Reorganise sample library on +drive - risk to older projects?

Im wanting to reorganise my folders of samples on my digitakt. Is there any risk with older projects still playing correctly? eg do projects link to samples on +drive or are all samples saved independently within the project?

Im thinking samples are saved independently in the project as one of 127 sample slots but just checking to make sure. If this is the case, technically i should be able to delete all the samples from the +drive and projects would still play ok.

there is a difference with ableton - a session can link to samples on a hard drive or you can ‘collect all and save’ then the samples are saved in the project folder.

Try it out. Create a two new samples and create a project where you use both. Then move and rename the first sample and delete the other sample, load up the project again, and see what works.

No. You can’t just delete all the samples. The projects will not play okay.

You can do a version of “save and collect” by backing your projects up on your computer with their samples. You can then load them back to your Digitakt. I’ve never tried doing this. I’m afraid of it. I would test it out with a dummy project first.

You can also reorganize your samples on the Digitakt itself or with Transfer. As long as the samples stay on the Digitakt, they’ll be loaded into your projects. You can rename them and move them to different folders all you want.

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You can move samples freely within your +Drive, project sample slot assignments won’t be affected

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This might help Elk-Herd 3.0

I think that’s correct. I believe Elektron use a hash of the sample (or some other unique identifier) to reference files because if you try to copy the same sample to the +Drive, even in a different location (and even with a different name I think) it won’t let you store the duplicate.

I don’t believe the projects independently store the samples with the project so if you delete them from the +Drive you’ll just have an empty space in your sample pool.

Please test this, don’t take anyone’s word as gospel!

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thanks for the tips. i am backing up my projects using the transfer app.

thanks. I have given Elk herd a try and its awesome! only used it for cleaning out unused samples in a project and moving patterns around though. Will see if it can be used for other sample management. cheers.

yes ive read mixed reports about this so i think i need to do some testing on a new project just in case. I did re-read the manual but it didnt seem to be clear about this and how it works with samples and projects.

ok so i did some testing and this is what i have found:

  • deleting samples from +drive means the projects using those samples wont load properly so projects dont save the samples in the sample pool independently. Its not like ‘collect all and save’ in ableton. The sample pool in each project is linking back to the +drive.

  • when i copied a sample and renamed it then used it in a project, if i deleted that new sample, digitakt went and found the previous version that i copied from and put that in the sample pool. So digitakt does allow you to store duplicate samples if they are named differently. There was a bit of strange naming going on in the sample pool where is seemed like digitakt got confused as to which was the correct sample to use, so duplicating samples probably isnt a good idea.

  • when I moved samples to another folder, then reloaded the project, digitakt still found the samples and loaded them correctly into the project’s sample pool.

thanks for everyone’s advice and tips. hope this helps anyone else who has a similar question.

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Oh, just to be clear, I meant that you can do this using Transfer. You have the option of saving your samples with the project to your computer. From there you should be able to recover the project even if your samples are gone. But again, I’ve never done it.

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I’ve done this on model:samples. It’s slick. No guarantee it works on digitakt of course, but I’d be surprised if the same rules didn’t apply.