[sdiy] Generic preset storage / converting presets between synths

[Kenneth Martinez]

Those who believe presets are the bane of creative synthesis - please 
avert your eyes (and avoid a flame war)...

Here's my wish: for my synths with preset storage and the ability to 
dump & load presets via midi sysex, I'd like to be able to feed the 
sysex of a synth into a software program which can (1) display the sound 
parameters in a meaningful form, and (2) convert the sound into the 
sysex format of any of my other presets synths.  That's not too much to 
ask, is it? ;-)

Does anyone know of any existing software, commercial or otherwise, 
which can do this?

I don't feel the need to do this a lot, but there are times when I'd 
like to know the actual settings of a preset... after all, the knobs 
don't move themselves when I switch to another preset.  Many preset 
synths don't show the values, you have to find them again by turning 
each knob (e.g. Prophet 5, Nord Lead); and for those modern synths with 
LCDs which do show the actual values (e.g. Andromeda, Virus), I'd still 
have to page around its menus until I saw all the values.

If I have one, I can use a free or commercial sysex librarian / editor 
program to view the parameters, but those are in the "native tongue" of 
each synth (typically, arbitrary units from 0 - 127).  If I want to make 
a very similar sound on another of my synths (hardware or software), 
I'll probably still spend a fair amount of time converting it to the 
other synth's format by adjusting parameters and listening.

So again - I want software that can display meaningful values for the 
parameters (filter envelope amount = 1/2 octave, envelope 1 attack = 
50ms, etc) and convert between these values and a given synth's sysex 
(as much as possible - resolution probably isn't good enough to get 
envelope attack to exactly 50ms on each and every synth, and envelope 
shapes vary between synths, etc).

I figure if I've thought it would be useful, someone else has probably 
already done it at least once ;-)  Anybody know of anything like this?