A full comparison between both versions is available here : Samplism – Audio Helper Project
I was confused by the line Import third-party library which mentions only Apple and Live librairies for the free version. Anyway, the free version is worth a try.
Anybody knows if Sononym has been on sale at BF, and around what price?
Installed the demo 2 days ago and already make good use of it.
I like the systematic approach that fits with organising samples so it will be easier when you are creative.
The Projects I make with it (maps with selected and exported samples) will work well with the ADSR Sample Manager in the DAW.
Atlas I liked also but mainly the sequencer that brought some good ideas and the switching of samples in the Drum pads.
Atlas is fun, Sononym feels like it will be a more substantial part of planning and learning production when I’m in that mood. My brains are happy (and get curious) with it.
I’m on Windows so Samplism is no option if I understood right.
I hope so because I have been waiting half a year to buy it already lol. I never buy a plug-in unless it’s on sale…
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I wouldn’t call XO a sample manager. It’s an extremely powerful and easy to use one-shot picker and arranger for percussion.
My Ableton Live template has XO grouped along with the 8 individual outs, you couldn’t ask for an easier way to create fun drum loops and record them individually. On the track next to that group I have ADSR Sample Manager which organizes everything into loops and libraries pretty neatly. My sample library is pretty massive, and the ADSR plugin does have a couple issues with file formats (it doesn’t seem to like OGG files, for instance) but with the ease of XO I haven’t really had a need for loops.
ADSR Sample Manager is a free tool though, so you can’t beat the price.
I also use Nuendo for tracking and Steinberg’s MediaBay is vastly improved from when it was first released - it’ll do samples and one-shots but also catalog MIDI files so you can just drag and drop those right into a drum track with HALion or Battery or Maschine. It’s probably going to be a distant third as far as what I use but it is a decent tool.
Usually 50% on Black Friday. Last year’s offer:
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thanks
Sononym is very good, I use a lot search by similarity, very useful for finding perfect variation of a sound.
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If anyone has been reading this thread and thinking about Sononym (which I’d highly recommend btw), now is the time to get it… 50% off for their live BF sale;
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A new thing from XLN. Sample based. Not really sure what it is or what it’s for tbh, but thought I’d share here.
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Tried it out earlier and am actually very impressed. It took the first thing I recorded on the mobile app, which was basically weird noises/gibberish, and somehow used its AI black magic and turned that into a pretty good beat. It’s expensive, but I recommend doing the trial for it. I think it could be great for anyone who doesn’t want to spend lots of time making beats, or just wants some inspiration in that department.
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Anyone who has XO will know it doesn’t recognise your sample loops, just one shots… well, Life seems to work with your loop library and lets you autoslice/chop them into something new using the same kind of ‘channel strip’ found in XO.
They’re pushing it towards catching your own ambient recordings for some reason (I’d guess that’s where they see a gap in the market), and speed of use… I like the concept, it seems like it still has a way to go to me tbh. If they made an XO style globe library of my loop library I’d be happy.
It’s also expensive even as an ‘intro’ deal.
Anyone who likes the look of it, I’d recommend checking out Audiomodern’s Loopmix. Loopmix has a lot of similarities and, at this point, goes way beyond Life in terms of functionality. You’ll just need to record and import your phone recordings manually.
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…yup, xln’s new baby seems a nice new take…
but why o why does it always need this upload to the cloud before it remangles ur audio…
i avoid any apps that need to be online to function…!
can anybody confirm, there’ no way around it…?
i mean, hey, cool twist, to use ur phone as a field recorder…but uploading and downloading again before u can make any use of it, is a no go for me…
and for now, it seems like, the whole thing even needs online treatment, if u feed it with ur very own recordings u already got on ur computer anyways…silly.
what kind of ai treatment nonsense happens here in the background, that u really need to be online for it…?
It could be that the data needed for the AI to work is too much* to download ?
* by somebody’s criteria
…hmmmm…but what is really the “magic” here…
the plugin is nothing but a sample mangler…there is randomization…there is syncopation…there is population…all free to adjust…so far, so nice…but also a pretty common thing…
what is it really doing to audio upfront in a cloud, that could not be done in the app itself…i don’t get it…
I’ve been using Life for the last day and it’s quite different than a normal beat mangler, regardless of where it initially stores its data. I’m especially enjoying it’s ability to mess with tonal content in ways that I simply wouldn’t have arrived. The ability to work through infinite variations, find one that feels good and then go in and fine tune things in the “Edit” window is really wonderful. I think there’s ways that XLN can improve it, but at the moment it’s a blast.
With regards to the usefulness of the phone app and the cloud upload, I think the usefulness is that you don’t have to remember to do anything. You can be out in the world, capture something, forget all about it and then when you’re in Life you open it up and it’s just there, waiting to be messed with. The intention to capture only needs to be there once and then the Admin aspect of the process happens in the background, which suits me just fine. I’ve got enough admin to do when I make music with a computer. Anything that pulls those things to the side and deals with them for me is a plus.
Yesterday I just went through my kitchen with a chopstick clicking against things and got a brilliant set of instant rhythms out of it.
