Industry Types: Why So Many Preset Synth Patches?

[RecreationalThinker]

My apologies in advance if this topic has been run into the ground already...

 

What is the rationale behind having so many banks of preset sounds in a synthesizer? I have a Motif6 that I am really into using, but I would much rather have those four banks of preset sounds available as memory locations. I like to write my own sounds, and I am running out of User memory. Yes, I have the memory card, but I would much rather have all of the sounds I want/need available without additional button pushes or memory dumps.

 

I realize that not everyone who uses a unit will want to write their own sounds, but isn't there a better way to demonstrate the versatility of a product without loading it up with Presets?

 

I still have a Roland JV880 that suffered from the same problem. It was even worse, though, in that it only had 16 performance memories...not the most flexible for live settings.

 

I like the fact that the ION allows you to write patches into every memory location, but with only 32 performances it is slightly limited for my needs as well.

 

Is the DSP capacity of the ION the reason there are no ROM presets? What other analog/VA synths are available with full access to memory location?

 

Thanks for your information.

 

Paul

[Dave Bryce]

Originally posted by RecreationalThinker:

I realize that not everyone who uses a unit will want to write their own sounds, but isn't there a better way to demonstrate the versatility of a product without loading it up with Presets?

Unfortunately, no. There really isn't.

 

First of all, you should understand that it's pretty commonly held that more than 95% of all synth owners don't program at all. Not even a little bit. So it's advantageous to them to have a ton of presets. These people don't actually want to write over any sounds - even ones they don't use right away - on the off chance that they might need them in the future.

 

Secondly, there are a lot of different tastes and applications for synths. When auditioning a synthesizer at a store, the average person goes through the presets to see how many of them are inspiring, many of them doing what I affectionately refer to as the "two-finger shuffle" - one finger on middle C, the other on the "program up" button. Push C, next program, push C, next program. Because there are so many different tastes, it's important that there are a wide variety of many different types of programs, so that almost everyone who tries the synth will find a whole bunch of stuff to which they can relate. Admittedly, they don't have to be non-overwriteable in this context; however, that way the manufacturer is assured that the programs will always be where they want them to be.

 

Thirdly, there's a "keeping up with the Joneses" thing going on. Many people look at specs a liiiiitle harder than maybe they should, and if synth A has 100 presets, and synth B has 1000 presets, it's easy to understand how synth B might look more attractive.

 

dB

[zeronyne]

You are comparing apples to oranges. If the Motif had no ROM at all, it wouldn't necessarily mean that it would free up enough cost overhead to add the equivalent amount of RAM.

 

It's also a matter of market forces. I'm not sure if there's ever been publicly available survey data from any company, but I remember my local synth tech telling me that 99% of synths that came in for repair had no changes to any of the factory user patches. Whether the small community of power users likes it or not, I'm willing to bet that MOST people who buy a synth do very little tweaking, and this same group probably appreciates having a ton of onboard sounds.

 

I'm not saying that it's a good thing or bad thing, but if there was a large demand for 1024 user writable performance locations, you'd start seeing it on synths.

 

As far as completely rewritable memory, as I said at the beginning of this post, it's really irrelevant how much ROM memory there is because it has nothing to do with RAM memory. I can wipe out all of the patches on my V-Synth (and have done so). But i can also recall all the factory patches with a menu command. So even though, I can use all my RAM, there's some ROM hiding in there somewhere. Whether I can see it or not is the difference between the V-Synth and a ROMpler.

 

{edited for spelling}

[zeronyne]

I didn't mean to echo Dave so closely...sorry..it took me a long time to post.

[RABid]

Originally posted by RecreationalThinker:

...

Is the DSP capacity of the ION the reason there are no ROM presets?

DSP capacity and ROM are mutually exclusive. Removing all presets will not affect the power of the synth engine. There are two other advantages to ROM presets that I did not see listed in DBs post.

 

Most studios you see pictured in Keyboard Mag, EQ, or any other magazine seems to have a Triton Rack, Roland XV-5080 and either an E-mu Mo-Phatt, Vintage Keys or Orbit 2. A keyboardist that is familiar with these units can go into that studio and start earning his money without fumbling through the presets.

 

If you ever had to replace batteries in a keyboard or rack unit you know that when the battery dies, user presets go away. When this happens, and it will if you keep gear long enough, you will have to rely on ROM presets until you get a chance to replace the battery and load the presets again.

