u-he refurbished Preset Browser discussion

[stardustmedia]

That feature was always the case, also in the old browser, and it's just a personal taste: Scrolling down (towards me) the mouse, should move the preset browser window to the left. After years, I still stumble upon this ... scroll scroll scroll ... "why doesn't the window scroll?"

Best for all would be, if this behaviour could be changed in the settings.

[Biome_Digital]

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.

I am trying to find the tags in Zebra 2.8. Is there a way to tag presets?

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

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.

I am trying to find the tags in Zebra 2.8. Is there a way to tag presets?

No. Zebra 2.8 disappointingly got the new browser but without the tagging features. I believe the reason was that there are just too many existing presets to tag, so they didn't bother. I do wish it was at least provided but with no tagged presets so user's could just tag their own. Combine that with bulk tagging of presets, and it would've been perfect.

I guess there's always Z3 for tagged presets...

[Biome_Digital]

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.

I am trying to find the tags in Zebra 2.8. Is there a way to tag presets?

No. Zebra 2.8 disappointingly got the new browser but without the tagging features. I believe the reason was that there are just too many existing presets to tag, so they didn't bother. I do wish it was at least provided but with no tagged presets so user's could just tag their own. Combine that with bulk tagging of presets, and it would've been perfect.

I guess there's always Z3 for tagged presets...

Ah that is a shame. I guess I have to put the tags in the descriptions. At least you can use the search for them and they do come up in the results.

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

Ah that is a shame. I guess I have to put the tags in the descriptions. At least you can use the search for them and they do come up in the results.

Yes, that's one approach. You could also do favourites as a kind of simple high-level tag. For example: Blue favourite for Bass, Purple for Pads, Red for Leads, and then just kind of filter that way. You could probably even create fake "authors" with tag names and use the author field as a psuedo-tag (if you're willing to overwrite the author field of course). So for example, you could do Author: "Bass - Analog", "Bass - Digital", etc. then just search by author.

This would've worked under the old browser, but I personally just created a personal "Favourites" folder, then created Bass, Lead, Pads, Poly, Plucks, etc. subfolders under that. So when I need to search for a bass sound, I just go to that folder and search around the old fashoined way. It's been very time consuming going through all my Zebra 2.8 presets and categorizing them using this method, but it works.

Lastly, just to clarify on a point from my last post, the other browsers do allow bulk tagging presets in the folder view, which I didn't find out about until yesterday. You can scroll to the bottom of the folder view, expand the Tags folder to see the Tags, then open the sub-folders for each tag where you can click and drag multiple presets into. I assume this same type of approach would work for the Author and Favourites if you wanted to use any of the workarounds described above.

[Urs]

No. Zebra 2.8 disappointingly got the new browser but without the tagging features. I believe the reason was that there are just too many existing presets to tag, so they didn't bother. I do wish it was at least provided but with no tagged presets so user's could just tag their own. Combine that with bulk tagging of presets, and it would've been perfect.

We'll be discussing "community effort" at some point, and maybe then we'll figure out how to get ten thousand presets tagged without putting a co-worker or two in asylum. If that doesn't pan out, we can always roll out an option for people to define their own tags. We'll see...

Anyhow, it's not set in stone yet, but for now I would like to assign the developer who did the major work on the browser a different task, particularly Zebra3 stuff.

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

If that doesn't pan out, we can always roll out an option for people to define their own tags. We'll see...

I'd be 100% on board with that approach.

But then again, if it's going to further slow down Z3 development by pulling someone off in order to make that happen I'd say forget about it. Would much rather see Z3 personally!

[Urs]

slow down Z3 development by pulling someone off in order to make that happen

Tell me about it! Depressingly, I'm currently running the webdesign department and I can't really work much on Z3 while we're pushing out updates to everything - which might easily take until the end of this year

Ah well, I'm handing a lot of Z3 stuff over to other devs.

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

slow down Z3 development by pulling someone off in order to make that happen

Tell me about it! Depressingly, I'm currently running the webdesign department and I can't really work much on Z3 while we're pushing out updates to everything - which might easily take until the end of this year

Ah well, I'm handing a lot of Z3 stuff over to other devs.

