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Drambo - where are the files kept? Are they visible in Files?
Hi all,
I’d like to backup my Drambo projects and files but I can’t see them in the ‘on my iPad’.
Am I missing something? Or is this not available yet?
Thanks
Comments
iCloud Drive.
Not available yet, I've stumbled across the same thing because iCloud isn't an option for me.
Nope.
@jameslondon74 It looks like the Drambo files are kept in private storage, the same as settings, presets, etc. in most other apps. They'll be saved in an iPad backup to computer, or iCloud if Drambo is enabled, but those backups can only be restored en-masse. That's not handy if you just want to retrieve one item. I think you can now Export individual items from Drambo to any Files location, but that requires you to export each item. Check the Open menu for projects and the (+) menu for presets.
Yes I'm not sure how useful this is to be honest. When I finish a session, I simply go into Files and copy the project folder, or whatever it is I'm working on, and copy to the cloud.
I might post this on the beep street forum.
@jameslondon74 Weird. Mine looks like this:
I'm pretty sure they are kept in the Drambo thread, with all the other Drambo posts
Where is this? ‘On my iPad’?
I just checked and I have no Drambo Folder either. Both on IPad iOS 11 and iPhone on iOS 13
The Drambo folder is on iCloud Drive, if you have it enabled. And it only contains items you've explicitly stored there.
Got it.
@jameslondon74 iCloud Drive
Thanks!
I see here how you can save a project to the local drive or icloud iDrive, so that’s done per project.
But what about samples?. It’s confusing.
Here’s importing a samples folder from iCloud...
It says “access will be granted” so I’m assuming it’s not copying the samples to its own file system. Right?. There’s no indication about that anywhere and you can’t see the samples anywhere. I have a Drambo folder in iDrive with a “samples” directory, but it’s empty... Should I upload all samples into this “samples” folder in iCloud iDrive?. Or does Drambo just reference the files in iCloud without copying them?. Which would duplicate the samples... Here’s a screenshot from iCloud that corresponds to the above Drambo “import folder”, “SAMPLES FROM MARS” contains the samples which I import into Drambo.
iOS file system is a nightmare!. Cheers.
@tahiche Indeed, file management on iOS is a nightmare so full file access to all Drambo samples, presets and projects has been added via WebDAV access. You can access the files both locally as well as over your network which makes file editing and exchange with desktop or other iDevices a very straightforward process.
Local access works well with Readdle Documents, one of the better file managers wih WebDAV access but you cna also use Windows Explorer or Mac Finder over the same network.
Moving files or complete folders, zipping files and folders, renaming, copying, moving, all that works as expected unlike inside the weird Files.app.
This is the Drambo WebDAV in Documents. I see the samples in the Samples directory. Those are the samples I imported from iCloud Drive.
Does that mean they’re stored locally in Drambo, on my iPad?. What’s the point of using iCloud then?. If they’re duplicated I might as well not use iCloud Drive at all.
@tahiche When you consider it, it's unlikely that a real-time music app could work with files stored on a cloud server or even a local NAS server. When you "import" data, it makes sense that they'd be copied to local storage for ready access. So, yes, I think you might as well not use iCloud Drive at all, for this purpose. Cloud storage is useful to preserve files, and share them with other devices, but not really for live use.
(I believe this is also the situation with removable drives as well, though we see quite a lot of discussion on this subject. How could an app rely on a drive that could disappear at any moment?)
You might be able to save sets of samples in Drambo presets or projects, save them to iCloud, and only recall specific ones for use. But that's much less flexible than having the data immediately available.
Adding to what uncledave said, mobile devices are mostly not tethered to a static location where reliable fast internet access is going to be available. iCloud Drive wasn’t designed with the demands of real-time music making in mind. When you are using files from iCloud they are always downloaded locally anyway whether you see them or not...but they aren’t guaranteed to stay local. So, most users would be frustrated by apps getting glitchy as they try to redownload resources stored on the internet.
Yes, I understand this, but apps like AudioLayer can store samples in iCloud and only download them on demand.
This is true but even more so running out of storage space!. And samples eat a lot of space. The big problem is the sandbox system and not being able to use external storage.
Another related “gray” issue... if you import local samples, from iPad local drive, it seems like samples are not duplicated doubling the used space, but referenced (a pointer linked to the original). This is not clear or well documented but seems the case after experiments and sharing it with others. In that case, using iCloud would be totally counterproductive, because it seems like Drambo does copy the files, but those files can’t be shared with other apps.
They really, really need to fix the iOS file system. It’s ridiculous.
If you have read the comments from people using the iCloud option in AudioLayer, it is a bundle of frustration for many. It isn't what the cloud drive was designed for -- and a use-case that is only relevant to a fraction of a percent of mobile device users.
