate a sound and give them a tag like "good" or "bad".

While I agree it makes no sense to do both rate a sound and tag it "good" or "bad" I DO find an actual 1-5 rating system VERY helpful. For example, say I'm going through lead sounds for my latest project, and find some good ones that I for sure want to use, some "ok" ones that might find use in a specific project, and some that just sound awful. If I rate these accordingly, next time I go through my leads for a project I can sort by ratings and hear all the Great ones first, followed by good ones, followed by ok ones, and so on. Makes browsing for patches much quicker as I can completely ignore the ones I thought were "bad" until the end if I haven't found an option by then. If I just labeled them "good" or "bad" and then search by "good" I would never hear these "bad" patches, which might actually work GREAT in the context of the song. Its AMAZING how "bad" a keyboard can sound in isolation but how GREAT it then sounds in the song/mix."

However, it looks like this is simply no longer possible, which is COMPLETELY idiotic IMO. Especially after hearing that Omnisphere took a page out of the way NI instruments use to sort and rate their files with KORE, its even more absurd!!

Still would love some tips on how you guys are organizing the sounds in your NI libraries without KORE (since I dont have it). I guess for now I'll just start saving any/all patches that might be useful into my favorites folder, which means I'll have like 80% of the patches in this folder when all is said and done, haha! Maybe I'll experiment with adding numbers infront of the names when I resave these patches as my own ranking system. Seems silly that I have to resort to this, but it is what it is I guess.

I really hope NI rethinks their browser system, but given the fact they discontinued what I now understand was a great browsing experience in KORE, I unfortunately don't see that happening.

[Big Tick]

Maybe try the latest update to Zen. It should do everything you want, and more.

[LGK_Dude]

Maybe try the latest update to Zen. It should do everything you want, and more.

I'm sorry but what is Zen? BTW, in case its relevant, I'm on a Mac using Logic (AU).

[Big Tick]

It's a universal presets manager (see link in my sig). It comes as a VST or AU so you can load it in Logic. You can use it to manage the sounds in your NI synths. You will need the VST versions of the NI synths, though, as it won't load AUs.

[LGK_Dude]

It's a universal presets manager (see link in my sig). It comes as a VST or AU so you can load it in Logic. You can use it to manage the sounds in your NI synths. You will need the VST versions of the NI synths, though, as it won't load AUs.

Wow, looks interesting and I'll give it a try. Does it let you rate patches or just browse them by name? Also does it take into account tags for sounds from NI instruments, or just names? Either way its AWESOME that you are giving it away for free and I really look forward to trying it out.

[Big Tick]

Yes it has star ratings, and you can tag your own favorites.
It doesn't take tags from NI because the structure for these is proprietary, however in Zen the tags are cloud-sourced, so you benefit from the tagging efforts by every other user.