Sononym and XO is the most productive combo that I’ve settled with for sample management, and I think they compliment each other really well depending on the task.
XO is great for trying out samples in a beat context, and I’m surprised how often I end up using certain samples that I’d probably never have chosen by just browsing samples (through Sononym or folders).
But Sononym, and its browser system, is my go to most of the time if I want a specific/certain sample… and its copy/paste integration straight into Ableton is great.
If I was forced to only have one- Sononym… but it’s close, and I’m happily settled with the Sononym/XO combo.
I installed the trial of both XO and atlas 2 and it only took about 5 minutes for me to vastly prefer atlas. The ability to make multiple maps from whatever folders of samples you want won the day for sure. XO won’t let me do it, even when trying to narrow my search it won’t let me select sub folders of my giant ‘samples’ folder and trying to add those folders separately it says I can’t because they are sub folders of the ‘samples’ folder I already added. Having to use one giant map of 100k+ samples is pretty useless to me. Also found atlas much quicker and easier to use in pretty much every way.
So probably going to get sononym and atlas. Thanks for the help everyone!
It’s more aimed at sound fx/design (& borrows a lot from SoundMiner) but the first version released was so incredibly slow as to be unuseable. I tried a more recent update and it was better… Its a free app but that’s how VC funded business works… get 'em hooked & later on enshittify
It’s nuanced, and I’m glad you got a deciding factor!
I didn’t know that about the maps, but I’m not really using them for right now.
The thing Atlas 2 does that XO doesn’t is have artist curated drum pattern you can randomize the samples used, or hotswap, and also export pout to midi the patterns.
It’s fun if you do a lot of drum programming, because you can get a decent beat going and then export out the midi to a track in Logic that controls external gear like the Tr8S.
I haven’t done it yet with her, but I did it with the Syntakt. But I had to switch machines since it’s got two rows of kicks and snares by default.
I hate to say it, but they also show you a pattern map, and I am pretty quick reading those and programming by hand.
Not trying to change your mind, just letting you know my experience with all three, though, I haven’t gotten two deep into atlas.
Both are great. And Sononym is so straight forward and list base, that it’s good for vanilla sample organizing.
Yeah, gonna definitely work with both of them longer. I think my use case is getting a quick beat down to help select samples and then moving it into the daw or external sampler for further processing and sequencing etc. and so far atlas has been quicker for this.
I’m pretty sure that Atlas does all of these things, unless I misunderstand you. Atlas has artist drum patterns that can be randomised. You can also hotswap all samples as you like and also export whatever you want with the midi.
Perhaps you are referencing a much earlier version of Atlas? V1?
The thing about XO is that there haven’t really been any major functional updates on it for a long time, whereas Atlas continues to improve and add new features usually every few months.
I do prefer some of the sequencer layout/functions of XO better than Atlas, but Atlas is the best all rounder for me.
I don’t get this, or buy it, XO doesn’t need functional updates… some things just work and are what they are, the notion that software needs to be constantly updated is weird to me.
I get it with a DAW, etc… but XO is rock solid and does everything I want it to, it not seeing updates is not a problem IMO.
(I don’t mean to sound down on Atlas either, btw, I think it’s great… XO just fits me better and using both is counterproductive.)
Growing the functionality of a product is important to me, especially when other products come out that have more to offer. All production tools should strive to improve their offering IMO. I like XO, but having bought it, I don’t really use it much, and so use Atlas more instead, as find it to be easier to use and also more capable for my needs.
I would possibly use XO more often if they for example developed it with some of the useful AI tech that is out there now for pattern generation.
XO hasn’t seen any major functional changes in 1-2 years, from memory. It does do a good job though as you say.
XO is a beautiful device. It has one if the best designs of all the plugins I’ve used. It doesn’t need new features to stay relevant. It’s not like it’s from 2006
Not that I’m aware of. XO auto renames the mixed samples to XO-1, XO-2 etc when exporting but that’s about it. Not sure about Atlas, but when I’ve exported there it uses the real file names. Like you say it’d probably be a step away from what they’re designed to do.
