Overwriting Factory Presets?

[Razmo]

Sorry if this has already been answered inside a thread somewhere, in that case, please forgive me

I have a very simple question ... and the title of this thread I guess says it all: Can the Factory Presets be erased?

Yes yes, I know that Factory presets normally cannot be erased, but I recall that I managed to press for this on the Prophet 12 a long way back.... on Prophet 12 it is possible to overwrite the factory ones via MIDI dump only... is this also the case with the REV2?

If not... PLEASE!!! consider doing the same in a future OS update for the REV2 because for many people, having 512 programs that is outdated, or just not for your style of music is simply a waste of precious preset locations... I'm buying a REV 2 very soon, and the presets are nowhere near what I do (I do Ambient stuff), so I'd basically have 512 useless presets that I would very much like to fill up with my own creations at some point, or at least write the few of the factory ones that I find useable.

I really still do not get why companies do "ROM" presets... it is the hatred of most other synths out there... in a few years they will be hopelessly outdated, and honestly (as per the manual), who needs 512 factory presets to tweak into new sounds? ... those you put in yourself can be as much tweaked for the same goal, so I still see no point in forcing the user to waste 512 preset locations like this.

I really hope you could at least make them overwriteable via MIDI like you did with the Prophet 12... other than that, thanks for creating such a nice update to the Prophet 8

[Paul Dither]

Why are 4 user banks with 512 preset locations not enough? I mean that seems plenty to me if you still wanna make some music on top of programming sounds.

[skrohmer]

I'd be interested in a second point. I'm compared to all of you very much a beginner . Also want to do some ambient stuff (well, a long way but makes lots of fun every day) but I'm struggling with finding the right patches just for having some examples out of the factory presets. What I want to ask: How do you keep an overview over all the patches, even if limited to 512? Do you use the librarian which is available for the synth or any other software? I find it even quite hard to search for a sound within 100 patches without scrolling through all of them. Or do you prefer to organise the patches to have e.g. same categories in one bank so you could for example find all pads in bank 1 and all leads in bank 2 and so on?

[Gerry Havinga]

I'd be interested in a second point. I'm compared to all of you very much a beginner . Also want to do some ambient stuff (well, a long way but makes lots of fun every day) but I'm struggling with finding the right patches just for having some examples out of the factory presets. What I want to ask: How do you keep an overview over all the patches, even if limited to 512? Do you use the librarian which is available for the synth or any other software? I find it even quite hard to search for a sound within 100 patches without scrolling through all of them. Or do you prefer to organise the patches to have e.g. same categories in one bank so you could for example find all pads in bank 1 and all leads in bank 2 and so on?

I am a very long term computer engineer and are extremely paranoid when it comes to making backups and such things  .

In general, I make regular backups for all sound banks for all my synths. I write the files to sys-ex format, if the patch-manager allows for that, to time-stamped files (date/time as part of the file name). I make backups of the backup files to another computer, off-site and onto external hard disks/USB sticks. I prefer the sys-ex format, instead of the native patch-manager/editor format as you never know if a program will still be supported in the future. Sys-ex can also be handled and sent to the synths using generic tools or a DAW.

For understanding the architecture of the synth and generic sound design principles an editor can be very useful. I haven't needed an editor for that the Rev2, but for the Blofeld the editor helped me understand how the synth is designed. After a few months using the editor I have internalized the architecture well enough so I don't need it anymore for sound design. I can now program the Blofeld without needing the editor.

Of course some editor / patch-manager allows your to categorize sounds. But as I hardly ever use factory pre-sets and practically always design my own patches (inspired sometimes by factory presets of other designers) I just put my own sounds in their own bank wiping whatever was there before. After all I have backups going back in time, so I can always retrieve a sound.

I do sympathize with Razmo. I am now a proud owner of the Rev2 for about 3 months and already I am at U1-29 for my own patches. In a year I will probably have filled U1, so I can imaging it would be great to also use the F-banks. But it doesn't bother me that much as I can always extract patches into sys-ex format and load them whenever possible from a computer.

[Razmo]

Why are 4 user banks with 512 preset locations not enough? I mean that seems plenty to me if you still wanna make some music on top of programming sounds.