 

One other point that someone else here can clarify. I cannot believe that the small amount of ROM it takes to hold presets raises the cost of the instrument any great amount.

 

What other analog/VA synths are available with full access to memory location?

 

Thanks for your information.

 

Paul

Nord Modular Rack.

 

Robert

[Dave Bryce]

What other analog/VA synths are available with full access to memory location?

Nord Modular Rack.

Andromeda.

 

dB

[coyote]

I'm not sure this is correct. There is an element which will skew that statistic.... before I'd ever bring a device in for repair, I would try every avenue to get it working by myself. Many (if not most) synths have a way to restore to the factory settings, usually by holding down particular buttons during power-up. It's a good bet many users have tried this as a desperation measure before bringing their synth in for service. Then the tech says "hey, this guy never bothered to change the presets! what a noob".

 

I can't imagine owning a synth for years and not attempting to change some sounds. Almost deserves a poll or something

 

Originally posted by zeronyne:

but I remember my local synth tech telling me that 99% of synths that came in for repair had no changes to any of the factory user patches.

[Dave Bryce]

Originally posted by coyote:

I'm not sure this is correct. There is an element which will skew that statistic.... before I'd ever bring a device in for repair, I would try every avenue to get it working by myself. Many (if not most) synths have a way to restore to the factory settings, usually by holding down particular buttons during power-up. It's a good bet many users have tried this as a desperation measure before bringing their synth in for service. Then the tech says "hey, this guy never bothered to change the presets! what a noob".

 

I can't imagine owning a synth for years and not attempting to change some sounds. Almost deserves a poll or something

 

Originally posted by zeronyne:

but I remember my local synth tech telling me that 99% of synths that came in for repair had no changes to any of the factory user patches.

I've heard pretty much that same spec from more than a few sources as well...I know a bunch of synth techs...most of em say less than 5% have any changes - that's what led me to post my original "more than 95%" estimate.

 

dB

[bleen]

I found this while looking at Ion reviews on Harmony Central :

 

"I bought this synth primarily because of the way presets sounded, though I wish it had just a tad more of them."

 

Aren't there 512 freakin' presets on this puppy!?!?!

 

I don't understand....

[zeronyne]

I think 99% is conservative.

 

A poll of forum folk would be skewed due to the high concentration of power users, but you might still be surprised if people would be honest.

 

I worked music retail for quite a while in the 90's, and I had never thought about this phenomenon until I started selling a bunch of samplers. Most people who bought samplers (this is excluding power users) for the first time did so because the allure of a box that could hold "any sound possible". Well, most of those folks never got past the 4 floppies that came with the unit. For people like this (again, I will be bold and say "most synth consumers") a box with a ton of presets is a godsend.

 

This whole trend really started with ROMplers in general, and the Proteus/1 specifically. I think people tend to shy away from programming ROM based machines because a) The initial raw waves are so bad that they don't know what to do with it, b) the initial raw waves are so complex that there's nothing you can really do with it, or c) they don't think they can do better than the programmers. I'm not saying that this is the right philosophy...I just think it's a popular one.

 

I also think the DX7 had a lot to do with the "screw it, I'll use the factory rhodes" mentality.

 

I am glad that there is a resurgence of interest in analog style programming. I think when imitative instruments don't exist on a synth, people are much more inclined to mess with the engine. But that is purely speculation.

 

And, by the way, you cannot trash the preset sounds on the Pulse or Pulse Plus.

[jozevgates]

I must admit that I've had my alesis qsr module for two years now and have only recently started

to modify the prests.

 

But a thought comes to mind, that if companies began to advertise this feature more; people might use it. And maybe there would begin to be more of a demand for it.

[aeon]

RecreationalThinker wondered:

What other analog/VA synths are available with full access to memory location?

• Clavia Nord Modular (all RAM, 999 patch locations)
  
• Waldorf Q (all RAM, 300 patches, 100 multis, 20 drum maps)
  
• Waldorf MicroWave II/XT/XTk (all RAM, 256 patches, 128 multis)
  
• Access Virus b, c (RAM+ROM, 256 patches, 128 multis, 768 ROM, can burn RAM to ROM!)
  
• Elektron MachineDrum SPS-1 (all RAM, 64 kits, 128 patterns, 128 songs)
   
  

hmm...I am starting to notice a European trend here!

 

• DaveSmithInstruments Evolver (all RAM, 300 patches)
   
  

That said, almost no one buys a Clavia Nord Modular unless they are going to program, so having only RAM makes sense.