There's no law that says you have to update everything BEFORE Zebra3 (though you're located in Europe, maybe there is a law). I mean, i totally wasn't expecting (and probably didn't need if I'm being honest) a browser update to Satin. If you guys just released the Spring and Delay plugins this year, made Z3 the priority, then revisited browser updates afterwards, I think a huge chunk of your user base would be forgiving. Since you're hiring a web developer anyway, it'd be more efficient in the long run than taking you off Z3 to focus on web development.

Just playing devil's advocate here.

[aMUSEd]

Enabling user defined tags is a pathway to chaos, I just spent the last few days having to tidy the Komplete mess my NKS browser had got into because I have imported banks from lots of different sources and they all have their own idea about whether to use say 'Pad' or "Pads" or a gazillion variations on categories (not to mention misspellings) - over tagging is a pain (just look at the mess Omnisphere made of this too). A simple clear cut system is best imho, I find the NI and u-he ones mostly acceptable and can live with what I find hard to fit in by adding text notes.

The fast way to tag an entire library is do what I did on the NI forum for the user NKS library (and before that, Kore) and grow a community of eager taggers who can take on different parts - say a bank or two each - trying to do 10,000 would drive even the most OCD like me crazier but dividing it up within a community gets stuff done pretty quickly. A few free banks might add an incentive. Maybe make a tag sharing thread for the free banks at least.

[Home Studio 87]

Enabling user defined tags is a pathway to chaos, I just spent the last few days having to tidy the Komplete mess my NKS browser had got into because I have imported banks from lots of different sources and they all have their own idea about whether to use say 'Pad' or "Pads" or a gazillion variations on categories (not to mention misspellings) - over tagging is a pain (just look at the mess Omnisphere made of this too). A simple clear cut system is best imho, I find the NI and u-he ones mostly acceptable and can live with what I find hard to fit in by adding text notes.

make it clear.. and "easy found"

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

Enabling user defined tags is a pathway to chaos

I agree, except the recent discussion around Zebra 2 and letting users tag their own patches was never about user-defined tags. I was suggesting U-he open the existing tag system from Diva/RePro to users so they can tag their own presets in Z2. Not create their own custom tags. So users would still be locked into the same tags currently available with no customization.

Tagging was left out entirely in Z2 because it would've been a huge effort to go through the 13,000+ Zebra presets between the factory banks and the patch library. But I'd still like to be able to access the tagging features of the browser, just for my own personal library. So the suggestion was, rather than suffer some poor U-he staffers into tagging 13k presets, just add in the tagging features and let users tag their own Z2 presets with the existing tag browser from RePro/Diva. This way, we as end-users, could benefit from the tagging system for managing our own Z2 libraries.

[EvilDragon]

I absolutely agree that user defined tags is going to lead to chaos.

[aMUSEd]

Enabling user defined tags is a pathway to chaos

I agree, except the recent discussion around Zebra 2 and letting users tag their own patches was never about user-defined tags. I was suggesting U-he open the existing tag system from Diva/RePro to users so they can tag their own presets in Z2. Not create their own custom tags. So users would still be locked into the same tags currently available with no customization.

Tagging was left out entirely in Z2 because it would've been a huge effort to go through the 13,000+ Zebra presets between the factory banks and the patch library. But I'd still like to be able to access the tagging features of the browser, just for my own personal library. So the suggestion was, rather than suffer some poor U-he staffers into tagging 13k presets, just add in the tagging features and let users tag their own Z2 presets with the existing tag browser from RePro/Diva. This way, we as end-users, could benefit from the tagging system for managing our own Z2 libraries.

OK yes I agree with that as long as it stays locked to the existing categories for consistency. Make it so

[Big Tick]

I absolutely agree that user defined tags is going to lead to chaos.

Having spent quite a bit of time on presets tagging systems ... I don't necessarily agree. The problem is that some tags are only meaningful to specific categories of users. So with a predefined system, you get into this situation:
Rap Producer: "I want Linndrum, Simmons, 808, 707 tags"
Classical Composer : "I want flugelhorn, oboe, french hornet, cornet, ... tags"
Generic Tag System: "You have acoustic and synthetic drums, and brass and woodwinds. Make do with it"