I understand your frustration, and I think the file system is less ridiculous than it might seem. For an awful lot of people (the vast majority), it is preferable to how desktop file systems work. Those of us comfortable working with file systems are outliers. Even people that think they are "expert" users get into trouble. For many years, part of my job involved giving help to people with the electronic music studio I worked on. The number of people who needed help because they had lost samples or accidentally changed samples used by their multisamplers was huge -- mostly because most people don't know where their files are or track which apps are using the same files.
For a developer, it is a nightmare to either make a user-proof so that users don't break their projects by accidentally moving shared resources or files stored on servers. The iOS file system is quite clever (if unintuitive to people that understand how file systems work: which is a lot fewer than you would think) because it does let you use the same file in multiple apps without exploding resource use or the user needing to remember where they have stored their files. And it is hard to accidentally delete a file in one app that references the file in such a way that it breaks your references in another app.
Exactly. They're stored locally in Drambo and there's no point in using an iCloud drive, at least I have no idea why I should.
You can not only add a "server link" to Readdle Documents to open a one-click connection to local Drambo but you can do the same on another iDevice to exchange files between any two Drambo installations by means of WebDAV over the same WiFi network.
)
(There are ways to make this work even over an internet connection but that would have to be part of another tutorial
@rs2000 what method would recommend for working with samples in Drambo?. AudioShare, Readdable Documents, Files app?
I’ve been checking out the WebDAV feature. The problem I see (and very well stated in the WebDAV feature itself) is that moving or renaming samples/folders will screw up the presets you already made, which makes sense but it’s a shame cos I didn’t think things properly beforehand and my samples folder is a mess. That makes total sense because the path to the sample files is written in the patch.
What would be really handy and a useful feature is that sampler presets could be treated differently and could be saved with the files, so as to make that path relative. That way if you renamed or moved the folder around you’d keep the patches intact. Sort of like when you save a project with files, in this case with a patch. This would also allow you to save the sampler instruments in iCloud, or external drive or whatever. Specialty relevant given how it’s easy to run out of space in iPad, and would allow for a “reliable” sample lib in Drambo.
Cheers!
Readdle Documents mostly. The internal audio player is good enough for previewing a whole folder of samples too.
For editing, I usually rely on TwistedWave because it has fairly good time stretching and pitch shifting and it can use all your AUv3 effects for processing audio files.
Well, that's not a property of WebDAV but rather your instrument and sample organisation 😉
I highly recommend to put samples into sub folders that have the exact name as the Sampler instrument preset. If you don't do that (and I had to learn this in my early days too) then at some point, you'll naturally lose track.
Absolutely. That's why I have already discussed this with @giku_beepstreet and we've agreed that instrument import and export including samples would best be done by packing everything into a zip file during export and unpacking the zip into the appropriate folders when importing. The user shouldn't even have to care about absolute or relative paths. I agree that relative paths would make sense if the samples were stored under the same folder as the instrument presets but Drambo's file hierarchy clearly separates them since you can use samples in many other modules as well, hey, even in a wavetable oscillator.
In other words: Sooner or later we'll have dedicated instrument with sample import and export.
If you can't wait until that feature is added and if you know a bit of bash scripting and the grep command, you can already write a script that only needs the Sampler instrument file name and it will automatically find all referenced samples, load them over WebDAV and create a zip file with everything contained.
Another script could then upload that instrument to any other iDevice you own. No iCloud or fast internet required.
This is what I currently do manually, resulting in zip files with this structure:
./Presets/Sampler/MyGreatInstrument_V1.drmodule
./Samples/rs2000/MyGreatInstrument_V1/Rattle_C2_098
./Samples/rs2000/MyGreatInstrument_V1/Rattle_C2_127
./Samples/rs2000/MyGreatInstrument _V1/Rattle_F#2_098
./Samples/rs2000/MyGreatInstrument_V1/Rattle_F#2_127
./Samples/rs2000/MyGreatInstrument_V1/Rattle_C3_098
./Samples/rs2000/MyGreatInstrument_V1/Rattle_C3_127
etc.
sorry to drag up this thread, but was just copying a bunch of samples into the Drambo iCloud samples folder, expecting them to automagically appear in Drambo. Not so.
I much prefer to use iCloud where possible so that everything is available on multiple devices. Does anyone know how it’s supposed to work?
Have you enabled Drambo to use iCloud Drive? It's in iCloud under your Name at the top of Settings.
This bit?
Yes. Then, you need to make sure you access iCloud and not local storage from inside Drambo.
If I add a flexi sampler, then click to load the sample, I can’t see anything that I’ve put in the Drambo iCloud samples folder though? Do you mean there’s a way to choose iCloud from the sample load dialog?
Edit: just found that you can hit save in the flexi sampler and save to an iCloud destination from there. But what’s the point if that folder doesn’t show in the list of available samples. I just don’t get it.
You might try posting this in the beepstreet Drambo forum. Lots more knowlegeable folks over there.
Thanks 👍