u-he refurbished Preset Browser discussion

[noiseboyuk]

I realise this is a deluge of opinionated and conflicting advice from all quarters, but I'm not sure what is there now is really reflecting your overall aim, with a lot of overlapping and duplicated tags. Perhaps "what does it sound like" is just too similar to Character. IMO, to avoid exactly this, ideally a subcategory should be a subset of nouns rather than verbs.

Let's take Pads. We have an Evolving subcategory, even though there's already an Evolving character. Ditto Distorted. Ditto Acoustic. Chords is also a Feature. There is a PWM subcategory here but nowhere else, whereas it might be a useful Feature alongside CrossMod or OscSync.

Meanwhile, If Keys becomes Poly (and presumably Leads mono) than I guess Mono and Poly in Features is redundant.

Phew.

I think duplication would forever mean a confusing browsing experience - do you search for Evolving in Pads or Character? The patch designer will probably only have chosen one or the other. So I'd rather see far fewer duplicated tags and thus far fewer subcategories - but maybe a few more Characters.

FWIW, here's a list of Pads subcategories and where imo they might be better placed (and in many cases already are):

Any - removed (defaults to this with nothing else selected)
Pads - removed
Acoustic - Character (already there)
Atonal - Character (Tonal / Atonal)
Breathy - keep (or Character Bold / Breathy)
Chords - Features (already there)
Distorted - Character (already there)
Drones - keep
Evolving - - Character (already there)
PWM - Features
Rhythmic - Features
Soundscape - keep
Strings - keep (add this to some other categories too)
Vocal - keep
Lo-Fi - keep (or add to Hi-Fi/Lo-Fi character)

Forgive for quoting myself, but slightly surprised no-one has commented on this one way or the other while all the focus has been on BrassGate. This feels like a fairly significant issue to me and will lead to ongoing problems and now would probably be the only time to really solve the problem. But if I'm the only one in the world who thinks it I'll retreat back under my shell...

[Echoes in the Attic]

I realise this is a deluge of opinionated and conflicting advice from all quarters, but I'm not sure what is there now is really reflecting your overall aim, with a lot of overlapping and duplicated tags. Perhaps "what does it sound like" is just too similar to Character. IMO, to avoid exactly this, ideally a subcategory should be a subset of nouns rather than verbs.

Let's take Pads. We have an Evolving subcategory, even though there's already an Evolving character. Ditto Distorted. Ditto Acoustic. Chords is also a Feature. There is a PWM subcategory here but nowhere else, whereas it might be a useful Feature alongside CrossMod or OscSync.

Meanwhile, If Keys becomes Poly (and presumably Leads mono) than I guess Mono and Poly in Features is redundant.

Phew.

I think duplication would forever mean a confusing browsing experience - do you search for Evolving in Pads or Character? The patch designer will probably only have chosen one or the other. So I'd rather see far fewer duplicated tags and thus far fewer subcategories - but maybe a few more Characters.

FWIW, here's a list of Pads subcategories and where imo they might be better placed (and in many cases already are):

Any - removed (defaults to this with nothing else selected)
Pads - removed
Acoustic - Character (already there)
Atonal - Character (Tonal / Atonal)
Breathy - keep (or Character Bold / Breathy)
Chords - Features (already there)
Distorted - Character (already there)
Drones - keep
Evolving - - Character (already there)
PWM - Features
Rhythmic - Features
Soundscape - keep
Strings - keep (add this to some other categories too)
Vocal - keep
Lo-Fi - keep (or add to Hi-Fi/Lo-Fi character)

Forgive for quoting myself, but slightly surprised no-one has commented on this one way or the other while all the focus has been on BrassGate. This feels like a fairly significant issue to me and will lead to ongoing problems and now would probably be the only time to really solve the problem. But if I'm the only one in the world who thinks it I'll retreat back under my shell...

I agree with what you wrote! I find the categories extremely confusing and inconsistent. Any should definitely be selected by default. Or even better, I don't think Any should be there at all, it should be Any when there is not another selection made. And why would there be a pads selection under pads. If it doesn't fit any of the other categorizes, it could be "Pure" or something.

[tasmaniandevil]

1. Listing favorites by color seems rather arbitrary & non-intuitive. Would it be possible to put a number inside the colored dot, if you guys don't want to have 1 to 5 stars like the French guys? Right now I just use the purple dot since it contrasts nicely, but having a more intuitive grading system would be nice.

There is already a feature request about being able to rename the favourites. We will contemplate if/how/when this is possible.

2. Very often I make a very slight edit to a patch, then I add my real initials to the end of the patch name, so I can tell them apart. But if that patch is in a different folder, how can I quickly compare the 2 patches without hunting all over for it? I agree there should be an option to put them in the same folder.

You can easily do it your way. Just go to the preferences (cogwheel) and set the 'save presets to' setting to 'selected folder' instead of 'user folder'.

[hakey]

surprised no-one has commented on this

Mostly agree. Not sure there's a universal solution; fixed tags will always involve some compromises.

A partial solution - the preset description field is searchable from the browser, which means that there's flexibility here that's perhaps missing from the tags. Users can effectively add their own tags.

