Synth bass preset peeve

[Starship Krupa]

Why can't VSTi manufacturers/preset designers decide on which octave their "basses" are supposed to be played?

Case in point, I'm auditioning bass patches in bx_oberhausen, Consumer of Resources, and every third preset, I have to hit the Transpose MIDI plug-in I keep racked up for just such occasions. Up one octave to get it out of the complete mud, then back to no transpose to get it out of the "pad" zone.

I could forgive it better if it were different across different manufacturers' synths, but these are factory presets from one single source.

1st world problem I know, but it chafes.

[David Baay]

I have always presumed they do this so that bass parts are playable on smaller controller keyboards without transposing. But, yes, you would expect a given vendor's products/patches to be consistent.

[Shane_B.]

I've noticed that too. The only thing I can think of is they do that with the thought in mind that you might layer it with something else in a different octave? I don't know. I'm not a keyboard player by any stretch of the imagination but I've noticed that too about bass patches on various VSTi's I've tried.

Yeah it's a 1st world problem but when you pay for those 1WP's you kinda expect a little more.

[Starship Krupa]

It just seems like sloppy programming to me, and as a longtime software QA engineer, I don't like sloppy programming. Adopt a standard and stick to it, at least in a single company's products.

Ah well, I gots me MIDI transposin' plug-ins.

[craigb]

5 hours ago, Starship Krupa said:

It just seems like sloppy programming to me, and as a longtime software QA engineer, I don't like sloppy programming. Adopt a standard and stick to it, at least in a single company's products.

Yeah! ??

(I'm a former Tech Lead for the CM/QA department of a Defense Contractor where I "reshaped" and maintained their standards back in the early/mid '80's, then did similar for a healthcare utilization review firm and Verizon.)

[Peter C]

On 4/27/2022 at 1:46 AM, Starship Krupa said:

Why can't VSTi manufacturers/preset designers decide on which octave their "basses" are supposed to be played?

Agreed, it's a right pain when auditioning especially.  It's not as if each manufacturer has their own standard, many basses from single manufacturers are all over the place. 

I'm also not a fan of many octaved basses which can play havoc with pitch placement - i.e. not sounding growly cos it's too low or wimpy because it's too high. A bass is supposed to be....erm....a bass, and if I want to add an octave up I'd rather be in control of that myself.

[CoveCamper]

4 hours ago, craigb said:

 

(I'm a former Tech Lead for the CM/QA department of a Defense Contractor where I "reshaped" and maintained their standards back in the early/mid '80's, then did similar for a healthcare utilization review firm and Verizon.)

So, what you are saying Craig is that Verizon sucks because of you!!  ?

[Bapu]

[Bapu]

My bad, I thought you said pees

[craigb]

2 hours ago, CoveCamper said:

So, what you are saying Craig is that Verizon sucks because of you!!  ?

Actually, I was on both sides of the Force there.

On the Dark side, I was forced to write the code (in the Generate Recurring Charges area of your bill) that calculates all those extra surcharges you see at the bottom of the bill and can confirm that they we're ripping people off!  They calculate both State and Federal taxes before their percentage is calculated on the new amount!  Not nice! 

However, on the Light side, I'm the one who wrote the fuzzy logic that matched the billions of call records from cell tower to cell tower which eliminated almost all of the dropped calls that occurred when one side or both of the call participants were traveling. 

The billing system I worked for (Prism) had only a handful of states that were covered, but did include the largest cell area in the U.S., Los Angeles.  The states were California, Nevada and Georgia.