 

Waldorf are often considered programmers synths (and in reference to the Pulse, it has fixed ROM and limited RAM because any more RAM would have meant the use of a memory controller, and part of the design goal was a low price, so that was not pursued).

 

Access have certainly sold a shedload of the Virii because of the presets and excellent factory programmers, and the additional banks available on their site. Also, their burn-RAM-to-ROM function in the Virus b and c is fantastic...1024 RAM locations!

 

Elektron and Dave Smith also know that their machines are going to appeal to programmers.

 

And while softsynths have a wholly different context in which preset-itis has to be evaluated, I have to say that as someone who loves to program, I love the presets from Peter Krischker and Hubertus Maass for NI FM7 (no disrespect to those not mentioned specifically). In particular, Peter Krischker really knows how to capture my ear with any synth I have heard his programming work on.

[realtrance]

That last point is another important one: not everyone who buys a synth, and wants to program it, knows how or can do very interesting or musical things with it straight off the bat.

 

Like learning an instrument, learning to program a wide range of interesting sounds takes time, practice, more practice, more time, actually some good study of the principles of what goes into the composition of a sound, both in nature and in synths, and then more practice.

 

Not many people have the time, interest or patience to do all of the above _and_ learn how to play a musical instrument. The Cartesian subset of those two categories has a very small intersection, in other words (the other side of that is that there are people out there who really know all the technical ins and outs of programming, but whose ears are just plain wooden, but I won't go any further on that line of thought... ).

 

So you get the "tons of presets," which to the more experienced, with each passing year looks more and more like a maze of twisty little passages, all alike (ten cents for whomever knows where that phrase came from!).

 

On the positive side: tons of presets, if done well -- and Yamaha does 'em really well, and Roland does, or at least did once upon a time when Eric Persing of Spectrasonics was helping them, and E-Mu does 'em really well if you're looking for presets that will mix really well and not just be performance and showroom floor standouts -- provide an exemplary range of ideas about how to construct a variety of sounds. Some study of the presets will lead to interesting revelations, small and large (the small ones: "oh. that really phat sound is because it got EQ'd at 80Hz like crazy, and the attack gets emphasis thru a high res setting along with the LPF turned all the way down and the filter envelope set to 12." the large ones: "ohmigosh. comb filter. cool. mixed with an inverted envelope and LFO modulating the decay value slightly with an S&H waveform.").

 

Tons of presets also give you lots of interesting starting places, if you're not too proud to beg and don't need to insist on the purity of an unmodulated sine wave as your originary starting point every time thru the creation of a patch. I've made many of my own "from scratch" synth sounds just to prove to myself I know enough to do that, but I'm not ashamed of taking a "pretty good" PPG imitation and making it really musical, to my tastes, with a variety of changes. I just generally don't give those ones completely original names in my synth, rename them to "PPG2" or something.

 

It's a wide, wide world. Everybody can be happy if they just stay out of everyone else's hair.

 

rt

[progfusion74]

I agree with realtrance. When I decided to set up a homestudio a couple of years ago, the choices were (a) become a better keyboard player, or (b) become a better synth programmer/sound designer. I chose the latter, but it hasn't been a walk in the park. No way I could have done both.

 

prog

[aeon]

realtrance said:

Tons of presets also give you lots of interesting starting places, if you're not too proud to beg and don't need to insist on the purity of an unmodulated sine wave as your originary starting point every time thru the creation of a patch. I've made many of my own "from scratch" synth sounds just to prove to myself I know enough to do that, but I'm not ashamed of taking a "pretty good" PPG imitation and making it really musical, to my tastes, with a variety of changes.

So true, and sometimes, even changing it does it a disservice.

 

A perfect example of that is a preset on the Nord Modular 3.0x OS called StrMachine2 by Zon Vern Pyles.

 

It sounds like a string machine...not any one in particular, but kinda like what a string machine sounds like in my head after remembering it through an impressionist filter.

 

Anyway, I needed a string machine sound recently, and after auditioning 30 Nord Mod string machine patches, and trying to create my own, I came back to this one patch, because it was just so right for what I needed...so simple, but so right.

 

All I changed was disabling the chorus on it so it was dry. After running it through a Korg OASYS Bi-Phase effect, I was good to go!

[marino]

Interesting thread.

About that 95%, I'm slightly more optimistic... I guess there are some synth owners that reload the presets on their machines before sending them to service, just because they don't want to run the risk to see their work stolen. Maybe they're a bit paranoid, but I know two of three...

