SonikSearch

[woodsdenis]

Starting a thread about a new to me sample search/categorise sample app, similar to Sononym.
Unfortunately no demo but money back/refund after 14 days. Its churning it way through many samples ATM so will appreciate anyones input.


https://sonikstation.com/soniksearch.html

[Cuauhtli]

Curious if anyone using Windows 10 has tried it.

[qtheerearranger]

plugin version but also ableton link support in standalone. very interesting. the link support sounds worth a shot if your a ableton/bitwig/logic user. really wanting this but waiting for someone to give word about its quality at this price tag.

[woodsdenis]

Very quick support with a few oddities I found, very quickly fixed.

[sonikstation]

Hello! I'm Derek, the creator of SonikSearch. Feel free to ask me anything.

I have a video that shows the import and analysis process of 170k sounds in 25 minutes. At the end of the video when analysis is complete, you can also see how responsive the GUI is with handling all of those sounds.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/zglxangk ... 6vqmj&dl=0

[sonikstation]

Curious if anyone using Windows 10 has tried it.

I have personally tried it on Windows 10.

[xanthos]

Hello! I'm Derek, the creator of SonikSearch. Feel free to ask me anything.

I have a video that shows the import and analysis process of 170k sounds in 25 minutes. At the end of the video when analysis is complete, you can also see how responsive the GUI is with handling all of those sounds.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/zglxangk ... 6vqmj&dl=0

Thank you for the showcase, but I still cant find a single video on Youtube for example to see SonikSearch in use. The website does not really show the interface or the look&feel.
Also your posted video is not the best advertisement for the app,
as it shows single kick drums from Christian Hirt's sample pack as "Type: Loop" and with BPMs - which single kick is neither a loop nor has it bpms.

I am a music producer and developer myself, I have an eye for things, let me know if you need help.

Greetings!

[woodsdenis]

They are incredibly responsive in support, I mean hours and have fixed and implemented a few ideas I had already. Agree their loop algo needs refining but apart from that it very quick and I find it easier to use than Sononym (which is great already.)

[audio/fault]

Video got deleted…
I‘m interested, but really would like to See at least a full screenshot of the GUI

[woodsdenis]

Screenshot 2026-03-10 at 20.11.56.png

Video got deleted…
I‘m interested, but really would like to See at least a full screenshot of the GUI

[sonikstation]

Hello! I'm Derek, the creator of SonikSearch. Feel free to ask me anything.

I have a video that shows the import and analysis process of 170k sounds in 25 minutes. At the end of the video when analysis is complete, you can also see how responsive the GUI is with handling all of those sounds.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/zglxangk ... 6vqmj&dl=0

Thank you for the showcase, but I still cant find a single video on Youtube for example to see SonikSearch in use. The website does not really show the interface or the look&feel.
Also your posted video is not the best advertisement for the app,
as it shows single kick drums from Christian Hirt's sample pack as "Type: Loop" and with BPMs - which single kick is neither a loop nor has it bpms.

I am a music producer and developer myself, I have an eye for things, let me know if you need help.

Greetings!

Thank you for noticing . In release v2.2.0, the one-shot vs. loop detection has been dramatically improved to reduce misclassification. I picked the sample pack that I did because it had a nice mix of sounds, not affiliated with Christian.

Will try to get some more videos and screenshots so you can better get a feel for the product. For now though, here is an updated video:
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/otmvi2fp ... ty8zt&dl=0

[sonikstation]

Video got deleted…
I‘m interested, but really would like to See at least a full screenshot of the GUI

I replaced the video with a new one (above) representing the current version of the software.

Here is another screenshot of the GUI

SonikSearch 2.2.0 Screenshot.png

[dastewart]

Hi Derek, congratulations on this as it looks really interesting. I have a couple of questions.

Firstly, I currently use (free) ADSR - how would SonikSearch improve my life over this?

Secondly, when are you going to make a demo? I understand the 14 day money back guarantee but it's not the same as a demo and I'd hold off trying this until there was one. And I don't think I'm alone in that.

[pekbro]

Yes demo plz.

[sonikstation]

Hi Derek, congratulations on this as it looks really interesting. I have a couple of questions.

Firstly, I currently use (free) ADSR - how would SonikSearch improve my life over this?

Secondly, when are you going to make a demo? I understand the 14 day money back guarantee but it's not the same as a demo and I'd hold off trying this until there was one. And I don't think I'm alone in that.

1. Great question. Depending on what you’re looking for and what problems you’re looking to solve, ADSR Sample Manager might be the solution for you. It’s a great product and solves a lot of use-cases. BTW, I don’t believe ADSR is still free, but rather at a low price.

However, where SonikSearch shines over ADSR Sample Manager is the following:

Find Similar Sounds with adjustable weighting
In SonikSearch, you can select any sample and instantly find others that sound like it, then fine-tune what "similar" means by adjusting the weight of each quality. As I understand it, ADSR has a basic "find similar" function, but SonikSearch lets you dial in up to nine acoustic parameters independently. So if you find a hi-hat you love but want one that's brighter, you can weight brightness higher in the similarity search. That kind of granular control doesn't exist in ADSR.

Performance at scale
This is a real pain point with ADSR. Multiple KVR reviewers reported that ADSR doesn't handle large sample pools well, slowing down their DAW considerably and taking a long time to load or respond to searches.

SonikSearch is built for fast startup, responsive browsing, and background processing that doesn’t freeze the UI — even with massive libraries, and only new or changed samples are processed on import. Searches and filtering are very fast. For someone working with large collections, this alone could be the deciding factor.

SonikSearch also has duplicate detection with adjustable similarity and a deep automatic analysis based on a collection of factors. That is if you’re looking for something “warm and percussive with a slow attack” you can find it in SonikSearch by using the audio properties that were analyzed for each sample, but in ADSR you can’t.

You might be interested in Synonym at higher price $99, but they don’t have a plugin version and I have also heard has performance limitations with large sample libraries though haven’t tried myself. SonikSearch has VST and AU supported and we're working on AAX. XO is at $189 and is specialized only for drum sounds, not ALL sounds like SonikSearch is. Synonym and ADSR don’t have sound maps, SonikSearch does. SonikSearch has a combination of the features in ADSR, Synonym and XO, and is priced lower than Synonym and XO at $89.

Finally, we’re looking to improve the product and provide quick support (as someone in this thread has already vouched we do). The latest ADSR was released back in 2023, and perhaps the last major feature set (1.7) was in 2021. Synonym has been promising a plugin for years I’m told, and there still isn’t one.

2. We are not against demos, we want to get SonikSearch in people’s hands so they can try it out, we just happen to not have the right mechanism in place to support demos currently. As a stop gap we offer the 14 day refund.

Hope that helps!