Can you help me find a preset?

A few days ago while browsing Zynthian, I found a preset called “Kraftwerk Drums” but I can’t remember which synth it was on. Could you help me find it? :slight_smile:

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That’s a good question. I was wondering a related thing, because finding a good sound or preset, or something that I once used, often takes me a good amount of time. Maybe it would be a good thing to have one place where there is a list of good/common sounds, sorted with tags, even with the possibility of hear them… :upside_down_face:

This is a subject that has been previously discussed but there was insufficient effort or enthusiasm to progress. Presets are already catalogued so a reducing (fuzzy) search of preset names and descriptions (if present) should be fairly trivial to implement. Tagging is a more complex subject. Technically it is simple but curating tags that make sense to the majority is challenging. We added tags to this forum and I have little clue how to tag subjects or use them to search for content. Tags can be useful where they are clear, widely agreed rules but modern computers (like RPi) can perform quite good searches so ensuring good metadata in titles and descriptions is possibly better use of our time. LLMs may also offer a better solution than tags.

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Yes, I understand, is a huge task, and difficult to achieve with good results for everyone. :sweat_smile:

I may tackle it, just for myself, as a curated (& personal) list of sounds with categories, tags or whatever allows me to sort them. I may even publish it, if I reach the point of “good enough to share” :wink:

And @riban, I think that what you suggest is quite interesting! If the sounds could be automatically generated/extracted, the information collected about the preset/engine/section/meta may be enough to classify them… And, being automatically, it would be easier to produce/maintain… Just brainstorming to myself, again :joy:

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I uploaded a short recording of a simple JC303 note and asked ChatGPT to describe it. The result, which took about 10s (which probably equates to half a rain forest tree of energy usage) was interesting but not useful in this context:

The analysis of the uploaded audio reveals the following:

Waveform

  • The waveform shows a relatively sharp, short-lived spike followed by a decaying signal.

  • This suggests the sound is transient in nature — something like a click, pop, or snap, rather than a sustained tone or speech.

Frequency Spectrum

  • The frequency spectrum is broad and spread across a wide range, with no clear dominant frequency.

  • This is typical of percussive or impulsive sounds, which contain many frequencies due to their short duration.

Preliminary Categorization

Based on the visual and spectral data, this sound is best described as a short, impulsive, broadband noise, similar to:

  • A mechanical click or knock

  • A static pop

  • An object tapping a surface

If you’d like a more refined classification or spectrogram analysis (to see how the frequency content changes over time), I can provide that too.

Mmm, the waveform could be interesting for the interface (and, fortunately, we don’t need ChatGPT for that). For instance, in this case, the sound could be classified with the engine/preset used, not much but at least, it’s a start (and for the OP, it could be enough). For melodic engines, we can add some sample notes (maybe some octaves apart), and for percussion engines, well, all notes where there is an instrument… on all presets! It may be a huge library! :face_with_peeking_eye:

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The dialog above between @riban and @oscaracena inspired me to prompt Gemini with @SYNTHFHZ ‘s original question. I haven’t tried to verify the response, but it did make sense and even seemed to show a good understanding of Zynthian:

A few days ago while browsing Zynthian, I found a preset called Kraftwerk Drums but I can’t remember which synth it was on. Could you help me find it?

The “Kraftwerk Drums” preset you recall finding on Zynthian is likely a preset within one of the following drum-focused LV2 plugins:

  • DrMr Sampler: A sampler plugin.

  • DrumGizmo: An open-source, multichannel, multilayered drum plugin.

  • DrumSynth: A plugin specifically for synthesizing drum sounds.

  • Geonkick: Another drum-focused plugin mentioned as becoming available.

These are all available as LV2 plugins within Zynthian. You’ll need to make sure the relevant plugin is enabled through the Zynthian web interface (Webconf → SOFTWARE → LV2-Plugins → MIDI Synth) before searching for the specific “Kraftwerk Drums” preset within that plugin’s settings.

Kraftwerk’s drumming style, famously synthesized and processed using analog technology, is often a source of inspiration for drum-related sound packs and presets. In fact, there’s even a free sound pack called “Honoring Florian” that is a tribute to Florian Schneider’s sound design, featuring Kraftwerk-inspired drums for Ableton Live and the Roland TR-8S.

Finding a specific preset on Zynthian can sometimes be a bit like an easter egg hunt, but focusing your search on these drum-related engines should bring you closer to rediscovering the “Kraftwerk Drums” preset.

AI responses may include mistakes.

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Shouldn’t there a result when searching within the zynthian file system for “Kraftwerk”, e.g. in zynthian-data/presets/lv2/* ? I would just do it, but the machine is at home and I am not.

(venv) root@zynthian:/zynthian/zynthian-data/presets# find . -iname kraftwerk
(venv) root@zynthian:/zynthian/zynthian-data/presets# rgrep -i kraftwerk
grep: xenia/the_lab/u101.mid: coincidencia en fichero binario
vavra/ForumOne Soundset mQ v16.html:<TD DIR=LTR ALIGN=LEFT>Kraftwerk Clk3CC</TD>
grep: vavra/mQ_Forum_Soundset_v16.mid: coincidencia en fichero binario
(venv) root@zynthian:/zynthian/zynthian-data/presets# 
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Seems more like a Midi drum loop, right? But there might be several presets as well on root level (like pianoteq having them in /.local/share/ and others might have them completely elsewhere).

As Gemini said: :joy:

Which gives us to the point of a collection of sounds, classified,… :wink:

This is the right answer, @oscaracena. The vavra plugin has this preset. I remember to have tested It.

As your quick and dirty command line search has shown, implementing a preset search for the LV2; presets is really easy because all LV2 presets are cached in simple json files. Indeed, we could easily extend the search to all engines by using the zynapi calls. Perhaps it’s not super fast, but It would be easy to implement.

Having a fast search tool would be more challenging. Having a unified preset cache DB for all engines would be the first step.

Regards

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Oh my god, I’m back here again….

I can hear thousands of gun shots, car engines and windy hills with bird song all over again, and still no usable solutions . . .

Did anyone ask about Kraftwerk?

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:joy:

[Off-Topic: @jofemodo we need reactions on discourse :upside_down_face:]

OMG!! no more features in discourse, please!

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What, not even this. . . . ?

I thought we already had this but apparently not. A good start would be to catalogue all presets. I think there is a class level function to extract presets from each engine which seems like a useful feature to build a table including preset name, engine, bank, etc. Having this may also help with some other requests, like, ”what sondfonts do I have?”. We already have the, “update presets” option in webconf so this looks like a good place to build the table.

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Assume everything is using a lv2 like structure, and construct everything from there, with a decent parameter examination tool in webconf to display ALL the parameters declared and set in the hierarchy.
Display parameters down to file locations of code object and source files

Mix in concepts like favourites early on.

Allow selection of displayed parameters to be projected into GUI environment.
Work favourites hard and provide good sort by tools.

I’ve been hunting around for the components of various components and it’s pretty obscure at the moment. The webconf has the concept partially defined but the data set has still got holding text for the most part.

FYI, I’m considering moving the “presets cache” to a relational DB (sqlite3) instead of using JSON files. It would simplify the task of searching and organizing presets. I will do some proof of concept tests and will report here.

Regards,

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