Because I like to have a huge set of presets to choose from... still it makes no sense to me, that when we are writing 2017, still have ROM presets... it was a cheaper solution in the past for ekstra presets when storage was more expensive, but today they are stored in flash RAM anyway... so even if 512 user presets are enough, I still do not see the logic in 512 permanent ones... as I wrote, most presets in ROM in almost any other synth out there from the 80's and 90's are being talked about as "not good" or "outdated" these days... this is a fact... so why keep on doing this?

I get the idear, that it's nice for some people to have them right now when they are still frsh etc... but the way they did with the P12 was a nice compromise... it still has non-rewriteable presets from the device itself, but if you need to change them, you can at least dump them from an editor... that to me is a win win situation, everybody is then happy, so why not?

[Razmo]

I'd be interested in a second point. I'm compared to all of you very much a beginner . Also want to do some ambient stuff (well, a long way but makes lots of fun every day) but I'm struggling with finding the right patches just for having some examples out of the factory presets. What I want to ask: How do you keep an overview over all the patches, even if limited to 512? Do you use the librarian which is available for the synth or any other software? I find it even quite hard to search for a sound within 100 patches without scrolling through all of them. Or do you prefer to organise the patches to have e.g. same categories in one bank so you could for example find all pads in bank 1 and all leads in bank 2 and so on?

I simply use an editor for this... I usually skim the net for any and all free presets there is, and load them into an editor where I can easily browse them one by one and listen to them.... all that I like and want, I put in a separate library... when that is done, I sort that library in any order I like the presets to be in, and simply dump these to a bank (or more).

That is why I want erasable presets ... so I can tailor my OWN "ROM Bank", and then use the user banks for all of my own creations.

[jg666]

I too am a bit confused what you can and can't do with the factory presets. I'm sure I've managed to change the sequence stored against a couple of factory presets so does it just allow you to change that?

I made sure that I didn't alter anything else on the preset when changing the stored sequence but I don't know what would have happened if I'd (for example) altered the cutoff value as well as changing the sequence and then storing it?

[skrohmer]

Thanks guys for your detailed answers!

Gerry,  I understand your intention very well, have been also a computer engineer for a few decades  . Backups are done quite regularly, I can feel with you. As far as my time allows I'm working on a little program to manage all the patches, will need some more weeks/months though. Regarding Blofeld: I have cleared all banks and use some banks for my patches and two other banks for a selection of original patches as well as for a selection of the Don Solaris Set. I don't have really many own patches at the moment so I can find them quite quickly, but 512 or 1024 of them could become a challenge. I'm missing a category at the Rev2 like it is realized at the Blofeld.

Razmo, I understand your argument that "today they are stored in flash RAM anyway", agree totally. So just to protect some users against unwanted overwriting is a nice idea which makes sense, but having a possibility to do it by SysEx dumps is a good idea in my opinion. Thanks for explaining your workflow of managing the patches. I'm doing exactly the same with Blofeld, just having by far not that requirements on the amount (at least for now  ), but for better organizing I would also like to have rather 8 than 4 banks. For the moment it is really helpful to have some example patches to start with, but then after some time the memory should be user defineable completely.

[Razmo]

I'm glad to see, that I'm not the only one opting for this compromise as on the Prophet 12...

The point is, that I can see this from both sides... I understand the need for something that is not wiped out by accident, but also the need to decide yourself exactly what those presets are... this is why I find that the compromise is the best solution.... and for some reason, DSI must think so too because they were the ones who accepted to do it this way on Prophet 12, not us who asked for it... we just asked to be able to overwrite the factory presets, not necessarily from MIDI only... but I think it's a good solution.

So I hope DSI will think about it for a future update, if it's not already possible to do this. I'll know this in a few days when I get my REV2 module, and post about it here.

[skrohmer]

So I hope DSI will think about it for a future update, if it's not already possible to do this.

Don't know why I never came to this idea, but now I made a quick test. IT WORKS over SysEx! 

[Razmo]

So I hope DSI will think about it for a future update, if it's not already possible to do this.

Don't know why I never came to this idea, but now I made a quick test. IT WORKS over SysEx! 

