I know this has come up a few times recently and I wanted to formalize it into a topic. I’ve been a fan of using snapshots for a long time, especially with an external MIDI controller for mapping to snapshots. I’m finding that I’d like to have either or all of the LP3, Audio player, or Recorder on many of my pedalboards but operating them doesn’t usually work well in a snapshot paradigm. When switching between snapshots, it usually isn’t desirable for the current state of those plugins to change. I’d love to have the best of both worlds - the ability to easily switch between states for rhythm, chorus, lead / clean, dirty, filthy, etc. while being able to control the file-based plugins independently.
An idea for making this available would be to have a an option in the snapshot menu that would present a dialog listing the plugins on the pedalboard, each with a checkbox indicating if the plugin is part of the snapshot. This way one could easily select which ones to include/exclude when the snapshot is saved.
Interesting, thank you for the feedback and the test. I did a quick test here, and indeed switching snapshots doesn’t seem to alter the transport state of the LP3. It did however affect the selected Track when I updated one of the snapshots after selecting track 2. If I select Track 2 and then enable a snapshot, the selected Track is moved to Track 1.
[EDIT] After doing another test with the Recorder, my snapshots are now in a state that affect the LP3. I have it in a Stopped state, and I switch from S1 to S2 and back to S1, it starts playing my Track.
I’d be glad to learn more about how snapshots relate to the LP3 and its various options.
With the Audio player, the state seems to be saved with the snapshot. I had a file playing and saved S1, then stopped it and saved S2. When switching between S1 and S2 the player restarts (S1) and stops (S2). For me this is expected behavior but not desirable.
Similarly, the Recorder is also affected by the snapshots. I saved both snapshots with the Recorder deactivated, started recording, and switching snapshots disables the recorder.
Yes, because a snapshot will alter the state of the control ports, the LP3 can be impacted by selecting a snapshot. The problem is that the snapshot isn’t aware that there are some control ports that you would rather not impact. This would seem to be a feature request as it is here.
This also touches the topic “grouping plugins” because including/or excluding a plugin group could be part of the problem and/or the solution (“grouping” explained below)
If this grouping would exist; it could be an option to set an option whether the group should be “locked” and “locked across snapshots”. If it is desired behaviour that nothing changes accross snapshots, this wouldn’t be necessary in the first place but it would help secure your settings, perhaps help tidying up a board and reassure that some things are really fixed. In other words; it is just as much a functional as an interface help to confirm nothing changes.
I’m touching several items at once here but I feel they are related.
With grouping I mean;
I’ve seen several remarks and ideas in people’s workflows where they have section of their board that they want to include because it’s their primer. You could call it primers, prefabs or blueprints…whatever
example: for a guitarist, he might be adding a gain+tubescreamer+amp [+all of their settings] to start their board with AND to have some consistency across boards
Sometimes we need to use several boards because you can’t cram everything into one board (limited CPU, keeping it tidy etc)
another group could be gain+reberb+delay [+all of their settings]; because, once again, it is something you want to add with a single click to your boards, ensuring some consistency and it makes building a board easy because you eliminate some manual, repeated tasks
Also; being able to minimize (make smaller) could help to keep a good overview.
In my opinion, snapshots need the ability to include/exclude the pedals of choice for the user. Even excluding the looper isn’t good enough. Maybe there is one pedal with 3 presets that I want to remember and there is another pedal that has 3 presets. Do I have 9 snapshots for all the permutations? Or can I have 6 snapshots that only change 1 pedal at a time?
I was hoping for this function too. I tend to use just 1 pedalboard with all the different sounds I want. After playing a lot with CV and complex pedalboards, I was back using snapshots, but I needed to exclude some plugins.
In my opinion the 2 main advantages for snapshots are 1) the possibility to select an item of a list in different plugins (like presets, amps models, ir files,…), and 2) with an external MIDI controller sending PC messages, there is a feedback on the Dwarf with the snapshot name.
So while I’m waiting for the next news from the MOD Team… I did 2 small modifications in the mod-ui code and I got Snapshots with exclude plugins working!! if there is interest in this, I will be happy to send a pull request…
I tried last days and looks quite stable, at least for my use …
Mainly I don’t use snapshots to turn On-Off effects, because for this there are already some great plugins for this like
This solution is not the cleanest, but I don’t have enough experience (…and time) for something better. But it just does what I need
Instead of a new parameter for each plugin like “Included or Not Included in Pedalboard Snapshot”, I just tried to reuse the existing ones. So there are 2 options I exclude a plugin (when saving snapshots or pedalboard)
#1: the actual plugin preset ends with “_NotInSS” #2: the plugin is bypassed except its preset end with “_InSS”
So if there is some problematic plugin status, I can always add it to the SS and it works like before.
So now in my pedalboard I have 3 NAM models for 3 different Amps with different Gains, each one with his corresponding Cab IR. I’m able to change to each combination with just a button of the chocolate plus midi controller and the status of other effects like Reverb, Tremolo,… or even the looper does not change (could be ON or OFF).
(“grouping” explained below)
