Best 'Sample Manager' plugin?

[Trancit]

Sononym by a huge margin. It's the only true sample manager IMO....

Fully agree with everything you posted. I also have those 3 and agree with your conclusions....

It doesn´t sync samples to tempo, does it??
And is a complete seperate and from your DAW independent app...
Perhaps something important for many people (me included)...

For me the only suitable alternatives are ADSR or Loopcloud (even if the latter costs a yearly fee) ...
As ADSR is quite buggy, I bit the bullet and pay my yearly fee for using the stable and far more powerfull one with better tagging, similarity search, and perfect timestretch/manipulation options before I use the sample in the DAW...

Again for me, Loopcloud nailed it but mostly the internal browsers in the DAWs are enough for my needs so I might stop my Loopcloud subscritpion at the end of this circle!

[dionenoid]

I own XO, Atlas and Sononym for a long time. I've also tried/had ADSR, Splice, Momentum, Loopcloud, and many others not even worth mentioning. Imo they all have flaws and downsides, and thus i gave up on a good 'sample manager' plugin long ago.

When you have a huge sample library, then both XO or Atlas won't be much fun to use : long loading times, big clusters of similar samples meaning it'll skip many, samples not recognized as drums (drums with reverb/delay often), short samples put in drum maps etc. Plus every new addition to your collection means new long scanning times, moving samples will cause errors, and changing system will mean days of rescanning.

Sononym is not a plugin btw, and while it is the best of the bunch at automatic tagging, it feels long-in-the-teeth and sometimes unfinished while development is terribly slow. Plus it leaves its files in every folder/subfolder. And automatic tagging is still off way too often, especially with loops and longer samples, which means changing everything by hand. It is okay for finding similar samples, but terrible for working with big drum libraries.

Things like ADSR or Loopcloud are just glorified advertising tools. None of them are very good at automatic recognizing samples, they are way too cumbersome in use when you have to change tags/properties, plus they have all the flaws as described earlier. During the time that i used some of these they also changed often, resulting in having to rescan or rebuild my collection multiple times, getting many errors and even crashes.

So in conclusion, and i know this ain't the answer you're looking for, but the best method remains to sort your samples yourself. Takes some time but it'll work forever...

And since HD storage is cheap nowadays, just make your own categorised folders, and copy folders/samples multiple times. For example ; i have folders with all types of drums, sorted by manufacturer, by type, and by key. Drum samples are small files anyway, so it won't hurt much to copy them to make your own customised folders.

The better daw's also have sample managers/browsers that do a better job then most of these plugins/software, while having the advantage of customising to your needs. And samplers are also pretty good at browsing, while many have random functionality, plus can 'preview' samples with their own fx chain. Coupling that with your own sorting of samples will get you much further than with all these 'sample managers' which all have their flaws.

Also, don't forget that none of these 'sample managers' have the full functionality of a proper (drum) sampler. So in reality, you end up loading found samples in other plugins, or in your daw. A lot of extra work and waste of money, which is easily avoided by just sorting your samples beforehand.

[kidslow]

Spot on dionenoid. Couldn't have said it better myself.

There is a missed market opportunity for a tool that helps one ingest sort, organize, playback, and rename sample files as they are acquired. I too have trialed and own most of the tools mentioned. I have been refining a repeatable workflow that allows for many many sources, and a process that makes a large library more useful than chaotic mess. It starts with a repeatable process during ingestion, a naming convention, hierarchy and all the rest. Loopcloud, splice, adsr all tempt with potential but miss by a mile because they are peddling something other than managing one's sample collection. Sononym and Atlas are limited in ways, but such a tool I envision could actually enhance workflow with them and make them better.

Then there is the middle ground of sample format. ConvertwithMoss is really coming along in there, but this is a part of the overall picture. If I buy samples with articulations in sfz or and metadata in rex files or whatever, shouldn't I be able to save that off into another format, if tools allow? Anyway, format of samples is part of the problem. As are midi, toolkits, and any other cruft that is sample library adjacent. Culling and or setting aside these items improves navigating ones library.

I also would place impulse response IR files inside the same category, or at least adjacent in problem. Just listening through a large collection of IR files and making notes and sorting acquisitions, and making them easy to use on projects in the future is a difficult labor intensive task with current tools available, unless you spend bucks and/or get a subscription or buy into something like the Overloud system. But if you have a combination of IRs of cabinets,devices,spaces and like to listen to, maybe some are long outdoor reverberations, something someone posted a dropbox link on KVR too, well it gets difficult to manage with conventional tools.

[jaydog4]

I much prefer , Atlas over all like the drum sample managers,

I'm going to try out this program now thanks to you guys have been managed or needed to manage my 1/2 terabyte sample database just it seems so tedious without a program

Sononym

Much love Jay

[MogwaiBoy]

Some excellent insights!

I do have my samples reasonably sorted at the Windows level, ie D:\Music Production\Samples\Drums\Snares - and the free Resonic Player can browse them quite easily with single click play. So I'm kind of OK there.

