RYAudio launches Sample Librarian sample management application for Windows

[RYAudio]

RYAudio is proud to announce the launch of Sample Librarian for Windows - an invaluable tool for managing and auditioning all of your audio samples and sample CDs.



With Sample Librarian you no longer need to waste time navigating through deeply-nested folders of all your audio samples, which is a sure-fire way to lose your focus (and then the moment of inspiration has gone). Instead you can use a tool designed specifically for the purpose of managing and searching for samples. Once you've found the perfect sounds for your new song, simply drag-and-drop them directly into your DAW.

Previously, breaking off from composing to go digging through your sample collection to find that elusive sample you know is in there (somewhere) could seriously interrupt your creative flow. With Sample Librarian, using your sample collection now forms a key part of your music-making process.

Manage all of your audio samples in one place
Add any number (even many thousands) of sample files (WAV, AIFF, REX, etc.) and be able to search the library extremely quickly in a variety of different ways.

Please note that sample preview support is not available for REX files (although it is for all other supported sample formats) however you can use all of Sample Librarian's other sample management and search capabilities with REX files as with any of the other file formats.

Find audio samples "lightning fast" across your entire library
Want to quickly find and audition all "moog" or "TB-303" samples you may have, irrespective of what sample CD they came from or where on your hard drive they exist? Simple and "instant". Find all samples of a given file type, bit depth, sample rate (or combination thereof) and many more options.

Get organised
Create "Groups" of samples that you would like to keep listed alongside each other, even though they are scattered across various sample CDs within your library. The original files remain where they are, but any number of new relationships can be created to help you organise your samples the way you want them. Or create "Smart Groups" that organise samples automatically based upon rules that you define (e.g. Rating >= 4 AND Bit Depth >= 24bit AND Comment includes "analog")

Add information to remind yourself of previous decisions
As you're auditioning samples you may find some choice examples that you want to remember in a future session, but may not be what you're looking for right now. But with thousands of samples in your library, how are you going to remember what was so great about this one? Before you move on, quickly add a "4 star" or "5 star" rating and a comment ("This would be perfect for a bouncy house groove") to remind yourself at a later date.

Get your money's worth from those sample CDs
Sample libraries aren't cheap, but often they sit languishing on your hard drive simply because you don't have an easy way to audition their contents and make use of them. You may already have the perfect sample to really polish your latest song but if you can't find it, it's not worth having! Sample Librarian makes using your sample library easy, efficient and fun.


For more information, and for a free 30-day trial, please visit the Sample Librarian product page at http://www.samplelibrarian.com

[tropicalontour]

Sorry. Tried to scan my sample library twice and it returned unexpected application errors both times. The application then closes. No sale. Sorry.

[RYAudio]

Tropicalontour,

We are very sorry to hear you encountered a problem trialing Sample Librarian, and would very much like to help resolve the issue with you. I hope you don't mind us PM'ing you in this instance to obtain more detailed information on the issue you encountered.

Many thanks.

[Aloysius]

A much needed PC Tool (on paper at least).

Plays REX2, WAV, ACID, ETC? Excellent. How about Flac, Gog, Ogg Etc?

Soundcard: Do you support ASIO?

I should probably check out the DEMO.

For how long is the Discount Period?

http://www.ryaudio.com/

[RYAudio]

Thanks Aloysius - it was exactly this reason that we wrote Sample Librarian. There are good solutions on the Mac platform for this, but less on Windows unfortunately.

To be clear regarding REX files; Sample Librarian will scan and include them into your library, allow you to add ratings, comments, use all of the search facilities, and drag and drop to your DAW, etc. However, as the REX format is proprietary to Propellerheads (who created the format) you are not able to preview them directly from the application (although you obviously can for all other supported sample formats). Apologies if this was not clear in the text above (which we will amend accordingly).

[aMUSEd]

You should be able to add it though even if it is owned by the Props. Reaper's built in media browser for example can preview REX files, so I think can Live's.

[audington]

Before i try the demo, how does this work? Do you point it at your samples and it catalogues them? (I have 300GB of samples from various libraries - both downloads and CDs that have been ripped) so it would take an age to add them manually.

[RYAudio]

You should be able to add it though even if it is owned by the Props. Reaper's built in media browser for example can preview REX files, so I think can Live's.

This is true, although it requires obtaining a dedicated development license from Propellerheads, which the other formats do not require.

We may look at including this in a future release, as it would clearly be a useful addition. However, we felt at this stage it was better to at least allow REX files to be imported and managed in the library rather than not including any support for them at all.

In a similar way we also envisage allowing users to add other file formats of their choosing (which Sample Librarian will not be able to preview, of course) so that you can still benefit from the management and search capabilities. Anything that could benefit from searching, and drag and drop to a supporting application would make sense here (e.g. Kontakt presets, or similar)

[RYAudio]

Before i try the demo, how does this work? Do you point it at your samples and it catalogues them? (I have 300GB of samples from various libraries - both downloads and CDs that have been ripped) so it would take an age to add them manually.

