Massive XL User Banks

Question

Sooo baffled with MXL browser architecture. So far I've managed to create a new folder and add a preset to it via the info button in the lower right of the browser.. But I can't find that folder in Finder. And MXL seems to require me to select presets INDIVIDUALLY before I can add them to my new folder. Is there no drag and drop at least? Can someone here enlighten me?

Kymeia · Answer

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/272321#Comment_272321

You can still move patches into a user folder after giving them a bank name, then rescan. The thing to understanding is just that the Massive XL browser is not a file manager, it's a preset manager.

Having been holding out for proper user bank support in Massive X since it first came out I'm fine with this, it's what was needed for people to begin authoring their own content and hopefully will now make Massive XL much more popular with third party content developers.

sunbambino · Answer

I'm studying the info you've been kind enough to  share, appreciated.

But my gut reaction is: here's more of the same nonsense we faced for years with Massive X, a vast unwieldy unfriendly mess, a good synth hog-tied with a nightmare browser.

I mean just compare this with say Diva or GForce Matrix 12… quick, intuitive & brilliant, plenty of tagging but so well thought-out.

LucienVale · Answer

I believe there's a distinction worth making here: what you're creating in the Info Pane is a custom User Filter Tag, not an actual folder on your filesystem.

That's why you won't find that folder in Finder. The custom tag is stored as metadata associated with the preset, rather than being represented as a physical directory.

One useful thing you might have missed: Native Instruments does support bulk tag editing. You can hold Shift and select multiple user presets in the browser, then assign or edit their tags together through the Info Pane. So you don't necessarily have to repeat the process one preset at a time.

If your goal is to physically organize presets into folders, you'll need to work with the actual preset files in your User Content directory. On macOS, the default location is:

"~/Documents/Native Instruments/User Content/"

You can also right-click a user preset in the browser and choose "Show in Finder" to locate its actual file.

As for drag and drop, it's important to distinguish loading presets from organizing them. The browser's tagging system is designed around metadata and filtering, not folder management.

NI's documentation explains these workflows in the Komplete Kontrol manual under "Managing User Tags" and "Presets".