Help with file management, do you save banks and projects with samples or not?

I was hoping to get advice on how members of this group manage their samples. Particularly when it comes to saving banks and projects. Most tutorials I’ve watched recommend saving samples with banks and projects. But I’ve found that when I do this I end up with the same sample listed multiple times in the samples directory. I find it super annoying when I scroll through my samples to have three or four of the same sample in a row. So I started saving banks and projects without samples. This makes the samples directory a lot cleaner and easier to deal with. But it has a downside. If you were to move your samples to different folders it breaks the connection between the bank or project and the sample and then you have to reload everything. I have tons of samples that I want to make kits out of. But I don’t want to have to remake all the kits when Beatmaker 4 comes out. How do you guys deal with this problem? Do you just deal with having the same sample listed multiple times and the samples directory? Is there some sort of work around that I missing? Any advice or experience with this issue would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

Comments

  • edited December 2017

    Save everything in the sample folder and try not to move them around. Put your imports into the sample directory. Copy your samples to the banks if you're backing up or moving the bank to another device and delete the bank after. I've found the best practice to be to save your samples in directories by source, e.g. the label you bought/got it from. The search function is only useful if you know the name of a sample and you want to quickly get it. The search list is very long and lacks context and as you say, it has duplicate entries.

  • I never save samples with projects or banks, that is very bad advice unless you are archiving the project or bank, not only does it give you multiples in the database but also starts to eat storage.

    If you do move your samples, Beatmaker 3 will simply search for them when you reload the bank or project anyway, so you can load, let it search, then save and its done, no reason to think Beatmaker 4 will not do the same thing.

    One thing you do need to keep in mind though, name your samples properly.
    If a bank or project has to search for samples, it will load the first it finds with the correct name, so if it is looking for 'Snare 01.wav' and you have a hundred snares called 'Snare 01.wav' it will load the first one it finds.

    It is simple good housekeeping.

    Go to the resources section of the forum and install the forum folder structure and then my SetDrums pack, you will be able to see good separated folder structuring with samples and kits.

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  • edited December 2017

    That favourites bank idea should be written up as a tip thread @triton100, it's genius for people wanting favourites !!

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  • Thanks for all the help guys! That is much appreciated.

    @d4d0ug said:
    I had the same dilemma. These days I save all samples with sessions, and ignore the samples directory completely! I took a leaf out of @5pinlink’s book and created my own folder in the directory.

    This definitely seems like a possible solution. Definitely something I would consider. Thanks for posting that.

    @5pinlink said:

    If you do move your samples, Beatmaker 3 will simply search for them when you reload the bank or project anyway, so you can load, let it search, then save and its done, no reason to think Beatmaker 4 will not do the same thing.

    This is really great. I didn’t know about this because I was using an older version of Beatmaker 3 that didn’t have the search feature. After updating I am really loving this feature. This definitely makes my life easier and alleviates most of my worries. Thanks so much for explaining that.

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