Sononym sample management/browser

[DrGonzo]

I am giving up on Sononym as for being my hub for handling my sample library. When dealing with a large library it's extremely slow to start up and becomes painfully unresponsive even to change filters.

It excels at finding similar sounds, which is great for creating a sample pool before making music. But using it when working with a song running in the background is like trying to run in mud + a couple of crashes.

Probably not strange considering the work it has to do, and it would probably work well for smaller sample libraries.

/C

[terminus_one]

Out of interest, what's your library size(s) @DrGonzo?

[DrGonzo]

Sononym reports almost 400 000 samples. Which _is_ a lot.

/C

[terminus_one]

It's a lot, but in this day and age it's not unreasonable.

I experience the same issues as you @DrGonzo – I have 3 separate "libraries":
1) Main [~640K samples]
2) Apple [~40K samples]
3) NI Shared [~200K samples]

… though this does include lots of Kontakt sample libraries (with open samples).

Once we get the ability to search across libraries I'm hoping to split the first one up a bit more.

(Note: the libraries are all stored on the internal [very fast] SSD).

[codec_spurt]

I was making up some samples for my new Korg sampler and just doing it from random stuff. I didn't want to duplicate the names so I just gave them similar names on a whim. Then I realised, doh, what if I really like those samples I load in to my new sampler and I want to work on them - I won't be able to find them because I don't know the name/folder structure (whimsical names only help so much).

Then I thought, what if there was a program that could identify samples not by name, but by how they sound. Second 'doh'. I remembered that I bought Sononym a while back in the sale.

I've not used it yet. I remember watching Grymmjack's video and he really explained it well.

Maybe I'll get around to installing it. I guess everyone's use case is different - I didn't even buy it for its ability to find 'like' samples, more for being just a decent sample manager.

It's interesting seeing the use cases of others. Sometimes they overlap with my needs/wants.

Decent sample managers and file explorers are the weak link in the chain on PC if you have a large library that you have built up yourself. Not even expecting them to catalogue and sort my NI Komplete library.

Here's the Grymmjack video:

[humpo72]

so, im a few days into the trial and i have my modest 200gb sample library set up. i have a few questions

can i search multiple libraries at once?
is there a way to correct BPM & pitch?
this one is probably my lack of knowledge, but on mac, is there a way to drag samples onto instruments in Cubase? i can drag samples into the project window without issues but if try to drag a sample onto say Battery, the battery instance will vanish even if always on top is selected in the plugin. my only workaround so far is to size both sononym & Cubase with half the screen each, i can then drag a sample over to battery with a bit of jiggery pokery.

some nice features would be the option to hide duplicates. in some of my sample packs, the same sample will appear multiples times as its in WAV format, Sampler formats and some REX file folders also have the complete WAV in the folder. I've just counted 1 sample in a Pack with 10 instances of the same sample.

categories for loops would be nice. some basic DAW integration would be nice such as tempo sync with host when playing samples in sononym. MIDI file support would be nice.

[danoise]

Hey, Bjørn from Sononym here!
I came here to share that Sononym has just been updated to 1.2 - nice release that fixes a number of annoyances:
https://www.sononym.net/blog/new-release-1.2/

And, I realize that this last post was left unanswered a while back:

can i search multiple libraries at once?
is there a way to correct BPM & pitch?

Both have been on the ToDo list for a while. I'm hoping that we will see progress now that the rest of the application has been brought up to date.

this one is probably my lack of knowledge, but on mac, is there a way to drag samples onto instruments in Cubase? i can drag samples into the project window without issues but if try to drag a sample onto say Battery, the battery instance will vanish even if always on top is selected in the plugin.

This sounds like it's related to how Cubase is handling window focus? Not sure if this is something that can be fixed on the Sononym end. Question is, how does it work when using e.g. Finder to drag files into the project?

Great suggestions, btw. Very much aligned with where the development roadmap is heading:
https://trello.com/b/5CAMhCj1/sononym-roadmap

[Echoes in the Attic]

I'd like to use Sononym on my Surface Pro. Such a bummer that drag and drop doesn't work with a surface pen, but it works fine with a mouse/trackpad.

[danoise]

Such a bummer that drag and drop doesn't work with a surface pen, but it works fine with a mouse/trackpad.

Yeah, it's a shame - the same is true for regular touch screens (I have one).
It's something we are aiming to include with the 1.2.1 update - as well as a couple of other issues that have been reported since last week.

[Echoes in the Attic]

Such a bummer that drag and drop doesn't work with a surface pen, but it works fine with a mouse/trackpad.

Yeah, it's a shame - the same is true for regular touch screens (I have one).
It's something we are aiming to include with the 1.2.1 update - as well as a couple of other issues that have been reported since last week.

Great news!

Something that would make this the ultimate tool, would be if you could select a range of time and simply drag that bit off as a new file directly to a DAW or audio tool. There used to be a tool on the mac(maybe still is) called snapper which was an audio preview tool that snapped on to the mac browser and it let you drag regions of the audio file and drag them off to make a new file.

Another cool option might be a non-destructive option to create a clip or audio region in the DAW for the selected area in Sononym. I'm not sure if that kind of things is possible, or is DAW dependent. But for example I use Bitwig so for example if we could select a region in the sononym audio window and drag that to a Bitwig clip or timeline, which would set the start/loop markers automatically, that would be cool. But still have the option of crating a new file as well.

[dunohearno]

Hey Danoise,

Got a bit of a problem, not sure whether it's me just being stupid or not. In my collections, some of the source files are marked as missing. Haven't exported the collections, but haven't changed anything in my library either, so not sure why. Is there a way of pointing the missing locations back to the file? Cant figure out if there's a way of linking them again?

[danoise]

Hey @dunohearno, I'm sorry for not spotting this any sooner!!

In my collections, some of the source files are marked as missing. Haven't exported the collections, but haven't changed anything in my library either, so not sure why. Is there a way of pointing the missing locations back to the file? Cant figure out if there's a way of linking them again?

Did you manage to solve this yourself?
Note that dealing with "missing files" is a workflow that's being covered in great detail in our next release:
https://trello.com/c/2yvmkPmn/50-workfl ... nd-folders

In other news, Sononym just got bumped to 1.2.2:

* Fixed: Retain cursor position in results when deleting
* Fixed: Guard against crashes while stepping through results
* Fixed: Occasional crashes when quitting app during startup
* Fixed: Auto-complete in search input could produce invalid text
* Fixed: (mac) ‘Internal Portaudio Error’ on some systems
* Fixed: (mac) Unable to ‘select all’ in text fields using keyboard
* Fixed: (win) Command-line args not always passed on to app
* Fixed: (win) Installer looking blurry on high-DPI screens
* Tweak: Place samples that failed to analyse last in search results
* Tweak: Submit search query on Return (don’t auto-complete)

Full release notes
https://www.sononym.net/blog/new-releas ... ersion-122

[DrGonzo]

Any way Sononym can get faster? With a big sample library it's really painful to use.

[GNXT]

Any way Sononym can get faster? With a big sample library it's really painful to use.

For me the only way was to brake down my library into separate libraries into sononym.

[danoise]

Indeed - with very big libraries, it can feel a bit like dragging your feet through mud! And there are also some specific combinations of macOS + external drives that can make things worse.

Fortunately, thanks to a new database layout the next release should feature reduced startup & access time:
https://trello.com/c/EeIkPPXT/51-improv ... ccess-time

For me the only way was to brake down my library into separate libraries into sononym.

Yes, indeed, this remains a useful trick. And since searching across libraries is also planned, the split into multiple libraries will eventually become less of a hurdle or something you won't even notice at all.