SonikSearch

[sonikstation]

I demoed SonikSearch and just purchased it - great tool. It massively helps me with sound selection from my 150 GB of samples. In fact, it has become indispensable to me within one week of use. Much more useful to me than any competing tools I tried (ADSR, XLN XO etc).

Derek, I shot you a few questions and suggestions by email. Thanks!

Thanks! Really glad to hear it. Just replied to your email.

[oobesan]

I demoed SonikSearch and just purchased it - great tool. It massively helps me with sound selection from my 150 GB of samples. In fact, it has become indispensable to me within one week of use. Much more useful to me than any competing tools I tried (ADSR, XLN XO etc).

Derek, I shot you a few questions and suggestions by email. Thanks!

Thanks! Really glad to hear it. Just replied to your email.

Any chance you will be uploading some true walkthrough videos any time soon?

[mordecainyc]

I demoed SonikSearch and just purchased it - great tool. It massively helps me with sound selection from my 150 GB of samples. In fact, it has become indispensable to me within one week of use. Much more useful to me than any competing tools I tried (ADSR, XLN XO etc).

Derek, I shot you a few questions and suggestions by email. Thanks!

Which features make it indispensable for you?
I have a huge sample folder so would like to know more. Currently using ADSR but not very frequently. I like it for matching tempo/key to project while auditioning samples/loops.

The features that make it indispensable for me are basically those that you mention:

- Curating sounds from my huge selection of samples. For instance, I’m looking for a kick in a specific genre; I may have about 10-15 relevant folders for that, that I want to check out. In SonikSearch, I select Kick as subsection of Percussion, and then quickly browse through those folders using autoplay, while my track plays in the background in Logic. Very useful to find the best fitting sound this way, and very fast. It also has a XO style cloud by the way, haven’t used that much so far, but that’s another way to browse.
- Curating loops by timestretching them to the BPM (and, if necessary, key) of my project. Then, when I find one that fits, simply drag the timestretched file into Logic. The timestretch algorithm sounds fine, so this has helped me massively. Theoretically you could also do this in the Logic browser I think, but that is very slow and buggy (at least for me).
- Workflow and speed of SonikSearch is very good and snappy. In comparison, I found ADSR to be very slow, draggy and annoying as hell to navigate through - SonikSearch is way snappier in my experience.

I noticed some small bugs but nothing that makes it unusable for me. Also, some more percussion subcategories would be cool, but so far it didn’t hamper daily use. You can also use the AI search function for more specific searches.

So in essence, I’m using it in the most basic way, but it just massively helps in quickly finding / selecting the best sounds for my tracks from my huge sample database. My 2 cents.

I would recommend trying the 14 day demo. You may need some patience when importing your samples, I did this overnight (and saw others complaining about that this takes long, I wasn’t very concerned about it - once it is done, you’re set).

[satYatunes]

Thank you so much for your detailed response. Appreciate it.

[qtheerearranger]

hey so why is the search so bad? ive turned the ai button on and off in the search bar and neither works for me. I have samples by evosounds for example - I search evo and kick and nothing comes up - i have about 200 samples that should match this.

[sonikstation]

hey so why is the search so bad? ive turned the ai button on and off in the search bar and neither works for me. I have samples by evosounds for example - I search evo and kick and nothing comes up - i have about 200 samples that should match this.

Hey, a couple of things that should help.

If you want to find just evosounds kicks, you can click on the evosounds folder first, then search "kick" within that. That'll narrow results to just kicks from that pack.

The AI search is based on how the sound actually sounds, not brand names or filenames, so it works best with descriptive terms like "hard kick" or "deep kick" rather than pack names.

The keyword search matches the exact text you type, so searching "evo and kick" looks for that exact phrase. Boolean search (combining terms like "evo" AND "kick") is on the roadmap.

Let me know if that helps.

[sonikstation]

I demoed SonikSearch and just purchased it - great tool. It massively helps me with sound selection from my 150 GB of samples. In fact, it has become indispensable to me within one week of use. Much more useful to me than any competing tools I tried (ADSR, XLN XO etc).

Derek, I shot you a few questions and suggestions by email. Thanks!

Thanks! Really glad to hear it. Just replied to your email.

Any chance you will be uploading some true walkthrough videos any time soon?

It's on my list! In the meantime, feel free to grab the free trial and take it for a spin. Happy to answer any questions here or at support@sonikstation.com.

