Pseudo Presets

Today I added a new feature to Cantabile 3 where plugins that only have a single built-in preset slot (eg: Kontakt) are automatically extended to give a generous 128 slots. Besides being a handy feature, this also provides better control and integration of these plugins with Cantabile’s session-state support.

Some plugins only provide a single preset/program slot. For example, here’s how the preset selector for Kontakt looked before today’s update:

Not only was this not very useful it makes it difficult to control the plugin from session-states (aka sub-sessions).

The workaround for this in Cantabile 2 was to use the Entire Bank sub-session behaviour so that when switching sub-sessions the entire plugin was reloaded. The downside was that the plugin was always reloaded introducing a delay even if the two sub-sessions had the plugin configured in exactly the same way.

While the Entire Bank option is still supported Cantabile 3 there’s now a better solution. “Pseudo presets” provide 128 preset slots for plugins that would normally only have the one. These pseudo presets are provided automatically and integrate seemlessly with the rest of the UI and with session states.

Here’s how Kontakt looks now:

You can rename a pseudo-preset just like any other — open the plugin editor and use the Rename command:

Here’s the preset selector is updated with the new names. Also, the next/previous preset buttons work with pseudo-presets:

There’s not much else to say about pseudo-presets — they work just like normal presets and will be available in Cantabile 3 Build 3025.

Got some feedback on Pseudo Presets? Here’s its Trello card.