As I already have some minor mess with all the presets I did in the past for various plugins I’m wondering if there’s already a guide out how to get this structured better.
On one hand I do my own presets and save them within the plugin, on the other I also do GP presets with the saved states of plugins
Besides this I have of course backups in time machine of my two Macs. However syncing only presets with the plugin internal functions is time consuming and you always forget something.
I also remember my first mac replacement some years ago which was quite time consuming to get things sorted out. Meanwhile my personal preset collections has grown and I think also needs some care…
So how do you guys handle this in the Mac world? Or even worse, in a mixed world of mac and Windows?
I started with an overview based on some questions to ChatGPT and lookup some locations on my SSDs…
some manufacturers moved the locations over time, or leave empty folder structures (e.g. Arturia: everything now in /Library/Arturia empty folders in ~/Library/Audio/Prestes/Arturia …)
for some I have seen only import/export so far
My goal: write something like a sync script to keep my macs in sync and have an additional backup.
BBB
PS: GP presets only is not sufficient for me, as I also use these plugin presets in my DAW (Logic)…
Unfortunately, if you are using the plugin’s preset management, I think you are pretty much on your own because every plugin does it differently. Some let you save presets anywhere, others force you to store them in folders predefined by the plugin.
I don’t think GP presets even work for third party plugins always.
At least when I tried to use them with the TH-U based looper, they didn’t help, so I had to export midi mappings and a preset separately to 2 different files.
In this case, if I remember correctly, saving the plugin blocks as favorites also didn’t help. However, when I export a rackspace and then import it, things work properly. So there’s some mechanism to manage that in GP (or maybe I’m imagining things now).
Anyway, I also tried to manage that at one point, and so far haven’t found any method to do it except saving presets manually in one host and then loading in another one.
GP presets simply save/restore the state of the plugin (basically doing for an individual plugin the same thing as GP does for an entire gigfile)
If the state is not restored correctly, then that is 100% a bug in the way the the plugin is (not properly) handling its state and the problem should be reported to the plugin developer.
MIDI mappings are unfortunately often stored as “global” and the developer does not consider them to be part of the state of the plugin. They do this under the (in my opinion misguided) view that users will always want to use the same MIDI message for the same parameter.
You’d have ask the developer — but @David-san is probably correct - the first time it loads up and is being initialized, it pulls in the proper map.
But for what it’s worth, the code that saves/restores presets is 100% the same code that saves/restores the state of the plugin for the gig file (not even a copy, we’re invoking the same function)
That’s exactly why I started this thread and listed my first findings in an excel table
Looking for best practices, or something I missed so far…
Unfortunatly plugin specific preset files are not really standardized, located at a specific location, there seem to be only recommendations (,fxp, fxb, .preset, .vstpreset, .aupreset etc …) - also depending on the usage of your DAW or live host…
So I think the most simple solution is to use the plugin’s own preset management to use/share presets in GP and any DAW like Logic, Cubase, Ableton etc.
Also, when accidentially trying a different plugin sound in GP and switching back without a preset
Currently I try to use plugins more or less in their standard configuration to avoid one more level of complexity/consistency management. Maybe I should reconsider this as well?
Thanks for the link. I already have the same structure on both of my Macs to be able to use gig files on both of them. This basically works 99% without syncing all content. But that’s the gap I want to close: seeing/using plugin’s presets as well and be able to use them outside the GP world.
The main challenge is to sync the various folder locations noted in the sheet above.
Therefore I will give the symbolic link option a try on my home iMac and relocate the presets (and probably other content) of the plugins in a first step and see if there are any side effects before making any changes on my gig MBP.
So there’s some mechanism to manage that in GP (or maybe I’m imagining things now).