 

I don't always see an advantage in having thousands of presets. Case in point: My Roland XP-80 is expanded with four cards. This brings the preset count to a little less than 1500, I think, plus 128 user (RAM) locations.

Well, when I need a new sound, sometimes I find it easier starting from scratch, or from the user sounds (I know them very well, since I prgrammed them) rather than scrolling thru hundreds and hundreds of patches - after a while, my ears get fatigued and my brain gets distracted. So those expansion cards are underutilized sometimes.

 

Also, my AN1x has only RAM memory - no presets. However, the factory sounds can be recalled, globally or one at a time.

 

Needless to say, no presets on the Matrix-12 or the SE-1 - nor on the VL-1m.

 

Carlo

[zeronyne]

Originally posted by realtrance:

So you get the "tons of presets," which to the more experienced, with each passing year looks more and more like a maze of twisty little passages, all alike (ten cents for whomever knows where that phrase came from!).

Now THAT was a blast from the past. The maze where the passages were all alike contained the pirates' cove.

 

(for those of you not old enough to have a mid-life crisis, the reference is from the first commercially available software text game, "Adventure"....as far as I can remember)

[bitdump]

One point left out that can raise the cost of a synth with more sounds, cost of paying people to develope them.

 

But then again if you really look at a great many of the presets in some synths or better family of synths, you will see a lot of borrowed items there as well. To be expected. But the cost of programmers of sounds and software is included in the street price.

 

neither here nor there in regard to the first topic, but the there is a cost difference in the number of presets in labor, not so much in hardware.

 

I like the kurzweil model of being able to modify the object sets as long as you know what dependants not the touch and what not too, lets you customize the sucker to load what you want, of course not even many power user do this, so I don't really see incentive of companies to really change the current trends.

 

Ant one of any other synths that let you customizes stuff in flash memory? Just curious, I think most still use mak ROM as it is cheaper.

[RABid]

I have some synths that I program, and some I never touch and use only presets. I program my Fantom, XL-7 and Nord Modular because those are the synths I "play". The others are filler and for the most part they keep the origional programming. As Carlos said, units with lots of presets can slow you down when you are searching for a sound. A fully loaded Emu Command Station has 2048 preset patches plus 512 user patches. The Roland XV-5080 fully loaded can greatly exceed that. One thing I do to most all of my synths is replace the user patches with the most frequently used ROM patches. I also organize these in groups of bass, lead, pads, etc. and use a common numbering system across all of my hardware.

 

Robert

[SoundMeister]

Why all the presets? Maybe a simple answer: people pay atention to numbers. If a keyboard manufacturer boasts 1400 inboard sounds (instead of only 300), the cost effectiveness analysis is skewed in the direction of the unit with more sounds.

 

~Peter Schouten

Pyramid Sound Productions

[coyote]

There's an inverse problem when you can overwrite any/all presets: once you've created a cool sound, you now have to decide which one of those presets you'll likely never want to use again. So you still have to audition all of 'em anyway!

 

For me, presets often come close enough to a sound I hear in my head to function as a basis for modification. I do sometimes start from raw waveforms (esp. on the JP8000), but usually I'll scroll thru the existing programs to find a starting point as I'm not fond of constantly reinventing the wheel.

[Dave Bryce]

Originally posted by marino:

About that 95%, I'm slightly more optimistic... I guess there are some synth owners that reload the presets on their machines before sending them to service, just because they don't want to run the risk to see their work stolen. Maybe they're a bit paranoid, but I know two of three...

I dunno, Carlo...

 

I've heard one or two people make this same point, and I think it's kinda funny (and yes, a bit paranoid)...do you know many synth techs that have a side business selling sounds?

 

Don't you think they'd realize that stealing their customers sounds and selling them would be taking a major risk as far as having their reputations destroyed? I do...

 

Originally posted by SoundMeister:

Why all the presets? Maybe a simple answer: people pay atention to numbers. If a keyboard manufacturer boasts 1400 inboard sounds (instead of only 300), the cost effectiveness analysis is skewed in the direction of the unit with more sounds

Agreed. I brought up that same point in my first post.

 

dB

[zeronyne]

You know, no synth MAKES a person listen to all of it's presets. You can treat a 5080 like a synth that has 128 user patches and a bunch of extra buttons.

 

If you use a computer in the studio, an editor/librarian is a good idea, and it makes the limited amount of RAM less of an obstacle.

