ZEN Universal VSTi Preset Loader

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ronnie
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ZEN Universal VSTi Preset Loader

Post by ronnie »

I came across this freebie when I discovered that my native V-Station (great arpeggiator and interesting "analog" poly synth) VST could not load FXP preset files. :evil:

This is a VST that creates a searchable database out of almost every VST out there's presets and provides a way to load them presets into any one of them when both the ZEN VST and target VST are loaded into a host DAW.

Solved the V-Station problem for me but I haven't tried it with anything else. Big Bonus is it scans your VST folder and automatically downloads presets for every one of them. Presets are updated (daily!).

From the Big Tick site:

Zen is a universal presets manager.

It loads in any host as a vsti, and acts as a loader for other vstis. So with Zen, you can search for “Rhodes piano” and get a list of all matching presets – regardless of the final vsti (Rhino, Zebra, Absynth… whatever). When you select one of the presets in Zen, the corresponding vsti is automatically loaded to play the requested preset.

Most popular vstis are supported, and new ones are added daily. Eventually Zen aims to categorize all available presets, for all vstis.
Zen is online.

Zen constantly synchronizes his own local database of presets with a master online database hosted at www.bigtickaudio.com – users get new presets daily, delivered right into their sequencer, already categorized.

Zen works following a social model, where the online database is constantly updated by the users themselves.

Zen is free. (Some downloaded presets are demos, though, but tons are not).

Big Tick Audio Zen
"I’ve come to the conclusion that synths are like potatoes, they’re no good raw—you’ve got to cook ‘em, and I cooked these sounds for months before I got them to the point where they sounded musical to me." Lyle Mays
jksuperstar
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Re: ZEN Universal VSTi Preset Loader

Post by jksuperstar »

Dang, great idea, even if it's just to search through MY OWN presets to find a sound across multiple VSTs.
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ronnie
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Re: ZEN Universal VSTi Preset Loader

Post by ronnie »

Okay. The concept is great but the execution leaves something to be desired. It didn't really solve my V-Station issue. It's very temperamental. Sometimes the presets are there and sometimes not. Has to be restarted a lot. Maybe because it looks like it hasn't been touched in a few years. It seemed to work with Massive a little better and some people have had success with Diva and Zebra but for now, I don't have a warm and fuzzy feeling about it to try those. Too much workflow distraction when my expectation was just the opposite. Also seemed to really hog memory when loaded as a VST in Cantabile, I was getting out of memory errors on a 32GB machine! And lo and behold, the thing was gobbling up more and more like there was no limit. Looks like the standalone is better but I need the workflow advantage in a DAW. What the heck could it need with the memory grab? In summary, I think it needs some more TLC before I would feel confident. Looks a bit neglected by developer if you ask me...
"I’ve come to the conclusion that synths are like potatoes, they’re no good raw—you’ve got to cook ‘em, and I cooked these sounds for months before I got them to the point where they sounded musical to me." Lyle Mays
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