Presets & Drum Kits
Browse synth presets, DX7 patches and drum kits in Draw.Audio, save your own sound presets, and import .syx SysEx banks. Free in your browser.
Synth Presets
- Preset Picker
- The preset picker sits in the song bar at the top of the page and shows the selected track's preset. Click the name to open the preset browser, or use the arrows beside it to step to the previous or next preset (Shift+P and P). The arrows step through the tab and filter you last browsed, and wrap at the ends. Picking a preset replaces the track's sound and leaves your notes as they are, and you can undo it. The browser stays open while you try sounds; press Escape or click outside it to close it. When you change a sound after loading it, the name shows (edited).
- Subtractive, FM and Wavetable
- The browser has four tabs. Subtractive, FM and Wavetable hold the built-in presets for each synth engine, and Custom holds the presets you saved. FM has two sub-tabs: Draw.Audio FM and DX-7. Picking a preset from another engine's tab switches the track to that engine. See Sound Synthesis for how each synthesizer works.
- Categories, Search and Favorites
- Narrow the list with the chips under the tabs, or type in the search box to filter by name. Categories: the FM, DX-7 and Wavetable tabs sort presets by sound, such as Bass, Keys or Pads. Click More to see every chip, and All to clear the filter. Favorites: click the star on a row to add the preset to your favorites. The Favorites chip then shows the starred presets in that tab. Recent: shows the presets you loaded most recently in that tab, from the last 12 across all tabs. Keyboard: in the open browser, the Up and Down arrow keys move through the list and play each preset. Left and Right switch the chip while the search box is empty. Alt+S stars the highlighted preset.
- Random Presets
- The dice beside the preset arrows loads a random preset from the Subtractive, FM or Wavetable presets, never your own. On a drum track it loads a random drum kit. The dice beside the search box picks from the list you are viewing, so it stays within the current tab and chip.
- Hear a Preset
- While the song is stopped, picking or stepping to a synth preset plays a short note so you can hear it. The note lasts as long as a note drawn with the current note length and gate. During playback there is no preview note; you hear the new sound in the song. Drum kits have no preview.
- Reset Sound
- To start over from a plain sound, open the Clear menu (C) and choose Reset sound. Synth tracks return to the Init preset; volume and pan stay as they are.
Your Own Presets
- Save a Preset
- Open the Custom tab and click Save as new… to save the selected track's sound under a name. After you change a sound loaded from one of your own presets, Update "name" appears and saves the changes into that preset. Built-in presets cannot be overwritten, so save a copy instead. Drum tracks have their own Custom view, which saves the kit together with the track's sound settings.
- Rename, Duplicate and Delete
- Each row in the Custom list has buttons to rename, duplicate or delete the preset. Delete asks you to click again to confirm. After a rename or delete, the message that appears has an Undo button. With a row highlighted, Alt+R renames, Alt+C duplicates and Alt+X deletes.
- Where Presets Are Stored
- Your presets, favorites and uploaded DX-7 banks are saved in this browser only. They do not appear in other browsers or on other devices, and clearing the site's data deletes them. Reset All keeps them. The sound itself is saved in each song, so a song you share plays the same for everyone, but the preset is not added to their Custom list.
DX-7 Patches
- Classic DX-7 Sounds
- The DX-7 sub-tab under FM has 256 patches from the classic DX7 factory ROM banks, sorted into categories such as Keys, Brass & Wind and Bells & Mallets. They play on Draw.Audio's 6-operator FM synth, so you can edit them like any FM sound. See Sound Synthesis for FM synthesis.
- Upload .syx Banks
- Click Upload DX-7 bank… at the bottom of the DX-7 tab, or drop a .syx file onto the open preset browser while the DX-7 tab is showing. Draw.Audio reads 32-voice SysEx bank files; a file with several banks in a row imports as one bank. Single-voice files are not supported. Each uploaded bank gets its own chip next to the categories.
- Uploaded Banks
- The Uploaded banks list in the DX-7 tab shows the banks you added. Click the pencil to rename a bank, or the × and then Delete? to remove it. Deleting a bank cannot be undone. Songs that already use one of its patches keep their sound.
Drum Kits
- Switch Drum Kits
- On a drum track, the preset picker lists drum kits in its Kits view. Each grid row plays one sample from the kit, like the pads of a drum machine. Switching kits keeps your notes and swaps the samples they play, and the rows update to the new kit. The arrows, P, the dice and search work as they do for synth presets. To tune or balance a single row, use Edit Drum Row.
- When a Kit Fails to Load
- A spinner shows beside the picker while a kit's samples load. If they cannot load, the drums stay silent, the picker is outlined in orange and a retry button appears beside it. Check your connection, then click the button to try again.