u-he refurbished Preset Browser discussion

[aMUSEd]

Well, I argued for user defined tags, but I get the counter argument - adding tags quickly becomes complicated and unwieldy.

And I don't think there's the demand anyway. It's just you and me.

Actually in Komplete Kontrol (NKS) you can add user defined tags - and it's a bloody nightmare. You end up with duplication (eg Pads, Pad, Bass, basses etc) and a million esoteric variations on the same thing as well as tags that make no sense except to the person who put them there. Honestly adding this would just create an unusable and cluttered system.

But isn't this down to the implementation? User tags shouldn't be mixed up with the pre-defined ones. Or you get the mess your talking about. As Urs said previously, user tags should remain local. This allows a user to have their own tagging system if they like. But preset libraries only contain tags from the pre-defined list.

I just can't see the benefit. Suppose I decide to tag some of my own patches 'covfefe' and then share those patches online? Are you saying my 'covfefe' tag would get removed so the patches would end up with no tags? OK so I may arguably benefit from being able to use my own obscure tags (just as I could make up my own words for things) but I would much rather have a system in place where patches can be tagged in a meaningful way others can also use to understand what the patch is (tags are just another form of patch notes really but structured in a way to support organisation).

[#rob]

Local user tags... mh.
"I was filtering for this patch, but I didn't find it. On my home machine it's tagged as 'bass', why doesn't it show up on my studio machine?"

[hakey]

That's a problem with the current non-user-definable but user-taggable system, no?

Apologies if that's the point you were making, Rob.

[EvilDragon]

No, that would be a problem with custom user tags.

[Aspects of Tone]

I just can't see the benefit. Suppose I decide to tag some of my own patches 'covfefe' and then share those patches online? Are you saying my 'covfefe' tag would get removed so the patches would end up with no tags? OK so I may arguably benefit from being able to use my own obscure tags (just as I could make up my own words for things) but I would much rather have a system in place where patches can be tagged in a meaningful way others can also use to understand what the patch is (tags are just another form of patch notes really but structured in a way to support organisation).

Okay here's an example where I would use user defined tags.
Let's say you've created a bank of 50 pads and very nicely offered them for download. I download your bank of pads. All 50 are categorized as Pads, with 25 tagged as Bright and 25 Tagged as Dark. There would likely be other tags but I wanted to keep it simple for this example.

So I go through my new bank of sounds and listen. Some I think of as Rich, others as Crispy. But there are no tags for Rich or Crispy.

So, I could ask for the tags Rich and Crispy to be added to the pre-defined list. But these are very subjective and I think everyone would have their own idea what Rich and Crispy sound like. Not to mention the mess that would come when everyone's personal ideas are included, and the overhead for the u-he team to keep adding new tags. The predefined list would end up containing hundreds of tags to cover all eventualities. Besides, I want to add the tag now, while I'm initially browsing my new bank. Not wait for u-he to update the list, then download the update, then add the tag.

Or I could tag some as Rich and some as Crispy from my own user tags. This allows me to search for the tags you added and to further refine my search using my own terms. For example, Pad, Dark, Rich. Or Pad, Bright, Crispy.

I see the pre-defined tags acting as a foundation and framework for me to build upon with my user-defined tags. Enabling more refined tagging that is personal to me. This gives me better searches that more quickly narrow down the results so I get to the presets I'm looking for quicker. After all is that not what this is all about?

If you are creating a bank to share then you would only use pre-defined tags.

[Aspects of Tone]

Local user tags... mh.
"I was filtering for this patch, but I didn't find it. On my home machine it's tagged as 'bass', why doesn't it show up on my studio machine?"

That's a problem with the current non-user-definable but user-taggable system, no?

Apologies if that's the point you were making, Rob.

No, that would be a problem with custom user tags.

Isn't this just the standard problem with using mutiple systems and, as hakey pointed out, with user-taggable presets, not just user-defined tags?

I assume the tag would be part of the preset file, otherwise how would it show up on other systems? So if you re-tag some presets in the studio (user or pre-defined), but don't copy/sync them to your home machine, then they are going to be different anyway

If you have a system of syncing your presets across multiple systems, e.g. via dropbox or such like, then I would imagine you would also be able to sync the local, user-defined tags, database without too much trouble.

It is the same with different apps that have access to the same files. Although my photo tag set is the same, I tag in Daminion, which is designed for photo management and tagging. I have to make sure those tags are synced before any editing in Lightroom, or all my tagging work is lost when I sync the edits from Lightroom

[hakey]

No, that would be a problem with custom user tags.

