The Space Between Presets
Exploration of the software synth presets space
Although we have so many ways to look for presets today, most of us still end up scrolling through an endless list. Could a software synth's presets instead be a visual map you explore by description and play like an instrument? In this talk, we will navigate preset space using text/audio as input, morphing between them in real time to chase a sound — with live demos on real synths, and look at where it works, where it breaks, and why a "map" of sound, built upon a pretrained audio-language model (CLAP), makes it possible.
Shiva Sankar Kannan
Senior Software Engineer
Dolby Labs
A software developer interested in audio, XR and creative tool development. Have 5 years of experience in the audio industry, working for Dolby Labs on spatial audio content creation tools. Worked in film before as a developer in animation and vfx houses.