Yay! ... then I can rest peacefully

Anyway it's not a trick one would try out, if you did not know about it from the P12 I guess... but I'm happy to see, that my request from back then with the P12 has been carried over into the REV2 ... I hope it will be a standard way of doing it in DSI synths to come

[skrohmer]

Anyway it's not a trick one would try out, if you did not know about it from the P12 I guess...

The Rev2 is my first DSI device. I'm sure I would have tried it out very soon if I had known of this functionality . Proud to have had the idea now...

I'd be interested in a second point. I'm compared to all of you very much a beginner . Also want to do some ambient stuff (well, a long way but makes lots of fun every day) but I'm struggling with finding the right patches just for having some examples out of the factory presets. What I want to ask: How do you keep an overview over all the patches, even if limited to 512? Do you use the librarian which is available for the synth or any other software? I find it even quite hard to search for a sound within 100 patches without scrolling through all of them. Or do you prefer to organise the patches to have e.g. same categories in one bank so you could for example find all pads in bank 1 and all leads in bank 2 and so on?

I simply use an editor for this... I usually skim the net for any and all free presets there is, and load them into an editor where I can easily browse them one by one and listen to them.... all that I like and want, I put in a separate library... when that is done, I sort that library in any order I like the presets to be in, and simply dump these to a bank (or more).

That is why I want erasable presets ... so I can tailor my OWN "ROM Bank", and then use the user banks for all of my own creations.

May I ask which editor you are using for previewing and sorting the patches?

[Razmo]

Anyway it's not a trick one would try out, if you did not know about it from the P12 I guess...

The Rev2 is my first DSI device. I'm sure I would have tried it out very soon if I had known of this functionality . Proud to have had the idea now...

I'd be interested in a second point. I'm compared to all of you very much a beginner . Also want to do some ambient stuff (well, a long way but makes lots of fun every day) but I'm struggling with finding the right patches just for having some examples out of the factory presets. What I want to ask: How do you keep an overview over all the patches, even if limited to 512? Do you use the librarian which is available for the synth or any other software? I find it even quite hard to search for a sound within 100 patches without scrolling through all of them. Or do you prefer to organise the patches to have e.g. same categories in one bank so you could for example find all pads in bank 1 and all leads in bank 2 and so on?

I simply use an editor for this... I usually skim the net for any and all free presets there is, and load them into an editor where I can easily browse them one by one and listen to them.... all that I like and want, I put in a separate library... when that is done, I sort that library in any order I like the presets to be in, and simply dump these to a bank (or more).

That is why I want erasable presets ... so I can tailor my OWN "ROM Bank", and then use the user banks for all of my own creations.

May I ask which editor you are using for previewing and sorting the patches?

I do not... yet... I'm about to order my REV2 tomorrow actually, but I've made editors for many DSI instruments in the past which I use for this purpose of organizing and editing sounds... P12 was one of them, and why I came to ask for rewriting of factory presets back then.

Unfortunately SoundDiver (the program I use) is only used by old prehistoric editor-farts like me these days... it is no longer in production, impossible to find, and has many quirks... but I know how to create editors in it, and DSI's SysEx specs is always top notch for this.

The way SoundDiver can organise presets, banks etc. makes it really easy to use for preset sorting, arranging and not the least, browsing them live... I usually have all possible presets in one library, then delete all that I will not use, and simply dump them to any bank I want to... so it's easy to overwrite the factory banks with it...

[Darrolav]

Hey everyone,

Any of you could explain me what is the procedure to overwriting factory presets?
I use SoundTower editor.

Thanks 

[Darrolav]

Hey everyone,

Any of you could explain me what is the procedure to overwriting factory presets?
I use SoundTower editor.

Thanks 

So, after some research on Sound Editor, a simple copy/paste from U bank program to F bank program is needed, it's a little boring to do that one program at a time but it works...

[Razmo]

Hey everyone,

Any of you could explain me what is the procedure to overwriting factory presets?
I use SoundTower editor.

Thanks 

So, after some research on Sound Editor, a simple copy/paste from U bank program to F bank program is needed, it's a little boring to do that one program at a time but it works...

The software editor you are using should be able to copy several entries to pull this off... but there really is not much magic to it... the SysEx command for overwriting a program works on both user and factory slots, so any editor that can copy/paste more than a single entry about should be able to do it... I do not know if the SoundTower editor lets you copy more than one though.