Preset browser

Every instrument’s preset name opens the same shelf on the right. Pick a row and you hear it on your own track, through its effects and mix, while the song keeps playing. Nothing is committed until you say so: Keep applies the sound as one undoable edit, Cancel puts the original back, and Original lets you compare the two at any moment. The library holds a few hundred authored sounds for the synths, the drums and the Resonator, alongside each instrument’s smaller factory bank, your project’s own presets and anything you have imported.

When to use it

Open it when you have a part written and want to hear it with a different sound, when you are sketching and need a starting point, or when a drum kit is right except for one voice. Because the audition plays your clip and not a demo, you judge the sound where it will live. Sampled instruments have their own Sound library with downloads; the mechanics of trying, comparing and keeping are the same.

Controls

Finding a sound

Search matches names, categories, descriptions and tags. Category buttons and the Factory, Project and Imported filters narrow the list; the choices last for the session. Up and Down move through the rows and audition as they go, Home and End jump to the ends, and Enter selects a row without committing it. Each chosen sound shows a compact note grid and playing advice.

Auditioning

Selecting a row swaps the instrument’s settings for the candidate. The panel shows those temporary settings and you can tweak them before keeping. Instrument automation lanes that the preset would change are bypassed during the audition, with a visible count; Keep commits the bypass, Cancel restores the lanes. Track, send and effect automation is untouched.

Demos

The small Play button plays the sound’s own recorded demo, independent of your track and of the selection. Demo audio bypasses the song’s rack and master and never reaches a recording or an export. Only one demo plays at a time.

Drums

Drums have two scopes: Full kit replaces every voice, and a single voice, reached from the pad’s Browse sound button, copies only that drum’s synthesis controls and leaves levels, pans, the other pads and the hat choke alone. Keep a kit, then reopen one voice to build a hybrid; it then displays as Current sound.

Leaving with changes pending

Closing the shelf with X or Escape, saving, switching tracks, loading a project or undoing while a changed audition is playing asks Keep sound, Discard changes or Continue browsing. Saving, loading and the rest carry on after your answer. Undo and Redo don’t: they wait until the sound is kept or discarded, then do nothing more, so press ⌘Z again when you mean it, for example to take a kept sound back out. Other edits made during an audition, such as a fader or another track, stay ordinary undo steps. Explicit Cancel is immediate and never asks. Browsing, demos and an unchanged candidate close without a prompt.

Tips

• Toggle Original on the phrase that matters most rather than the whole song; the comparison is instant and the pending choice survives it.
• Some voice settings, such as unison copies, take effect on the next note, so let a phrase pass before judging a chord sound.
• Recording, export and freezing wait until you resolve the audition.