But it got messy when I purchased, say, a sample "pack" that included not only drum 1-shots, but also loops and potentially even MIDI files... I had to make a decision - do I breakdown each 'pack' into it's individual pieces, and move them to their individual categories on my hard drive? It worked OK for awhile, but then that creates problems like when "Kick1.wav" from Ghosthack and "kick1.wav" from go in the same Drums > Kicks folder... they can't co-exist.

So I decided to just keep everything together in their respective packs, and have a D:\Music Production\Samples\Packs' folder - but browsing that became tedious, so I tried ADSR, which was OK with tagging and searching but like others have said... it's quite slow and buggy - I think I lost my database on an update, etc. So, in setting up my new computer, I'm thinking, there must be a better way to do this - to improve my workflow and stay creative rather than getting bogged down in folder structures.

FL Studio is my DAW and to be brutally honest I have never used the file sidebar as it just seemed very primitive and messy - but maybe that is the solution, to just get used to previewing and dragging/dropping from right there within the DAW, like all the producerbros on Youtube

The galaxy map type GUIs of both Atlas and XO kinda weird me out actually - I don't think about my samples as a big messy clusters of particles. My OCD just wants neat, tidy and regimented tagged lists + similar I am seriously considering Atlas, but ultimately I think Sononym is what I'm looking for, but actually it doesn't even have tagging yet...

[MogwaiBoy]

I found this too as an alternative to ADSR:
https://www.soundparticles.com/products/explorer

Thank you for discovering this! I'm going to try it out.

Let us all know how you find it compared to ADSR Sample Manager, please

I'm thinking about giving it a go myself to see if it fares better than ADSR.

[MogwaiBoy]

Found these too:

https://baseheadinc.com/basehead/
$150 for the 'Lite' version, though .. on sale!

https://www.prosoundeffects.com/soundq/
Hmmm looks quite good actually?

https://icedaudio.com/site/
AudioFinder - Mac only

[lotus2035]

It doesn´t sync samples to tempo, does it??
And is a complete seperate and from your DAW independent app...
Perhaps something important for many people (me included)...

Sync to tempo and search by tempo/key is the main reason I use ADSR (and previously Loopcloud).
If Imageline ever add those functions to the FL Studio browser it'll be game over.

[MogwaiBoy]

It doesn´t sync samples to tempo, does it??
And is a complete seperate and from your DAW independent app...
Perhaps something important for many people (me included)...

Sync to tempo and search by tempo/key is the main reason I use ADSR (and previously Loopcloud).
If Imageline ever add those functions to the FL Studio browser it'll be game over.

Have to admit the new Sounds tab in FL's search sidebar is pretty awesome. Loops are auto-sync'd to tempo. Immediate drag and drop too. Hmmmm, if they get more advanced like this about databasing your own user sample collections, without subscription, I'll be set.

[jules99]

Jamahook might be worth looking at closer as a sample manager.

https://jamahook.com

[kidslow]

I had to make a decision - do I breakdown each 'pack' into it's individual pieces, and move them to their individual categories on my hard drive? It worked OK for awhile, but then that creates problems like when "Kick1.wav" from Ghosthack and "kick1.wav" from go in the same Drums > Kicks folder... they can't co-exist.

The best solution I have found, and this applies to working with any media, is filename contains enough data that you can tell by looking what it is and where it is from. Filenames are better than other metadata options because they are immediately visible. Some sample packs grok this. Most don't. I noticed samples I download in my loopcloud free trial today are much better about these details than e.g. Splice was 3 years ago when I tested it.

Next best solution is if the folder name contains enough details to know which pack the contents came from. Not ideal if you end up with a bunch of kick1.wav files and no way to match them to a containing folder easily. Ideal solution here would be an automated rename all files as they are ingested. Then you can move them into any folder hierarchy you want. The downside is long clunky filenames and front loading all this work as you ingest new packs. Also it must be automated or would be too much work.

Such digital workflow problems have largely been solved in the photo and video world, for their needs, where ingestion is a part of the process. Sample pack ingestion is not something every or any producer or designer needs to consider, until they reach a certain tipping point. Then you start looking for software solutions and at this thread. Even people with large music collections that they've digitized personally confront naming problems (but metadata is a much bigger issue with music collections).

[cryophonik]

Cosmos is great in theory but last time I tried it it was absolutely broken. It kept forgetting entire folders worth of samples and automatically rescanning them, which was a multi-hour endeavor because the scanning is so slow compared to Atlas or XO. I wasted way too much time trying to get it to work and eventually gave up.
If you actually manage to get your samples scanned in, the categorization is pretty comprehensive and does work very well. Unlike Atlas and XO, samples get various tags (vs. a single type tag - pitch, length, genre, brightness, distortion etc.) that describe them, somewhat similar to the ADSR one. It has a map for drum samples and bass/other oneshots (sortable by sample type like the competitors plus Brightness and a couple other options) but also allows you to search and filter loops (drum and non-drum) in a list view as well.
The main functionality downside for me is that you can't search within subfolders at all, not even by entering folder names in the text search. You can however tie multiple root folders together and enable/disable them together.
Due to the scanning issues it was unusable, which is unfortunate because it's both cheap and an excellent sample librarian (almost all the advantages of both ADSR and XO/Atlas and even more - if it were to actually work!). I refuse to use Waves anymore so I have no idea if they've fixed it. Honestly I doubt it.

edit: Just read the Waves release notes and supposedly they've improved Cosmos scan times.
edit edit RE:Cosmos: I was using this on Windows 10. Possibly it's better on another OS.