I’ll also note that the controls feel a lot like Logic’s “Drummer” app to me, which I’ve longer to have replicated and available in Ableton. For me, I hear when things click, so the way Drummer allows you to drag the dot along the axis and refine things until it works is perfect. Life feels a lot like that to me.
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As Life has little to do with sample library management as per this thread, here’s its own one;
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how? when I save kit it saves to a location in atlas format. it doesnt seem to have an export option for the kit. it can just print the sequence as audio which is not what im looking for. I dont really want to drap and drop 64 individual files from the grid either
Hello,
after few years establishing a personal workflow for me and my students.
Here my thoughts on this subject :
Important aspects for me, it can be standalone but i need (at least) a bridge to preview samples in BPM synced to a DAW Project. That doesn’t mean Sononym, Waves Cosmos, Samplism, Audiofinder are not useful but it would be more to search and filter (preparing some loops that catch your interest or give inspiration), than experimenting/previewing in the context of a track.
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XO is the best for searching kits and colors for one-shots in the context of a project. For me nothing beat XO it could be enhanced like real 4 bars (or 8), midi import, polymeters… (little things like that) it’s pretty fast at scanning (Cosmos is the worst in terms of scanning time, few TO can take 4/5 days and nights + it’s not synced you have to load in CR8 sampler to make the stuff synced which is a deal breaker to me)
XO works offline works only for oneshots
(cons sometime it need to scan and refresh it can delay your session a bit and you can never know when it will asking for that) -
Loopcloud is the best for searching/previewing for Loops in the context of a project. It’s synced, you can preview in a scale of your choice and filter by root note/scale, you can preview vocals with delay and reverb… something you can’t do without crazy routing. It is also the fastest to scan your loops
Loopcloud works offline works for oneshots and loops -
Maschine is the best for previewing Presets by categories and set favorites especially if you have a lot of VST NKS ready + a very dope company called NKS Freelance Soundlabs that make some popular VST NKS ready from your user folder (like omnisphere) + some third parties expansions/soundset. Also, to me MaschineAutoTagger is very important as well. That way you can listen 70% of all the bass you have from all your VST at once and favorite/tags what you really like…
You still have to keep in mind, Artificial Intelligence is more precise on one-shots than loops, which is kinda understandable. so searching doesn’t usually return 100% great results.
After experimenting with lots of data, from presets / to oneshots / to loops with those modern technologies (Ai) i still works the old school way and from time to time with this workflow way.
As moods of the day is still very important in what you are doing or will do, and previewing, searching very time consuming and results in ear fatigue…
i use different workflow in my day to day composition. i like to challenge me by sort of games and limitations. (like today i try to make a started snippets with some water sounds, or finding a movie/tv show and i try to write sounds on images…)
i like to prepare sessions, by browsing, searching and making preselections for the next day session. i find it more efficient to browse from a collection of stuff that are selected as “those loops inspire me” and see within that selection what i come up with rather than using Ai, tags, keywords to see if i have the chance to find something. There’s more chance that you end-up with nothing the same day. But i heavily rely on XO, Loopcloud (with my samples collections) and Maschine that for sure. As they made easy to find, try, replace for better in a composition process.
Other great Workflow, Mixing, Arranging enhancers for 2024-2025 :
(you need Ableton for that mostly)
AutoTrackcolor
SongSketchPro
Incredible M4L Tools from noirlabs
Gain Snaphot from ElysabethHomeland
mm device off
plugin list export (great if you collaborate)
better macro in ableton
Stem separation for learning purpose
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This sentence reminded me to this video illustrating the point. It’s on Bitwig but I guess it works the same in other DAWs.
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I’ve come to a similar conclusion. Maschine kits are great, though you can experience something similar with Ableton & Kitmaker, since any loops that come into your project get snapped to tempo and audio quantise is good. Not sure if preview always makes non-Ableton loops on the beat or not. It certainly works for their own loops though. Kit Maker kits don’t have effects on, but in my experience most core drum sounds in Maschine kits have effects baked into the samples and then a limiter or something on them (unless I’m misreading the effects chains.) When I export audio from Maschine, it almost always sounds as it is in the box, unless you add stuff yourself.
As you say the big advantage of NKS is that self contained universe. Freelance Sound Labs are great. I have their NKS previews for the Softube synths and they are really good. But as you menton being able to select (for example) “percussion” and rifle through mutiple sounds across various packs within the project tempo is great (similar to Logic loops.) I use way more NI sounds this way than I would left to my own devices.
If things went south with Maschine for any reason, Ableton and Push would be an excellent all in one way of achieving something similar, especially with sound similarity search. However, the reason I like Maschine is I have found the disconnection quite helpful between the idea generation phase (Maschine) and then arrangement (Ableton.) Plus the preset browsing in Ableton is not nearly as good.
Also re: AI, I also have Atlas. I quite like the way it misclassifies certain things, which can lead to some happy accidents. It can also do lanes of different sequencer lengths which neither XO or Maschine do. It also supports MIDI control, which I haven’t explored but could be a very nice way to keep everything in Ableton land, with a Launchpad/Push or similar.
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