Sample management- where do you keep your samples?

wim

@Apex said:
... And I absolutely do not use iCloud ever.

I can't resist asking what your reasons are. I'm not interested in questioning them, I'm just curious.

Apex

@wim said:

@Apex said:
... And I absolutely do not use iCloud ever.

I can't resist asking what your reasons are. I'm not interested in questioning them, I'm just curious.

Why, when I can just back the stuff up myself? Never been a big believer in any “cloud” stuff. Especially for anything personal and/or important.

Tarekith

I always store my samples in some kind of folder hierarchy these days, something I can use almost anywhere with little prep. I've changed DAWs, hardware samplers, software samplers, etc enough over the years to realize I can't get too married to the file system of any particular app. All the samples I gather I curate and organize into folders based loosely on type:

Drum Sounds
- BDs
- Snares
- Cymbals
- Perc
- etc
Recorded Sounds
- Ambiences & Soundscapes
- Animals & Nature
- Hits
- - Hi Hits
- - Medium Hits
- - Low Hits
- Misc
Synth Sounds
- Keys
- Bass
- Sequences
- Pads
- Random
Drum Loops
Synth Loops

I keep a copy of these on my laptop HD, a USB stick, and in iCloud so I can access it from iOS apps or while traveling. I should also mention I'm EXTREMELY picky about what samples I save these days. They have to really strike me as interesting, I don't save too many to cut down on finding what I'm looking for in the heat of writing. I think my entire sample collection is like 4-5GB, and probably 2GB is stuff I'e just been too lazy to sort through yet

Ailerom

In a Files app folder called My Samples, right next to My Midi, My Loops, My Secret Unsanctioned By The Geneva Convention Frog Experiments, My Documents.

JackRubinacci

Thank you for all these tips. Interesting to see that there’s several ways to do this .

Going to have to put it all together and see which works for me . Very glad to have all this info . Thank you so much 🙏

MisplacedDevelopment

Big collections like the samplesfrommars stuff gets put on Synology network attached storage so I can get to it from any device and also to a USB SSD for quick access.

I would second the idea from @seonnthaproducer and suggest AudioLayer as a way of instrumentising(!?) your samples. For what it does it is light on resources and loads samples in to memory as you need them. It will easily handle multiple gigabytes of data per instrument and once you have put together the instrument then the whole thing can exported as a zip file which you can then archive alongside your samples. If DAWless is your thing then it works very well as a way of triggering audio clips. If nothing else then it is a way of bringing together related samples to save you having to look for them in folders.

robosardine

I usually leave them in a pile and name them things like -

This is it!
Keeeeeeep.
The best one.
Don’t delete.
Good aceeeeeed.
Dandy Voxhole
Use me.
Could be good.
Bassiuss
The one you want!
First choice.
Ready for chopping.
Latest effort.
Bass drum fours.
Tanked it!

OscarSouth

In my guitar (load them onto tracks through 1/4 jack input).

Just being silly, but it's kind of true -- I don't maintain a large sample library and if I want to re-use a sound from a previous track I usually just dig out the archived project that it was used in. I've had the same couple of samples loaded into Samplr for about 6 years now, which you can see in action on a track here:

(hear the final track by that artist here: https://elfinbow.bandcamp.com/track/daffadilly-down-2)

I've not changed the sounds in there since then and had been using them for a good while already by that point! They're all recordings of human voice emulating nature (lots of people on this board that know that already and with greater insight) and it's pretty much the entirety of my 'persistent' sample library.

JackRubinacci

😂 .. everyone of my demos is called pretty something like this 😁

****> @Tarekith>; @robosardine said:

I usually leave them in a pile and name them things like -

This is it!
Keeeeeeep.
The best one.
Don’t delete.
Good aceeeeeed.
Dandy Voxhole
Use me.
Could be good.
Bassiuss
The one you want!
First choice.
Ready for chopping.
Latest effort.
Bass drum fours.
Tanked it!

JackRubinacci

Sounds really nice.. thank you for sharing it .. gonna watch the video now 🙏

@OscarSouth said:
In my guitar (load them onto tracks through 1/4 jack input).

Just being silly, but it's kind of true -- I don't maintain a large sample library and if I want to re-use a sound from a previous track I usually just dig out the archived project that it was used in. I've had the same couple of samples loaded into Samplr for about 6 years now, which you can see in action on a track here:

(hear the final track by that artist here: https://elfinbow.bandcamp.com/track/daffadilly-down-2)

I've not changed the sounds in there since then and had been using them for a good while already by that point! They're all recordings of human voice emulating nature (lots of people on this board that know that already and with greater insight) and it's pretty much the entirety of my 'persistent' sample library.