In lieu of buying gear, I seem to have become obsessed with organising everything music-related - samples definitely being part of that
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I have tons of samples and packs I’ve collected over the years. The thing I’m seeing is that the quality of the samples improve over time. So I just archive older packs on an external hard drive and focus on the most recent packs I’ve got.
To deal with constantly buying packs, I have a Splice account. But I don’t buy one-off samples. I save up over the course of a few months and buy whole packs. So I get higher quality packs less often.
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Is it about the qualities of a sequencer if you’re building drum kits?
I use XO mainly for creating drum kits and working that way is really quick! …the sequences are just convenient to test the kit out without much creativity involved (I just try that kit with the preset patterns).
Then exporting and using a drum rack in Ableton or transfer it to one of my Elektron samplers.
Organising definitely beats GAS induced buying!
I do the same. I have to just accept that I’m an obsessional kind of person and have to try and direct that in non-destructive ways 
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I just want to select the samples I want easy and quick without having to go through 100 folders. then I want to copy/export them to my octatrack. thats it. DAWless from there, so no sequencer needed. Still XO the best for the task?
Thanks to this thread, I found the other one about Atlas, XO, etc. Sononym is also mentioned.
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Putting all my samples in one location definitely feels massively productive. Now I want to focus putting different types of samples on specific machines (hardware samplers and iOS devices) so that I can sequence them live via my Launchpad Pro. Organising THAT (particularly from a MIDI perspective) is my next obstacle!
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XO has one caveat I dislike:
You can add folders (sample packs) and you have checkboxes which folders are “allowed” to be used (filtering).
Problem: That function is there but not very well implemented. E.g. when a path changes … you have to reimport or it’s impossible to read the folder path when it’s too long.
But after that it’s really a breeze and quick to use. I just wish they would add a function which lets me drag&drop the kit to a new track in Ableton with a drum kit already setup (I can only drag&drop the 8 kit samples to a drum kit that is already there) - after rendering the files are automatically saved and ready to be used with any sampler.
Just one other problem … file names … looks like this:
XO-6 OP HH (processed) 2022-02-23_190616.wav
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I like the XO sequencer, it’s straightforward but still really powerful and good within it’s own parameters… I also like running it as a standalone app if I’m just on my computer and have an idea.
If it’s there, I’ll use it. It’s really intuitive for getting variations on beats fast, and super simple to export it all.
Mac HD> Scan… 
I agree with you on this one, that annoys me a bit too. But, at least you can keep your rendered kits together and know what it is.
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Yes, I’d go with XO for that.
Also, make sure you feed XO with the content folder you got with the OT from Elektron… loads of good material in there.
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Out of interest, have you tried either of the
free options - Cosmos or ADSR? I’d be interested in seeing a shootout. Surely some enterprising YouTube synth influencer (synthfluencer?) has such a video on the cards
I reached a point where I just decided it was more worth my time to create new samples in line with new productions rather than dip into my mostly disorganized collection.
I shelved or deleted everything and started fresh. Mind you I don’t buy samples so it might have been an easier decision for me than it would be for some.
It basically came down to how I wanted to spend time in the studio… pretending to be a musician or pretending to be an archivist/librarian 
The more comfortable I become in my overall process the more I find sifting through
and comparing options to be stifling to creativity/productivity.
I want to program a beat in order to move an idea forward towards a song and not sit and listen to 200 different kicks hoping for a holy grail that will drive an idea forward.
My goal is to finish the current little 5 track project that I have been working on and then extract a tidy percussion library from that for future use.
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Another approach, sample to order, use it as part of the composing process, invariably some won’t end up getting used, delete them. This way you don’t end up accumulating lots of dross.
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Because of the way I started making music, sampling has always been critical to my workflow, but as a result of not having a musical background I struggled with knowing how to embellish samples I took from records because combining two samples from different sources usually resulted in dissonance (and not in a good way).
