Biotek 2 User Path Question For 3rd Party Lib Samples

[wagtunes]

Has anybody given this any thought?

I am a sound designer. I am currently working on a library for Biotek 2.

If I create patches with custom samples that are located in, say, my user/wagsrfm folder. If somebody purchases this library and doesn't have a user/wagsrfm folder designated as their user path (which of course they won't) what happens when they put the samples in their own user path? Will my patches find the samples? I would think not?

This actually brings up an even bigger can of worms.

Let's say 10 different designers make Biotek 2 libraries, each with a different path? As a user can only designate one path in their setup, even if it's currently blank. they can still only use one of those 10 libraries at a time, having to manually change the path each time they want to go to a different library.

Obviously, this isn't a practical solution NOR is it acceptable on any level.

So, I gotta ask. Has anybody given this any thought at all because right now, I don't see how 3rd party devs can make a library for sale unless they stick to the stock waveforms and samples that come with Biotek 2.

[jabe]

I tried to work this out. The .biotekinstrument files (which as XML format) include one or more lines mentioning files in a folder referred to as [public samples]. I couldn't find where that folder was linked to a real folder.

[zzz00m]

Has anybody given this any thought?

I am a sound designer. I am currently working on a library for Biotek 2.

I would just send a PM to @Wolfram Franke, the Biotek developer. He has a presence here at KVR.

[Wolfram Franke]

Hi everyone,

I think I have replied to wagtunes via our support page but I'd like to share the info I gave with all of you. Here it is:

Let's imagine you had your samples in a folder named "UltimateLibrary" in your user samples folder, wherever that may reside. The way BioTek stores samples is via a relative path like so:

[private samples]/UltimateLibrary/Bass/AwesomeBass.wav

Thus, as long as the customer you've sold your library to has the same folder structure inside his or her user samples folder, every sample you provided is found right away, no matter if he or she is on Linux, Windows or Mac.

If, on the other hand, the sample can't be found at that location, BioTek searches for "AwesomeBass.wav" in both the preset and the user sample folder structure and returns the first one that matches. This means that you should try to come up with unique names for your samples rather than using e.g. "Kick 1.wav" in various drum set subfolders. And, when the folder structure matches, loading is a bit quicker since the sample hasn't to be searched first.

BioTek understands samples and multisamples in these formats: wav, aiff, exs (Logic EXS24 multisample format) and sf2. At a later point, we will add sfz as well.
Note that exs and sf2 can hold more than one multisample in a file, i.e. a normal string section, a tremolo string section and a pizzicato string section. If such a file is found, only the first multisample is used. There are, however, no limits on sample regions in a multisample, you can use 128 key ranges with 127 velocity ranges each.

Best wishes,


Wolfram

[zzz00m]

This was a good question, as was the one asked about how to get user samples to sustain that was posted over in the "Instruments" forum.

I learned a couple of things, and was able to get user samples in Biotek to use a sustaining loop with a very old copy of Sony Sound Forge 7. Using the Sound Forge menu options "Special > Edit Sample > Sample type sustaining > Infinite loop", and then when doing "File > Save as" making sure to select "Save metadata with file".

Biotek seems able to read the metadata about these loop regions in a WAV during playback, as long as the metadata is saved with the file.