You get the same problem where tags can be applied locally from a fixed tag system.

Edit: I'm not arguing for user-definable tags, just wasn't quite sure what point Rob was making.

[synth_punk]

Urs & team how will you be rolling out the new browser in other U-he instruments down the line, individually say with Zebra 2.8/3 next ?

[pdxindy]

User defined tags sounds like the worst possible idea to me...

The very last thing I would want is to download some presets only to have a whole bunch of unwanted tags cluttering up my system.

Plus, there are already something like 130 Tags and Sub-Tags. That is more than enough to categorize any possible sound. If anything, I would rather have fewer not more...

[Aspects of Tone]

User defined tags sounds like the worst possible idea to me...

The very last thing I would want is to download some presets only to have a whole bunch of unwanted tags cluttering up my system.

Plus, there are already something like 130 Tags and Sub-Tags. That is more than enough to categorize any possible sound. If anything, I would rather have fewer not more...

[SIGH]

Under my suggested system you would not have unwanted tags in downloaded presets. Why does everyone assume that they are going to get these extra tags in downloaded presets?


I am asking for LOCAL, custom, user-defined tags. Separate, extra, over and above the official list just for personal use on my computer(s) only.

Urs already said they would be local. I'm saying this is a useful system to aid in preset searching and I would like to have it

[#rob]

Urs & team how will you be rolling out the new browser in other U-he instruments down the line, individually say with Zebra 2.8/3 next ?

Yes, that is the plan. Repro-1/Repro-5 are our guinea pigs, and once the browser is in a more final state we'll start putting it into our other products, I think Zebra2 v2.8 will be the first one. After that, we'll start implementing it product by product, since it's not just one generic control to swap but it will require (slight) individual GUI redesigns.

[pdxindy]

User defined tags sounds like the worst possible idea to me...

The very last thing I would want is to download some presets only to have a whole bunch of unwanted tags cluttering up my system.

Plus, there are already something like 130 Tags and Sub-Tags. That is more than enough to categorize any possible sound. If anything, I would rather have fewer not more...

[SIGH]

Under my suggested system you would not have unwanted tags in downloaded presets. Why does everyone assume that they are going to get these extra tags in downloaded presets?


I am asking for LOCAL, custom, user-defined tags. Separate, extra, over and above the official list just for personal use on my computer(s) only.

Urs already said they would be local. I'm saying this is a useful system to aid in preset searching and I would like to have it

I understand that is what you are saying... Sorry, but I don't think it would be any more useful than the tags that are already there... there are already more than enough tags there to effectively categorize any sound.

It is also adding complexity to a system that does not need more complexity...

So I think it is a complete waste of development time only to make things worse!

Anyway, we do not have to agree, and you are welcome to want that.

[Aspects of Tone]

I understand that is what you are saying... Sorry, but I don't think it would be any more useful than the tags that are already there... there are already more than enough tags there to effectively categorize any sound.

It is also adding complexity to a system that does not need more complexity...

So I think it is a complete waste of development time only to make things worse!

Anyway, we do not have to agree, and you are welcome to want that.

I think it would be better, but as you say we don't have to agree

Plus it's not up to us. If Urs and the team decide it is of value then it will get implemented (sometime). If not, then not

Cheers.

[jbraner]

Hi,

I haven't even installed yet, but I will be in a few days. Can I just ask one quick question?
(sorry if it's been covered already)

Is it safe to start "organising" my Repro-1 presets now - or will things change by the time the final release is out?

I don't want to spend too much time "organising" things - if I'll have to redo it all again - post beta.
Thanks.

[#rob]

Is it safe to start "organising" my Repro-1 presets now - or will things change by the time the final release is out?

The tags are just an additional layer, the "old way" of creating filesystem folders and moving presets around or renaming them in your operating system's file explorer still works.

However, as usual with this "old" way of arranging patches, one needs to be careful when installing updates, since the installers will by default install the regular patch structure, at least for the factory patches. And with the final release version, there will be loads of new patches, so it may be worthwhile waiting a little before going and rearranging everything in there just yet.

I've been told there will be significant changes to the tagging itself, yes. As it currently stands, we'll make it so that it's NOT possible to NOT assign a sub-category. So I think it's also best to wait for the final version in this regard, before you get carried away tagging things that you might have to change later on.