My collection is probably tiny compared to most. I have the stock Cubase instruments (e.g. Halion, Pad Shop, etc.), FM8 and a couple of others. Even so, that’s thousands of sounds. And of course, that’s not taking into account any physical hardware. I also have a Roland JV-2080 and a Korg Kronos. Without a good browsing / searching / tagging system it’s hard to find what you want when inspiration strikes, made more difficult by having to look in different places for different things. For example, I can’t do a global search for Cello and find cello presets across all my instruments.
I thought Media Bay might be the universal place to do this, but if I understand correctly it only includes Steinberg instruments, e.g. it doesn’t know about FM8 unless I save each preset one at a time. With thousands of sounds, that’s unlikely to happen. Media Bay also has no integration with the external instruments you create.
VST instruments, each with tons of presets, are such a huge part of music production today I’m sure many of you have strategies for browsing / searching / auditioning sounds as you work. I’d love to learn from your approach if you wouldn’t mind sharing how you do things.