- Does Zen work with plugins with their own, proprietary preset format ?
- What about presets requiring external sample data ?
- How do I add a plugin to Zen ?
- My music computer is not connected to the internet. Can I still use Zen ?
- Can Zen detect presets duplicates ?
- How do I import my presets into Zen ?
- I am a commercial presets designers. Does Zen enable users to infringe copyright by uploading my presets to the database ?
- Zen displays a hourglass “waiting” cursor every few seconds
Does Zen work with plugins with their own, proprietary preset format ?
Yes. Regardless of their preset format, all plugins can export their preset data to the host – this is what the host uses when saving a song. A few plugins, however, don’t support the single-preset preset import/export calls, and therefore will not work with Zen.
What about presets requiring external sample data ?
There have plans to support them, but this might require the plugins to support a very simple set of vst extensions (basically, to let Zen know about the external assets it requires for a given preset).
How do I add a plugin to Zen ?
Just drop its dll (or on the Mac, the .vst bundle) in the plugins list.
My music computer is not connected to the internet. Can I still use Zen ?
Yes. Zen support several modes, allowing to:
- work completely offline (in this case, only the presets that have been loaded so far are available)
- work offline with the database on a shared drive. The database can be updated by a daemon process running on another computer.
Can Zen detect presets duplicates ?
It usually can, but it depends on the plugin. Some plugin will add random data to their presets, making duplicates detection unreliable. In this case Zen will warn if a preset with the same name exists for the same plugin.
How do I import my presets into Zen ?
Just open the vsti to play the presets, enable “autoimport mode” on Zen, and browse through the presets on the vsti. Each time a new preset is selected, it will be imported into Zen database. Alternatively, you can also drag&drop individual fxp files directly into Zen.
I am a commercial presets designers. Does Zen enable users to infringe copyright by uploading my presets to the database ?
Absolutely not. Users can’t share their library over the internet. For most users, Zen only works one way, e.g, building up a local library of presets published by presets designers.
Zen displays a hourglass “waiting” cursor every few seconds
This is because it is downloading presets, and needs to refresh the current results list. If there are a lot of new presets to be downloaded (as is the case the first times you run Zen), this can be annoying. Try to select a synth in the Zen search list, as it will only refresh when a preset for this synth has been downloaded. Alternatively, you can also set Zen offline, and run the command-line updater instead.
