RYAudio launches Sample Librarian sample management application for Windows

[fatphil]

I've got tons of samples on DVDs that I don't have the space to keep on my computer, I just want to import some samples on a project by project basis.

Does sample librarian also catalog external sources like sample DVDs?
All of the text I've read so far says "On your hard drive".

Thanks,
Phil

[Aloysius]

Oops

[fatphil]

In fact I already use a great application called whereisit that I've cataloged ALL of my other DVDs/CDs etc, but it's a very general file cataloging application, and not really aimed specifically at audio production.

I'm hoping Sample Librarian will offer a way of cataloging my externally stored samples (on DVDs) and tag them with audio specific data like sample rate, bits, length, type (instrument/sound effect/loop/oneshot), key, etc...

I guess this may be asking too much

[RYAudio]

I've got tons of samples on DVDs that I don't have the space to keep on my computer, I just want to import some samples on a project by project basis.

Does sample librarian also catalog external sources like sample DVDs?
All of the text I've read so far says "On your hard drive".

Thanks,
Phil

Sample Librarian is indeed currently based around indexing samples that exist on your hard-drives. Theoretically (although this has never been tried) it would index a DVD if placed in the drive, and then if you replaced the DVD and rescanned it would add the additional files from that DVD. But you would need to reinsert the correct DVD every time when you wanted to preview a sample from it or drag-and-drop one into your DAW. You wouldn't be prompted to insert the correct DVD so it would just be a matter of whether the correct DVD happened to be in the DVD player at the time. So not ideal really. To truly handle this we'd need to add support for removable drives explicitly, so SL would know that different media could be hosted on the same drive letter and would therefore store some other unique ID for the DVD itself.

So the answer unfortunately is no at this stage, but we may well consider this for the future if it seems to be a commonly requested feature.

Just by way of an update, Sample Librarian is currently at v1.1 which includes a number of changes over the initial release:

- New: Tolerance and handling of unsupported files has now been significantly improved. Additionally, a report is now shown after sample import if any sample files could not be imported, detailing why they could not be processed (corrupt WAV file, etc.).

- New: You can now speed up scans for new samples significantly by only rescanning from a given folder. Click on a folder in the Library Navigator's "Locations" tree and choose "File...Rescan from selected folder", or right-click on a folder or the sample list (if currently viewing the contents of a folder) and choose "Rescan from here".

- New: You can now specify (in Tools...Options) a custom sample editor to use for the "Launch associated editor" function, rather than using the Windows default file associations.

- Fixed: Waveform rendering issue on certain Windows XP machines (white bar appearing through middle of waveform).

- Fixed: Resizing the sample preview pane sometimes resulted in the waveform being incorrectly drawn.

- Fixed: When launching an external audio editor to edit a sample you were unable to re-save the file as it was locked by Sample Librarian. Before launching the audio editor Sample Librarian now stops playback and releases the file.

- Fixed: Samples where the filename includes a period (.) before the final period and extension (e.g. Extra.Period.wav) were not being imported.

- Fixed: Sample files of only 1 sample in length caused a problem with waveform preview.

- Fixed: If you added a root drive (e.g. "C:") to your list of folders to scan (not recommended!) any samples in that root directory would not appear in the sample list when the drive letter was clicked in the library navigator (although they could still be found via search or clicking "All from here" at the top level of the library).

- Fixed: When the sample list loses focus (e.g. if you click into the search box) it was difficult to see which sample was previously selected. The selection colors have now been changed to make this more obvious.


Version 1.2 is soon to be released and will include (amongst other additions):

- Support for additional file types: OGG Vorbis (.ogg and .oga), FLAC (.flac and .fla) and Windows Media Audio (.wma) sample files

- A tagging system whereby samples can be tagged with attributes such as Genre (Rock, Pop, Dance, etc.), Sample Type (Drum Hits, Synth Loops, etc.) or whatever other tags and categories you wish to create.

[fatphil]

Thanks for the prompt reply and update.

I've decided I'm going to put all my samples on an external hard drive so I can get to them quickly and easily. Makes sense considering how cheap drives are nowadays. I'll give your 30 day trial a go too.

Thanks again,
Phil

[fatphil]

Well I've now got 35GB of samples (I'm about half way) copied on to my external drive. 46000 files in 3000 folders. It searches them really quickly.

A couple of things I'd really like added:
- Right click a sample in search result and have "Show in Library navigator" not just "Show in Windows Explorer".

- If it's in Auto preview mode I'd like to be able to retrigger the current sample with a single click so I can hear it again. EDIT: This sometimes works, so I guess this an occasional bug then.

- I'd like a "play looped" option. So I can hear drum loops over a few iterations.


Some nice to haves:
BPM detection for loops.
Timestretch for auditioning at a particular BPM


What do you think?

Cheers,
Phil

[RYAudio]

A couple of things I'd really like added:
- Right click a sample in search result and have "Show in Library navigator" not just "Show in Windows Explorer".

That's a good idea, so will definitely look to add that in the near future.

- If it's in Auto preview mode I'd like to be able to retrigger the current sample with a single click so I can hear it again. EDIT: This sometimes works, so I guess this an occasional bug then.

It does retrigger if you click in any column other than the first, so that's an inconsistency we'll address. Note that in the upcoming v1.2 you can trigger/retrigger a sample by pressing the spacebar, which has been one of the most common requests!