[sonikstation]

Hey everyone, wanted to share some recent updates based on feedback from this thread and elsewhere:

- Boolean search is in — you can now combine search terms
- Collections browsing improved — you can now browse all samples across a collection
- HiDPI / 4K display scaling fix for Windows
- Installer cleanup fix — SonikCentral now removes the installer and any old installers after running
- Installer size reduced
- Key sync to nearest key — auto-transposes in whichever direction requires the least shift
- Drag and drop any sample into SonikSearch to find similar sounds in your library
- SonikCentral update fixes
- AAX support is now available (macOS)

To get these updates, grab the latest SonikCentral from sonikstation.com, then update SonikSearch through SonikCentral.

Walkthrough videos and a user manual are on the list as well. Keep the feedback coming — it's been really helpful in shaping where things go.

[qtheerearranger]

i like the search change personally thank you. I personally really think the number of search results for what you've searched is a nice feature if you can add it easily.

[qtheerearranger]

if you could add this sorta boolean system from cubases media bay i would be head over heels about this sample manager. You can have it be many things, attribute, name, type, genre, etc. theres a lot in mediabay.

[Sekops]

On a trial period at the moment and gave it a go yesterday to index my sample library. Faster than Sononym and leaves ADSR in the dust. 10 hours on an M4 Max for 1.5M samples and remains responsive after indexing. Being able to Refresh subfolders is very welcome.

Would love to see some enhacements:

Select All in folder possible, to then be able to add to collection, one at a time is very restrictive
If I add a file to a collection I want to be able to delete it from the collection without deleting it from SonikSearch DB
More categories, including Drum Breaks, Hats / Percs
MIDI support to play samples from MIDI notes
A randomiser like ADSR that can be used inside any folder / collection
FLAC support and any other major format that's missing
Noticed the process is still single threaded, yet I have all these performance cores doing nothing during indexing
Smart collections like Serato crates that auto populate from a root sample folder when adding new samples based on criteria
Persistent settings, e.g. set Autoplay on, close app, open app, Autoplay is back to off
Autorotate support. Ever tried 100 kicks samples to see which one fits in your mix? Enable autoplay plays sequentially through folder / collection for every MIDI hit
There's likely many more!

Hope that inspires!

[sonikstation]

On a trial period at the moment and gave it a go yesterday to index my sample library. Faster than Sononym and leaves ADSR in the dust. 10 hours on an M4 Max for 1.5M samples and remains responsive after indexing. Being able to Refresh subfolders is very welcome.

Would love to see some enhacements:

Select All in folder possible, to then be able to add to collection, one at a time is very restrictive
If I add a file to a collection I want to be able to delete it from the collection without deleting it from SonikSearch DB
More categories, including Drum Breaks, Hats / Percs
MIDI support to play samples from MIDI notes
A randomiser like ADSR that can be used inside any folder / collection
FLAC support and any other major format that's missing
Noticed the process is still single threaded, yet I have all these performance cores doing nothing during indexing
Smart collections like Serato crates that auto populate from a root sample folder when adding new samples based on criteria
Persistent settings, e.g. set Autoplay on, close app, open app, Autoplay is back to off
Autorotate support. Ever tried 100 kicks samples to see which one fits in your mix? Enable autoplay plays sequentially through folder / collection for every MIDI hit
There's likely many more!

Hope that inspires!

Thank you for the suggestions. There's been an update, go ahead and grab it from SonikCentral. Select All in folder is now possible and the multi-select can be used for various actions (adding to a collection, editing metadata, drag and drop). You can delete sounds from the collection without removing the samples from the database by right-clicking on the samples and going to "Collections" and unchecking the collection name(s). As for the other suggestions, I'll keep these in on the radar, thank you.

[sonikstation]

if you could add this sorta boolean system from cubases media bay i would be head over heels about this sample manager. You can have it be many things, attribute, name, type, genre, etc. theres a lot in mediabay.

Thank you for the suggestion!

[Trancit]

Have,´t tried the demo yet...

Just one quick question which bothers me in most DAW browsers:
I like to preview loops already timestretched to projects tempo but without having the need to run the hosts playback for doing so...
Most DAW browsers require the sequencer running though...
Does SonikSearch as a plugin inside a host allows me to preview them "synced" to tempo while the playback is stopped?

[sonikstation]

Have,´t tried the demo yet...

Just one quick question which bothers me in most DAW browsers:
I like to preview loops already timestretched to projects tempo but without having the need to run the hosts playback for doing so...
Most DAW browsers require the sequencer running though...
Does SonikSearch as a plugin inside a host allows me to preview them "synced" to tempo while the playback is stopped?

If I understand the question correctly, yes, SonikSearch allows "syncing" to tempo (it will set the DAW's tempo to the plugin and timestretch the file, or if it's already timestretched you can have the plugin not timestretch the file) and you can preview the audio without having to start playback in the DAW. It works either way, either start playback in the plugin (DAW playback can be stopped), or start playback in the DAW (which starts playback in the plugin). Hope that answers your question!