Overview of benefits:The benefit of being able to save out external presets - or as FL Studio calls it "Project bones", provided the preset files are interoperable means easier rebuilding projects in other daws, and easier migration in a number of scenarios.
This can be very helpful for a number of reasons:
1. Migrating between DAWS: the engineer can rely on simply bouncing all raw tracks and re-apply the same plugins. Since there is no open framework comparable to that of OMF that includes implementation of plugins and/or their states, automation data etc... This at least can be a step toward that sort of ease of migration.
2. Migrating session data: in the event a new session needs to be made with a similar loadout on the fly as opposed to using track templates.
On occasion I've had track templates cause crashes due to embedded plugins that for whatever reason do not want to load properly. Perhaps it might simply be the case that a particular plugin state was corrupted somehow and trying to recall the state causes the plugin to fail loading and Sonar cannot complete the loading process.
Sure, you can "Shift" open to enable safe mode and see which plugin fails to load, and skip it the next time. BUT when you do that, you forfeit that plugin entirely and lose whatever potential state that plugin was in (if you're smart enough to manually save out your preset files externally from making the track template you're lucky).
3. Modularity - Having individual preset files correlating to the plugins used in the FX Bin on the track or bus always updated with the latest state it was left in would make it easier to re-use on other elements, in other projects without the need to recall everything in the FX Chain, or follow the same gain structure. I may not want to recall an entire FX chain just to get a particular plugin with it's settings I had applied in a previous session.
4. Simplifies miscellaneous tasks: Part of my regular process (which can be quite time consuming) is deconstructing a finished project to extract presets, build track templates, FX Chain Presets, bounce out processed stems and raw tracks to keep for archival purposes, etc. This regular routine is a good practice but comes at a cost of time management. When business picks up, I have no time to upkeep finished projects in this manner and this could cost me more time in the next project where something I employed in a previous project in whatever manner (a track template, a plugin loadout, FX chain, instrument setting etc) might come in handy to just call up again in the current project.
Caveats & Concerns:There are of course some caveats. First, I don't know, nor do I presume to be able to include clip-based FX. I also don't believe this can include Region FX, since these don't have state load or save capabilities.
Another caveat is that automation of plugins can disrupt the state of which the presets are saved. Should the state save feature look only at the very beginning of the session or bypass automation data and simply "look" at the latest available state the plugin is currently in? How does the preset autosave behave when automation is present, will it be based on the current playback head in the timeline?
post edited by Soulburned - 2015/11/18 23:39:19