Curated module sets using Stoermelder MB favourites

Plugins & Modules
1

This thread is inspired by Lars’s thread on the FB group about issues beginners face regarding the sheer amount of choice offered by the plugin library with currently 2,487 modules and counting… here’s a link to that thread for reference.

Users often want to download all the free plugins because this enables them to open other people’s patches which is one of the best ways to learn, but this can lead to choice overload in the module browser.

Various ideas were put forward as to how the situation might be improved and Omri suggested using the Stoermelder MB plugin which allows sets of favourite modules to be collated. The MB plugin stores these favourites in a json file located at Rack/Stoermelder-P1.json.

So to start things off I have created a favourites list of 250 free modules that equates to 10% of the modules available. This is a much more palatable list to scroll through and can be filtered by tag and developer just the same as the full module list. You can think of it as a browser within the browser. I have selected modules from nearly every tag/category and have tried to cover all the bases.

Clearly this list is very subjective and it is not intended to be a definitive list of the best modules or anything like that - there are many great modules I use regularly that I have not included (my personal favourites list is about 400 modules) but I wanted to limit this to only 10% of the library.

This list is not really aimed at complete beginners - they are probably best served by sticking to VCV modules first to figure out the basics. This is more for people who have a reasonable grasp of the fundamentals and are ready to branch out into 3rd party plugins without being completely overwhelmed.

It should be considered a ‘first-draft’ and could doubtless be better and I would encourage others to chip in on how it might be improved and to compile their own lists of favourites and post them here. We can then see if this is useful or not :slight_smile:

To use this favourites list, first make sure you have Stoermelder’s PackOne plugin installed and place the MB Module in your Rack.

Then download the json file below and place it in your Rack folder. If you have already created a list of your own favourites, make sure you make a copy of your Stoermelder-P1.json file and store it somewhere safe first - so you can then revert back to it.

So without further ado…

Stoermelder-P1.json (20.6 KB)

Edit: I think all the modules in this list are free - there’s no quick way to confirm in the browser. If anyone finds any commercial modules in this list please let me know.

8 Likes
2

Very interesting. I’m not an “expert user” of VCV by any means. But scrolling through that list I do recognize many of these as modules that people seem to use a lot and that have good reputations.

1 Like
3

I’m a member of VCV Rack Ideas’s Patreon and he did a video on his 100 go to modules that is another very good springboard for formulating your own favourites list

5 Likes
4

Thanks for the mention! I hope that I could update this video at some point of new useful modules soon or make even short list of very needed and interesting modules for me to start with. Even maybe beginners friendly. Because the situation described by Lars is pretty interesting subject to investigate. If we take a closer look to any moderate eurorack system we will not find too much deviation from the mainstream list of modules that modulargrid suggest. Again that’s pretty interesting for me to apply it in VCV world from kind of average user needs in software modular. Cheers!

4 Likes
5

ok, so the next question is where to put some of these so that people can find them?

6

If I‘d only knew if my browser works in Rack v2 I would add support for custom categories, like favorites. Until then, no more development on MB :frowning:

1 Like
7

Oh! At first I thought your message was a non-sequitur, but now I understand. The idea would be that downloaded files of “joe cool’s favorite” would be become a value of “favorites”, or something like that? Yeah, that would be sweet! Then the user could curate their own collection, in case they like the favorites from user X but not from user Y.

1 Like
8

Yeah, that was exactly my point. Currently exchanging favorite lists is possible but not very convenient.

1 Like
9

Ben - you appear to have rejected my feature request before I even got round to making it! :wink:

1 Like
10

Not rejected, just postponed :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

6 Likes
11

Would you be able to use tags and favorites at the same time (logical and)? So I could find “Steve’s favorite filters” (for example).

2 Likes
12

The favourites currently does work with tags - so if you have my favourites file, open the browser, click on favourites at the top of the tags list and you see my 250. If you then click on filters, you see the 19 modules I selected which are tagged filter.

What would be great is some kind of Favourites dropdown, where you could create multiple new favourites lists and name them. “My Techno set” and “My Ambient set” for example. When Omri sends me his “Omri’s granular gravy set”, I could drop that in my favourites folder and it would appear in my favourites menu. I could select his list from the dropdown to see the modules in it, then click on tags to see what filters or whatever are in it.

4 Likes
13

want!!!

2 Likes
14

Here we go actually -

4 Likes
15

This is the future of module browsing and I am all for it.