Hi,
Sorry for this dummy question, but I’m totally new to music production and synths, but what is a patch? I see people sharing patches on the Internet, but I have no idea what they are or how to use them.
A preset for a synth is often called a patch.
Thanks. So, are preset and patch interchangeable words in Vital?
Kind of.
People use both terms. For me a preset is more of a preexisting setting, as the name suggests, while a patch consists of all the settings of a synth to later recall.
the LFOs on Vital have presets, not LFO patches. But if you save a sound (state) that you made in vital, I would call that a patch 
if you then went on and shared it with the world it would again become a preset I guess.
This is funny, and probably nitpicking.
Modular Synths usually have patch cables to route CV and Audio…
So in short, call it preset.
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Hahaha… a bit confusing, but you helped a lot. Thanks!
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Yea, funny how when you load a preset, modify it and then save it, it becomes a patch
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not only in Vital but in the synth world in general
historical reason:
in the days back, aka 60s, you had modular synthesizers
i.e.:a synthesizer was a collection of individual modules
those were connected with…you guess it: patch cables !
a collection of patch-cable-connected moduels represented a sound - a preset
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technically, a preset shouldn’t be called ‘a patch’. I truly have no idea why people started to call ‘presets’ ‘patches’. A patch really means to ‘(re-)attach’. So in the ‘modular’ world patching was used the right way. Patch two elements by means of cables (etc).
Now, i can see why a ‘patched’ modular synth = a state that can be called a ‘preset’. The modular synth is all set-up for use with ‘a patched’ setting. I guess it was called a patched modular synth = a patch = a preset.
These days i would call ‘a preset’ a preset. Not a patch.
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And if Matt releases a new version, chances are there are some patches applied to the source code which make for even better presets…
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“Patch” doesn’t just have to refer to a modular synth. Your “preset” will contain the same types of patching information, like tying modulation sources to your LFO, etc., connecting oscillator outputs to filter inputs, etc. Just because you don’t see what’s going on under the hood makes it no less of a “patch”. That said, a modular “patch” still didn’t control things like potentiometer settings on the synth; it’s only signal routing.
IMO, the terms are pretty much interchangeable.
Yeah they’re used pretty interchangeably.
I did spend a few hours switching my naming scheme from ‘patch’ to ‘preset’ before releasing because beginners can infer meaning from ‘preset’
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