Sample Vault: find anything in a 200k-sample library with zero manual setup

[wadamek]

Sample Vault was created to make sample libraries of any size automatically organized and fully searchable. It focuses on finding sounds for specific use cases and making that as efficient as possible, rather than organizing just for the sake of organizing. For example, you can type in any arbitrary text like "background effects to increase the energy of the drop" and the app will surface matching samples.

It's a standalone app for Windows and macOS. Benchmarked with libraries of 1 million samples. Free download at samplevault.app. Account required as it includes a starter pool of premium features, but everything that runs locally is free (there is also a browser demo on the page you can use to see the app without creating an account). Unlimited library size.

Unedited 2 minute walk-through of a few of the features on a 218k samples library


How it works
1. Scans your directories for sound files and extracts any available information from filenames immediately.
2. Extracts audio features and runs ML classification in the background.
3. Generates rich semantic descriptions about the samples that are then used in the main search feature of the app.

As soon as your files are scanned (which should take no longer than 10 minutes for a library of any size), the app is fully functional and basic filtering is available. All extra features become available as samples get processed. Analysis speed is configurable based on CPU/RAM resources, but the app can analyze up to 2000 files a minute (with a more realistic average, at partial resources assigned, of around 500 files a minute).

Analysis and tagging run on your machine and stay free: key, tempo, brightness, genre, and similarity between sounds. On top of that, an optional cloud step reads your folder names and filenames to suggest categories, packs, and creators it can't get from the audio alone, and to write the descriptions the search runs on. It only organizes your files. It never generates any audio. When it gets a tag wrong, you can fix it and re-tag in bulk.

Notable features
- Semantic search of samples (e.g. "melodic flute loop for the breakdown")
- Duplicate detection
- Map cluster views (work for all sample types, not just drums)
- Timestretch, transpose, and sync playback with DAW
- Customization via dock layouts, themes, fonts, UI size
- Sequencer
- Similarity search
- Offline support
- Rename or delete any tag or genre across your whole library at once
...and a lot more.

Subscription plans are available and enable cloud storage for samples, AI usage, and access to the app and your samples in the browser. There is a lifetime purchase option which offers all the same except you plug in your own AI key and cloud storage, but it doesn't offer browser access. The paid tiers exist as those parts are constant running costs. On the free plan, all of the data lives in a local database on your drive. There is also a public roadmap to get an idea about what may be coming next.

About me
I started music production as a hobby around 4 years ago, but by day I work as a software architect and run a startup consultancy. I started this project as an experiment in how I could leverage generative AI to automate the boring parts of music production, and how far I could push modern tech compared to what's already out there. I'm building this mostly as a passion project, hoping that at some point it may bring enough revenue to scale it into other tools for music-making as well.

Hope you enjoy the app. Would love to hear your thoughts about the project!

https://samplevault.app/