I have too many presets. Across my various plugins, from content bundles that were on sale over the years and I can’t say no.
Too many samples as well but that’s fine. For the presets I want to give them ratings and clean up some names and things, but there are just too many. It will take me months to get through them all.
So then I will spend up all my time and energy having a pretty library and no music done. Don’t want to thin out the presets because there is going to be gems hidden here and there. I also want to give ratings to reveal these gems so I can quickly find the best ones. But that will take me months to process. What do I do?
Ya you’re probably right. I have to listen to them myself, one by one. There is no batch process that can do this particular thing for me. The best path is always the hardest, not the fastest. There’s too many
A good thing about the media bay is the flat-view type of sorting. And having plugin preset previews alongside samples in the same place.
I was thinking about that too. That there’s lots of sounds in plugin presets that are kind of like samples themselves. Especially SFX sounds. But if you’re browsing through your sample library, how do you know that you don’t have a similar sound in a plugin preset somewhere?
There’s the NI nks library, that they have rendered out previews for you. You can favorite the previews folder and have samples and presets together. And there’s a tool that can render out non-nks plugin presets too.
But I just spent two days on my serum 2 presets and just scratched the surface. Looking at the mountain infront of me. Ah frik I don’t want to deal with this. Am I just wasting away my life on nonsense.
First, I would look at the plugins and not the presets. Study how they work and if they have something to offer that’s worth keeping them. That includes looking into the manual if necessary. You probably have a bunch of delay chorus, compressor etc plugins. Group them and see which one sounds best or offers anything unusual. Get rid of those plugins that don’t stand out!
One of the key side effects: While studying plugins (best sorted by type) you’ll get much better at understanding and tweaking plugins/presets. This way, you won’t rely on presets alone anymore. You’ll be way faster to get to the sound that’s needed for a specific idea. No need for a gazillion ratings. Just rate them on the fly while actually working with them.
@ASUNDER, it’s as @Reco29 says. It’s a good practice to open a VST and hear something generic. You will get a feel of their sound character. Most of the time, many many presets for the very same category of sounds, are very similar, with tiny modifications. You will never need all of them, just basic ones reflecting the sound category. Just get to know the plugin, and you’ll be fine with some tweaking, just to make the sound you want and have it sit well in the mix.
This is coming from a dude with hundreds of paid plugins, which are now just taking space on my drives. This is because I ended up with 5-6 currently (talking about instrument plugins here), which do the job perfectly. Two of them are stock plugins. Around 200 presets (all tweaked, it’s like a personal signature) for my drafts, and then another 200-300 for specific cases. Everything else is gone. Still, I keep all my plugins. You never know what an update can bring, but for now I don’t see this as too wise
But the question is about presets. I’m wondering if there is some kind of trick to getting through them faster.
I don’t know who told you I only rely on presets.
Or what “rely on” means.
Is this the doctrine that a song is better because the sound is unique or hand crafted? No, every song on the internet sounds the same because of composition, not because of sound design. And because lots of producers use samples heavily, and get their samples from subscription services. Which populate the same samples on the same feeds.
I’m not doing that. I’m telling my computer what music to make, instead of my computer telling me what to make. How do I do this? Customize everything in advance. So that I’m not playing musical-chairs with my music (whatever sounds the best first is what I end up with?). No, I filter out the less-than-best in advance and then the library is ready for when I’m making a song; I already know what I want.
But I’m staring down ten thousand serum presets and I just don’t want to do it.
That’s actually half the reason I don’t get anything done. I get stuck on a basic sound, jamming on my keyboard and there goes my time.
Which is why I have to rate them. So in the future I can ignore the overlaps and junk, and removing that splinter in the back of the mind telling me there is a better sound down the list. Because I haven’t explored it all yet and not knowing what’s in there is infuriating.
I was not implying anything, sorry, if this came across the wrong way.
My idea was to reduce the amount of presets by getting a better understanding of the plugin itself and its fortes (e.g. filters). As a consequence, you might not need to rate all plugins or their presets because you could thin them out, start from basic presets and take it from there.
I understand that your workflow is different and that’s okay. Again, no offense implied, you do you. I was merely trying to add a new perspective.
Coming back to your original question: Sorry, I don’t know how you can rate so many presets without spending a serious amount of time and energy. TBH, I don’t think it is possible to remember all presets that sound alike and rate them accordingly. Maybe that’s just me, who knows
I would love to suggest a clever solution apart from the approach above. I’m afraid I don’t have one. Maybe someone else has?
Ya, I didn’t realize that your strategy is less plugins results in less presets too, my fault. I didn’t mean anything either. “Who told you” is just a way of asking.
I think that I bought a serum megapack a while back. And sample packs usually come with presets too. Now I have a huge task infront of me.
They say simplicity is key; that an abundance of choice causes lots of problems, including analysis paralysis. I have to agree. I’m one of those examples of what not to do. Filling up my space with content and now babysitting that content is a full time job.
I can be quite ruthless with regard to keeping stuff (any stuff) on my hard drives. It’s not about space - I have around 20 terabytes of internal drives and a couple of terabytes on external drives.
My solution won’t be popular, I know this.
But here goes… Delete all your presets. Back them up first if you must, but remove them from their folders.
When you open a project, save all the instruments settings as new presets, rated and with sensible, searchable names.
That’s it, in a nutshell. I can think of plenty of caveats, &tc, but basically, it’s scorched earth.
You can get default presets back just by reinstalling the instruments. If you have more than a couple of dozen instruments you probably have too many. Do the same with them. and any other FX plugins, while you’re at it.
Cull, cull, CULL!
No more useless time sinks. No shiny object syndrome. No mountain of libraries collecting dust. No AI slop and the fake people who use it, and their used car salesman bullsht. No fake reality. No fake morality. No fake doctrines. No fake living. Only music.
Only through suffering does the pearl of great price refine its beauty and majesty.