 

Live is a whole other issue. If 16 or 32 performance locations is not enough, you may want to invest in a hardware sequencer or MIDI patchbay that just sends patch changes to the slots in a single performance. If you are already using a sequencer, then you need to buy nothing more to solve the problem.

[Tusker]

There are two different issues here. Should synth manufacturers have thousands of presets? Should synth manufacturers allow users to overwrite these presets and replace them with their own?

 

I believe the answer to both issues is yes.

 

Just make it so we can call back the factory sounds. Yeah I know those carefully programmed multi-timbral performances are going to stink if the users replace the patch memory with their own stuff, but how many synth users actually end up sequencing Haydn with the "orchestral symphony" performance and it's carefully panned violins and celli?

 

If you are going to make it easier, fool proof the programming instead. Use a software overlay to control multiple parameters with intuitive labels like punchy, bright, wobbly, etc. Such an overlay won't be as complex as a sequencer like KARMA. And it will reduce that 95% statistic, which should be lowered not planned around.

 

It's time the synth industry took some responsibility for the 95% statistic.

 

Jerry

[RABid]

I bet there is a big diffeence in user altered programs between difficult units like the Motif and easy to program units like Triton.

 

Robert

[synthdogg]

Originally posted by Dave Bryce:

What other analog/VA synths are available with full access to memory location?

Nord Modular Rack.

Andromeda.

 

dB

Is this true? Ithought only the "user" patches were writable. Aren't the "preset" programs burned in?

 

Maybe I misunderstood the original post, but I thought the question wasn't about the sheer number of presets on a synth, but about the presets in ROM that can't be over-written. Am I wrong here? Personally, I prefer the "all-RAM" approach, but I certainly don't mind the extra ROM anks tagged on top. I usually ignore them, but know it isn't actually taking RAM memory away (as has already been written in this thread).

I kinda like the way Korg has been doing it. Fill up the memory locations with good sounding presets, include backup disks so you can always restore, and leave all the memory RAM so the user can do whatever they want.

 

So add to the list:

Korg Triton/MOSS expansion

Nord Lead 3

[realtrance]

"Difficult to program" is another moving target. Some synths and synth techniques -- like the FS1R and FM synthesis -- pretty much define the high bar without question. But beyond that, it's really a matter of knowledge, experience and familiarity with a particular synth or synth-line's architecture.

 

Only because I've used Roland stuff so long (well... comparatively speaking ), I find it snap-easy and intuitive to patch on virtually any Roland synth simply because I understand all the concepts, the architecture, the interface, and because Roland's been extremely conservative about changes in those areas (even with V-Synth). The same is probably true for other synth manufacturers' lines of stuff.

 

rt

[guestuserguestuser.com]

Here's the way I think all synths should have their memory set up:

 

1) Presets in ROM - lots of 'em, well organized, and easy to navigate.

 

2) A 'loading area', or 'staging area', that's used for loading files into. But it can't be saved, and it loses all its memory when you power off.

 

3) A User area for saving User patches.

 

Lots of synths have 1) or 3), but I don't think I've ever seen 2). It just makes sense to me. Let's say you've got 3 User banks with 100 patches each, but you've already filled User Bank 1 and 2, and you've partially filled User Bank 3. Now you download or buy a bank of patches, and you want to load it - where you gonna load it? You're going to have to over-write one of your User banks, unless you have 2), a Staging Area.

[MortenJ]

Originally posted by RecreationalThinker:

 

I like the fact that the ION allows you to write patches into every memory location, but with only 32 performances it is slightly limited for my needs as well.

 

Paul

ION has 64 performance mine has.

[Jeebus]

Originally posted by GuestUser:

Here's the way I think all synths should have their memory set up:

 

1) Presets in ROM - lots of 'em, well organized, and easy to navigate.

 

2) A 'loading area', or 'staging area', that's used for loading files into. But it can't be saved, and it loses all its memory when you power off.

 

3) A User area for saving User patches.

 

Lots of synths have 1) or 3), but I don't think I've ever seen 2). It just makes sense to me. Let's say you've got 3 User banks with 100 patches each, but you've already filled User Bank 1 and 2, and you've partially filled User Bank 3. Now you download or buy a bank of patches, and you want to load it - where you gonna load it? You're going to have to over-write one of your User banks, unless you have 2), a Staging Area.

The Triton Studios have a preview feature that lets you play patches without actually loading them into memory. You can go through your unloaded banks, and rather than loading a whole bank, select patches out of each one.