When you first start the application the sample library will be empty, so the first step is to tell Sample Librarian where to find your samples (which can be any number of hard-drive folders you choose) and then Sample Librarian will scan the folders (and their sub-folders automatically) you specified, looking for the individual sample files within those directories and adding them to the sample library.

To get more of a feel for how the application works, without installing the demo, the full help documentation is available as a PDF download from our Web site too:

http://www.ryaudio.com/SampleLibrarian.pdf

I hope this answers your question.

[RYAudio]

A much needed PC Tool (on paper at least).

For how long is the Discount Period?

Sorry, I forgot to answer this part of Aloysious' post...

We envisage 30 days, to enable people to exercise the full trial period.

[audington]

Before i try the demo, how does this work? Do you point it at your samples and it catalogues them? (I have 300GB of samples from various libraries - both downloads and CDs that have been ripped) so it would take an age to add them manually.

[Edit]

To get more of a feel for how the application works, without installing the demo, the full help documentation is available as a PDF download from our Web site too:

http://www.ryaudio.com/SampleLibrarian.pdf

Thanks, I've just downloaded and read the manual. I'm on the verge of buying, but before i do I have a couple more search-related questions.

Some sample libraries I own have been named extremeley poorly by their creators. Some are as simple as 001.wav, 002.wav, 003.wav etc (I have entire libraries named like this, frustratingly!). Some other libraries might be named like drum01.wav, bass01.wav. As you can imagine it would be a nightmare (in fact pretty useless) to attempt to search for anything within these types of libraries.

Is there an easy way of getting around that, short of manually commenting each sample or renaming each sample? If there's a way of improving that, I'm in

Feature request related to the above:
Do you plan on adding any kind of 'library recognition' facility? I've used Sound Miner and FXLibrary before with SFX Libraries. They recognise the libraries you are importing from their inbuilt database and populate each sample with keywords to make searching easier. It's great being able to type CRASH GLASS and get all occurrences of crash sounds with glass tinkling in.

I know that to automatically cover all existing sample libraries would be impossible, but if the feature was there at least users could manually tag a library or two and then submit the database file, and you could include it in future updates or as additional downloads.

[Aloysius]

There are Batch File Renaming Applications (for free) on the Internet.

Here's one example (that might be of help). I'm sure there are better examples out there:

http://www.mediacollege.com/computer/fi ... ws-xp.html

[RYAudio]

Some sample libraries I own have been named extremeley poorly by their creators. Some are as simple as 001.wav, 002.wav, 003.wav etc (I have entire libraries named like this, frustratingly!). Some other libraries might be named like drum01.wav, bass01.wav. As you can imagine it would be a nightmare (in fact pretty useless) to attempt to search for anything within these types of libraries.

Is there an easy way of getting around that, short of manually commenting each sample or renaming each sample?

That's annoying, for sure, and currently the solution would be using comments in Sample Librarian or indeed renaming the files before importing them. In Smart Groups (which enable you to build complex searches based on rules) you can use the path/folder name which can help in some instances (e.g. Path contains "the sample library name", or path contains "drums") but I think this will be of limited value in this case unfortunately.

We are planning to add a mechanism for tagging samples in a future release of Sample Librarian (although we can't say when, as yet), so that you can select a group of files, or a folder, then right-click and apply a tag or set of tags (e.g. "drum", "analog", "bright", "pad", etc.) which may well be the answer for this type of problem. Exactly how best to do this kind of taxonomy is something we're still evaluating though, so any feedback on how people would like to see this implemented would be much appreciated.

Do you plan on adding any kind of 'library recognition' facility? I've used Sound Miner and FXLibrary before with SFX Libraries. They recognise the libraries you are importing from their inbuilt database and populate each sample with keywords to make searching easier. It's great being able to type CRASH GLASS and get all occurrences of crash sounds with glass tinkling in.

We are considering talking to sample library manufacturers to see if something like this could be achieved, however we will need to wait and see whether they would be able (and willing) to provide us with the data needed to do this.

I know that to automatically cover all existing sample libraries would be impossible, but if the feature was there at least users could manually tag a library or two and then submit the database file, and you could include it in future updates or as additional downloads.

That's not something we had considered before; enabling a user-driven collaborative effort to build a core of known sample libraries. That's a great idea...

[burkek]

Crashed twice on Windows 7 64 bit. Uninstalled. Sorry, not ready for primetime folks.

KEv

[gpunk]

Could have been a useful tool
No REX preview renders it completely useless here unfortunately and i don't see the point of even including REX support without preview
The product seems half finished at this point, will look again when it is developed further