I suspect some of these sample managers just look at the file name, and folder name to arrive at their categorisation, but some, surely must analyse the audio itself ?
Would I be right in thinking that any software that displays a 2-d cloud of samples must be doing audio analysis ?
I’d also welcome recommendations for which sample managers are currently doing this well.
XO and Sononym both analyze the audio. I am impressed by Sononym but I ended up using XO much more for drums since it’s faster to have it integrated in the DAW.
Synonym is great for sample management and being able to make full use of your sample library, especially as it works with loops as well as one shots.
XO and Atlas are both great, although I personally much prefer XO, but they’re more like sample-based drum machines than dedicated sample managers (although they do do this too, but just with one-shots).
Finally, if you’re using Ableton, the inbuilt sample management in Live 12 is now pretty powerful and mature; I wouldn’t overlook that as an option.
Hello it depends on your vision of a workflow to me.
The way I see things is organize your sample materials can be cumbersome. XO, COSMOS, LOOPCLOUD (you can use it with your own content) are the BEST. They really analyse the sample, it’s not “only” on filenames. You can rename your kicks, claps and XO will put those sample as kicks in the kick area.
I ended up using XO for one shots (I remove any long one shots as it doesn’t make sense into XO) and I use COSMOS for Loops, now that waves added preview in Sync to the daw (or CR8 sampler)
I made very specific custom folders into Cosmos that serves as filters (idea coming from experimenting with my workflow vision into XO)
And for vocals I preview into Ableton (not on the grid) passing through a delay and reverb into an audio track. (Something you can achieve with Rogue Amoeba Loopback app but any Soundflowers type of app could do that)
If someone want a better detailed explain of my workflow I can write something here… some hints are in this post I made a while ago :
unfortunately Regroover Pro is gone and I missed it everyday…
for the how my previewing hack works :