I was left with the choice of either only using one sample source to rinse out all my sounds from - which is where the Large Professor/DITC/Pete Rock/Beatminerz etc approach of filtering out the high end for the verse and bringing it back in for the hook came from - or using samples which I already knew the key of. I wasn’t a guitarist so it didn’t occur to me at this stage that I could use a guitar tuner to help me work out what notes the samples I’d taken were, so my only option was sample collections. I didn’t have the money for actual instruments, so sample CDs became my instruments. I would scour Future Music CDs etc and gradually built up a sound that was basically like using instruments without having any. Gradually it became obvious that, as I got older and gained some disposable income, I could use actual instruments instead/as well, but the sample collection remained and also continued to grow because it allowed me to access the sounds of instruments I could not afford, find or have the space to accommodate.
Which, in a very long-winded way, is why I don’t feel bad about being a sample glutton & maybe it will help others accept & learn to love the positive aspects of their own SAS tendencies 
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I discovered Driven Machine Drum samples recently and bought them instantly.
I barely use other drum samples (besides weird exotic percussions which I love) so I stored my drum samples collection in a hard drive and focus on these amazing ones.
They are one of the best (if not the best) in its category. Carefully processed, fits perfectly in any mix. Magic
And double magic if you use them in a Rytm, with all the analog circuits.
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No shame in my game. I use samples on just about everything. Have a Splice account and browse Loopmasters quite often.
I want my music to sound a certain way and that’s really only achievable with samples.
Plus, I’m too old and have been doing this too long to have the patience to craft the perfect kick or clap from a sine wave. There’s thousands of those out there. No need to recreate the wheel, IMO.
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I’ve actually gone fairly simple with my organisation so far. Each sampler has the same samples on it’s storage card for now - Essentials from Mars, BlueMarTen & some other DnB, and some sci-fi movie dialogue - plus whatever it came with. I haven’t made any of my own samples yet. Going to learn my way around the machines first.
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My initial plan is to make my CD3000XL into the drum machine, loading it up with collections of single hits taken from organic drums (samples from friends, Cult Drum Sounds, Nate Smith etc) drum machines (Samples From Mars, Puremagnetik) and regular percussion.
Then I’ll have the Volca Sample as either a 4 voice poly (using single cycle wave forms) or odd electronic percussive textures (using Buchla sounds and things from Folktek, Samples From Mars)
That leaves me with the Werkstatt for bass and 0-Coast for oddness.
I’ve got 2 old iPads, one of which will run Samplr (again, using Samples from Mars, Folktek, Puremagnetik), the other of which will probably run a poly synth of some description (whatever runs on old iOS - probably the Arturia things)
My only issue is that I wanted to do it all from the Launchpad Pro 3, but that’s only 4 channels of sequencing. The iPads can sequence themselves but I just need to figure out how to sync them all together…
This concern of how we deal with complexity (i.e. over-large sample spaces) is an interesting one. There is a simple and remarkably powerful solution taken from computer science - randomness. The computational method was first identified by Stanislaw Ulam, a Ukrainian no less, while helping to create the first atomic bomb at Los Alamos circa 1946. It led to the Rand Corporation producing the a book called ‘A Million Random Digits with 100,000 Normal Deviates’ which was literally a book with a million random numbers in it.
For those able to deploy python there is a code snippet at:
#python - Best way to choose a random file from a directory - Stack Overflow
This is what I came up with
#Prompting user to enter number of files to select randomly along with directory
#source=input(“Enter the Source Directory : “)
source=”/Users/badbass/Desktop/”
dest=input("Enter the Destination Directory : ")
no_of_files=90
#no_of_files=int(input("Enter The Number of Files To Select : "))
print("%"*25+"{ Details Of Transfer }"+"%"*25)
print("\n\nList of Files Moved to %s :-"%(dest))
#Using for loop to randomly choose multiple files
for i in range(no_of_files):
#Variable random_file stores the name of the random file chosen
random_file=random.choice(os.listdir(source))
print("%d} %s"%(i+1,random_file))
source_file="%s/%s"%(source,random_file)
dest_file=dest
#“shutil.move” function moves file from one directory to another
shutil.move(source_file,dest_file)
print("\n\n"+"$"*33+"[ Files Moved Successfully ]"+"$"*33)
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I let SAS just happen and organize my samples with SONONYM.
Never browsed any directory ever again.
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