Yeah, the last time I used Cosmos on my Mac, I had the same experience - absolutely terrible and unusable. Hours and hours of wasted time scanning only to have all of it lost and the app frozen. Glad to see they've finally updated it, but I'm not sure I would trust it again and I don't want to be the guinea pig.

[Fannon]

Interesting that the discussion moved toward how to organize the files and folders.

I've also thought about it but not sure if I arrived at a good solution, yet.

First, I have split my sound content into a smaller, high quality collection and then an "extended collection" where I dump the rest.
In the high-quality collection, I've indeed split up the contents of sample packs:

* AUDIO Drum Hits (organized by /vendor/pack name/drum hit type/*)
* AUDIO Drum Kits (organized by /vendor/pack name/drum kit/*)
* AUDIO Drum Loops
* AUDIO IR Guitar
* AUDIO IR Room
* AUDIO Wavetables
* AUDIO Misc

Then also MIDI:
* MIDI Chords
* MIDI Scales
* MIDI Drum Loops
* MIDI Misc

In almost all cases folder structure contains /vendor/pack name/ , so there are no file name duplicates. Also sometimes I want to filter by vendor or by sample pack name and then it's convenient to have it in the name.

Not so happy about the Misc. folders. If anyone has better ideas how to structure it, I'd be really interested.

[macmuse]

I had to make a decision - do I breakdown each 'pack' into it's individual pieces, and move them to their individual categories on my hard drive? It worked OK for awhile, but then that creates problems like when "Kick1.wav" from Ghosthack and "kick1.wav" from go in the same Drums > Kicks folder... they can't co-exist.

The best solution I have found, and this applies to working with any media, is filename contains enough data that you can tell by looking what it is and where it is from. Filenames are better than other metadata options because they are immediately visible. Some sample packs grok this. Most don't. I noticed samples I download in my loopcloud free trial today are much better about these details than e.g. Splice was 3 years ago when I tested it.

Next best solution is if the folder name contains enough details to know which pack the contents came from. Not ideal if you end up with a bunch of kick1.wav files and no way to match them to a containing folder easily. Ideal solution here would be an automated rename all files as they are ingested. Then you can move them into any folder hierarchy you want. The downside is long clunky filenames and front loading all this work as you ingest new packs. Also it must be automated or would be too much work.

Yes, this. It takes work but renaming everything to include info in the name is great. If you use a batch renaming app it can go quickly to rename both the folders and individual files. You can include developer name, pack name, what it is (snare, etc.), tempo if a loop, whatever you want. That info travels permanently with the file forever, so you never have to worry about an OS upgrade or anything that can cause the info to be lost (versus tags which are only readable per app, unless you use OS tags but they are OS-dependent and not readable in apps). This filename info identifies the file in any DAW, any app, and on any computer because it is not app-dependent.

Then if you use Sononym or other app, this naming structure further identifies the file in there too, so it’s a win-win.

I like to know what developer/where the file originated, so this works perfectly for me.

[Halma]

I had to make a decision - do I breakdown each 'pack' into it's individual pieces, and move them to their individual categories on my hard drive? It worked OK for awhile, but then that creates problems like when "Kick1.wav" from Ghosthack and "kick1.wav" from go in the same Drums > Kicks folder... they can't co-exist.

The best solution I have found, and this applies to working with any media, is filename contains enough data that you can tell by looking what it is and where it is from. Filenames are better than other metadata options because they are immediately visible. Some sample packs grok this. Most don't. I noticed samples I download in my loopcloud free trial today are much better about these details than e.g. Splice was 3 years ago when I tested it.

Next best solution is if the folder name contains enough details to know which pack the contents came from. Not ideal if you end up with a bunch of kick1.wav files and no way to match them to a containing folder easily. Ideal solution here would be an automated rename all files as they are ingested. Then you can move them into any folder hierarchy you want. The downside is long clunky filenames and front loading all this work as you ingest new packs. Also it must be automated or would be too much work.

Yes, this. It takes work but renaming everything to include info in the name is great. If you use a batch renaming app it can go quickly to rename both the folders and individual files. You can include developer name, pack name, what it is (snare, etc.), tempo if a loop, whatever you want. That info travels permanently with the file forever, so you never have to worry about an OS upgrade or anything that can cause the info to be lost (versus tags which are only readable per app, unless you use OS tags but they are OS-dependent and not readable in apps). This filename info identifies the file in any DAW, any app, and on any computer because it is not app-dependent.

Then if you use Sononym or other app, this naming structure further identifies the file in there too, so it’s a win-win.

I like to know what developer/where the file originated, so this works perfectly for me.

Sononym received a batch renaming function with the last update which looks quite impressive on paper. I have not checked it out yet but what I’ve read in the manual looks promising.

https://www.sononym.net/docs/manual/renaming/