[hakey]

Following on from the above, I had the idea to add tags in the preset description field with a hashtag prefix (to signify 'this is a tag').

However, searches prefixed with a hashtag don't return anything. Is this deliberate - does a hashtag in the search field have some other function?

[EvilDragon]

Hashtag searches for available tags only.

[hakey]

That explains it.

Is there a reason not to return searches with hashtags from the description field too?

[Viktor [TUC]]

Forgive for quoting myself, but slightly surprised no-one has commented on this one way or the other while all the focus has been on BrassGate. This feels like a fairly significant issue to me and will lead to ongoing problems and now would probably be the only time to really solve the problem. But if I'm the only one in the world who thinks it I'll retreat back under my shell...

Don't despair, I'm reading all comments in this thread, and will take notes. Haven't had much time yet to make any decision or discuss this with colleagues though. This is our first browser of this kind and categories/tags may not be perfect in its first iteration, but we're reading all comments!

Viktor
u-he team

[Aspects of Tone]

Found a graphics display bug:


Can still scroll but the extra stuff remains over the keyboard:



64bit Reaper 5.62 on Win 7 64 bit.

[pdxindy]

Forgive for quoting myself, but slightly surprised no-one has commented on this one way or the other while all the focus has been on BrassGate. This feels like a fairly significant issue to me and will lead to ongoing problems and now would probably be the only time to really solve the problem. But if I'm the only one in the world who thinks it I'll retreat back under my shell...

I agree with what you wrote! I find the categories extremely confusing and inconsistent. Any should definitely be selected by default. Or even better, I don't think Any should be there at all, it should be Any when there is not another selection made. And why would there be a pads selection under pads. If it doesn't fit any of the other categorizes, it could be "Pure" or something.

The Pads selection under Pads accounts for Pads presets that do not have a sub-category selected.

Do you have a suggestion of a more elegant way to handle it?

[noiseboyuk]

Thanks TUC. (and some hero worship... bloody 'ell, your patches are amazing...)

Forgive for quoting myself, but slightly surprised no-one has commented on this one way or the other while all the focus has been on BrassGate. This feels like a fairly significant issue to me and will lead to ongoing problems and now would probably be the only time to really solve the problem. But if I'm the only one in the world who thinks it I'll retreat back under my shell...

I agree with what you wrote! I find the categories extremely confusing and inconsistent. Any should definitely be selected by default. Or even better, I don't think Any should be there at all, it should be Any when there is not another selection made. And why would there be a pads selection under pads. If it doesn't fit any of the other categorizes, it could be "Pure" or something.

The Pads selection under Pads accounts for Pads presets that do not have a sub-category selected.

Do you have a suggestion of a more elegant way to handle it?

Well if Echoes is anything like me, just clicking Pads at the top level would ideally show everything in Pads. Ta da!

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

Forgive for quoting myself, but slightly surprised no-one has commented on this one way or the other while all the focus has been on BrassGate. This feels like a fairly significant issue to me and will lead to ongoing problems and now would probably be the only time to really solve the problem. But if I'm the only one in the world who thinks it I'll retreat back under my shell...

I agree with what you wrote! I find the categories extremely confusing and inconsistent. Any should definitely be selected by default. Or even better, I don't think Any should be there at all, it should be Any when there is not another selection made. And why would there be a pads selection under pads. If it doesn't fit any of the other categorizes, it could be "Pure" or something.

The Pads selection under Pads accounts for Pads presets that do not have a sub-category selected.

Do you have a suggestion of a more elegant way to handle it?

Make the subcategory entirely optional was my suggestion earlier in this thread. Just click Pads as the main category, and if no subcategory don't require entry of one. The main category would already tell you it is a pad patch.

[noiseboyuk]

Yup yup - what FBET said.

[pdxindy]

The Pads selection under Pads accounts for Pads presets that do not have a sub-category selected.

Do you have a suggestion of a more elegant way to handle it?

Well if Echoes is anything like me, just clicking Pads at the top level would ideally show everything in Pads. Ta da!

I agree that clicking the main category Pads should show everything in Pads

But there would be no way to show only those presets without a sub-category selected... thus the Pads sub-category.

I would rather have that function than not have it. If for no other reason than to be able to list which presets I mistakenly didn't give a sub-category to.

[noiseboyuk]

I agree that clicking the main category Pads should show everything in Pads

But there would be no way to show only those presets without a sub-category selected... thus the Pads sub-category.

I would rather have that function than not have it. If for no other reason than to be able to list which presets I mistakenly didn't give a sub-category to.

Having a pad subcategory for pad will be forever confusing. Sure you could get into logical operator territory - I really need a pad that ISN'T breathy... if you really wanted to go down that road, it would be far neater to right click on a tag, which would return anything BUT that tag.

Personally I don't think that's necessary anyway. The whole idea of tags is to simplify searching. I want a Pad... click Pad, and there they are. You often don't need to drill down any further in a subcategory there, because one of the other fields will be more appropriate. Analogue... phat, so you jump to Character for those and job done. It's far more logical to streamline everything into thinking on those lines than worrying about categories that are exclusively not other categories.