Quick background on my issue:
I was working in Cakewalk, it was hours into the day so I was burning out, earlier in the day I found a cool preset I wanted to base some things around. It’s nothing groundbreaking it’s definitely been used before but I can’t personally recreate it (It sounds simple to mimic but I’m new to this so I struggle). Anywho, I deleted some instruments from the project so i could finalize and accidentally deleted that vital instance, then ctrl+z led to a crash, which led to the vital preset being lost for-fkin-ever… Until I checked the projects data folder, it has a short audio clip of the preset playing two notes.
I’m hoping some audiophiles on here will know which preset this is so I can get back to it. I’m sure I got the preset from this site within the last 6-ish months but it could also be from a larger collection I got from a google drive.
If you can’t think of what this is but have a similar sounding or better sounding preset along the same lines I’m always down for new good things!
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If it came from a preset pack, the original preset might still be in your Vital library, even though the project instance is gone.
Btw I’m building Presetti, which might help here. It lets you index your existing Vital presets, then use an audio clip to find similar-sounding ones, all works offline and for free. That two-note clip could help you track it down, or find something close.
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That’s awesome I actually spent a bit of time wishing there was some kind of plugin that would index vital presets and take snippets of their settings on import (ie, sample a note or two to index the preset’s sound) so it could reverse lookup presets for this exact case. Guess posting here was the right call, I’ll check Presetti out and let you know
It works very well actually when you said you’re building Presetti I thought you meant it was still prototype, I didn’t think it would be this smooth of a process lol
In my case It didn’t work, but I think that’s my fault and not Presetti’s failure. I think I edited the original preset (possibly SNFK’s Control preset) to make it sound as it does in the clip I shared, I MAY have added an LFO to 2 of the oscillator’s volume knobs to give it that pulse vibe but I can’t remember specifically. Regardless, I learned my lesson, always save every change to a preset; the one you don’t save will be the one you fixate on and can’t reproduce even if it sounds simple.
The app itself installed easily, once I targeted my vital folder it took a minute to build the library but it didn’t slow anything down for the rest of my pc(usually indexing audio stuff slows things a bit), there were 2 issues when building the library (Steinberg’s HALion plugin threw an error about accessing documents folder when initially scanning the pc, the plugin doesnt work currently anyways they need to patch it, other issue was a popup message about a corrupt preset can’t load into the library, but then it was the first preset in the library and its preview played without issue, so maybe just a logging error?)
One note I have is the preset search feature, import short audio to find similar presets in your library, seems a little loose with it’s protocols. Like it found some decent matches for sure, but then there were some that were way off I don’t know how to explain what I mean by way off lol, just didn’t sound similar at all maybe used some similar fx or mechanics but I thought it was worth mentioning. Also when clicking the star to mark my favorites if there is a way to batch select, there should be a tooltip to say so, and if not it’s definitely worth looking into!
I’ll probably use this app often, it’s going to make my audio work much easier as I have the kind of brain that needs things sorted my way or I get confuddled and lose presets then waste days of work trying to get it back
Cheers for this!
Thanks for trying it and for writing all this up. Glad the install and the Vital folder setup went smoothly.
On your clip: I think you’re right. Presetti can only point you at presets that exist in your library. If the sound came from an edited Control with extra LFOs on the oscillator volumes, the best it can do is land near it. I’d still check the top few results, since the base preset may be in there.
HALion: thanks for the heads up. I’ll look at why it trips over the documents folder during the scan.
The corrupt preset popup is the one I want to track down. Since that preset played fine afterwards, it might be a wrong warning. If you still have the exact wording, send it over. If you want to dig in, Settings has a Debug log toggle. Turn it on, run the build again, and send me the file. You can post it on our Discord, which is also the place for any other issues or ideas.
On results that sound way off: the list always fills up to 150 presets, so the further down you go, the looser it gets. The top of the list is the part to trust. You’ll also get closer results if you give Presetti a C4 note. Presetti keeps and compares every preset at C4, so a clip played at C4 is the cleanest match. Other notes still work, but they are a bit less precise. I’m also thinking about pitching clips to C4 automatically, but I haven’t decided yet. If some of the top results were off too, tell me which ones and I’ll look at what they have in common with your clip.
For favorites, there’s no batch select right now. You click the heart on each preset. I’ll add it to my list, and I’ll add a tooltip if it ships.
Glad you find it useful. Tell me how it goes once you’ve used it for a while.
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I don’t remember the exact wording, the popup for HALion was a generic warning popup from HALion itself, if Presetti opening/closing the plugins as it indexes this would seems like a permission conflict as presetti tries to get presets from HALion, which is just a player I believe. It has pretty strict permission requirements so I think Presetti is just trying to access it as it’s in the default scan path and it’s just getting blocked by the system. Could also be a controlled folder access issue.
The warning for the corrupted preset was just a white popup dialogue box, the corrupted preset was called “Banana Wob”, it’s from a creator called afro I got somewhere in the wild. I just confirmed it works in vital, in my DAW, and the preview works in Presetti. My scan found something like 1700 presets, maybe it hit a kind of limit or tripped itself up at the end of the scan leaving one unchecked and logging it as a corruption? Either way, good work, looking forward to how to progresses
Sorry for the late reply, I’ve been a bit busy last couple of weeks.
Thanks for the report. HALion is just a player, so the system blocking access during the scan is a likely cause. I’ll make Presetti skip it or handle the failure without a popup.
Btw how’s the usage going so far? Did you discover any cool presets?