- I'd like a "play looped" option. So I can hear drum loops over a few iterations.

Another good suggestion.

Some nice to haves:
BPM detection for loops.
Timestretch for auditioning at a particular BPM

BPM detection is always a little tricky as it only makes sense for perfect loops, and then you have to guess how long the loop is in bars - presumably by seeing if the result is an "unlikely" BPM (too slow or too fast) and then multiplying or dividing by 2 until the BPM seems more probable. But then, it might just have been a really slow or really fast loop so you guessed incorrectly. Timestretch; added to the list but can't promise at this stage!

Thanks for your feedback, it's much appreciated.

[Fixed Error]

A good idea. I use Cubase and Ableton so I dont really need this. Also Ive organised my sample library to the point where I know where evrything is so its great hassle to find stuff. One thing that would really set it apart would be a preview in place option a la Cubase and Live. Previewing is of no use to me without hearing the sample in time and in context. Of course, that opens up a whole can of worms needing timestretching etc. Hope it does well.

Jim

[karrikuh]

I'v been searching for a while for a tool to manage my sample library (mostly drum one shots). I'm particularily interested in a tagging system which allows me to quickly pick samples according to a bunch of attributes (e.g. electronic/acoustic, soft/hard, short/long) represented by tags.

I tried out Sample Librarian and very much like it so far for its slick UI, simplicity, responsiveness and low memory footprint. Please keep it that way and resist the temptation to add features not related to its core goal i.e. sample searching/browsing/previewing.

Unfortunately, in it's current state (version 1.2), I fear the tagging system doesn't cut it because right now I'm unable to select samples by combining multiple tags. I recommend adding some kind of tag cloud where you can subsequently click tags to narrow down you choice. I think the way its realized in TaggedFrog is brilliant.

[RYAudio]

Unfortunately, in it's current state (version 1.2), I fear the tagging system doesn't cut it because right now I'm unable to select samples by combining multiple tags. I recommend adding some kind of tag cloud where you can subsequently click tags to narrow down you choice. I think the way its realized in TaggedFrog is brilliant.

Many thanks for your interest in Sample Librarian.

Regarding searching for tags, we do have plans to add a form of filtering facility in a future release which will allow you to quickly specify filters to include/exclude samples from view based on various criteria (tags being one obvious example). So a very point-and-click approach to searching/filtering on multiple tags. Hopefully this will address the need you outlined above.

Thanks again for your feedback.

[Loki Fuego]

Does Sample Librarian extracts information from acidized wavs (like Key, BPM)?

[RYAudio]

Does Sample Librarian extracts information from acidized wavs (like Key, BPM)?

Not in the current release. The format information within WAV files is notorious for being quite messy for anything outside of the core information, and the Acid tag information does not appear to be publically documented so what information there is online seems to be from people attempting to reverse engineer what they have seen in various files. That said, the location and format of the BPM information appears to be consistent so that should be relatively simple to import into Sample Librarian. We'll add that to the list of feature requests for sure.

Thanks for the suggestion.

[karrikuh]

Unfortunately, in it's current state (version 1.2), I fear the tagging system doesn't cut it because right now I'm unable to select samples by combining multiple tags. I recommend adding some kind of tag cloud where you can subsequently click tags to narrow down you choice. I think the way its realized in TaggedFrog is brilliant.

Many thanks for your interest in Sample Librarian.

Regarding searching for tags, we do have plans to add a form of filtering facility in a future release which will allow you to quickly specify filters to include/exclude samples from view based on various criteria (tags being one obvious example). So a very point-and-click approach to searching/filtering on multiple tags. Hopefully this will address the need you outlined above.

Thanks again for your feedback.

Thanks for the info. This sounds good, looking forward to this!

[Loki Fuego]

http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=172636

Code: Select all

** The acid chunk goes a little something like this:
**
** 4 bytes          'acid'
** 4 bytes (int)     length of chunk starting at next byte
**
** 4 bytes (int)     type of file:
**        this appears to be a bit mask,however some combinations
**        are probably impossible and/or qualified as "errors"
**
**        0x01 On: One Shot         Off: Loop
**        0x02 On: Root note is Set Off: No root
**        0x04 On: Stretch is On,   Off: Strech is OFF
**        0x08 On: Disk Based       Off: Ram based
**        0x10 On: ??????????       Off: ????????? (Acidizer puts that ON)
**
** 2 bytes (short)      root note
**        if type 0x10 is OFF : [C,C#,(...),B] -> [0x30 to 0x3B]
**        if type 0x10 is ON  : [C,C#,(...),B] -> [0x3C to 0x47]
**         (both types fit on same MIDI pitch albeit different octaves, so who cares)
**
** 2 bytes (short)      ??? always set to 0x8000
** 4 bytes (float)      ??? seems to be always 0
** 4 bytes (int)        number of beats
** 2 bytes (short)      meter denominator   //always 4 in SF/ACID
** 2 bytes (short)      meter numerator     //always 4 in SF/ACID
**                      //are we sure about the order?? usually its num/denom
** 4 bytes (float)      tempo
**

From wav.c in libsndfile library

[grymmjack]

Can you add rex and rx2 preview support? I know you called it out earlier, but.. That's a deal breaker for me with something like this.

Good to see someone filling the gap in windows sample managers though. Mac has some great ones.