jajcus / sampledrawer Goto Github PK

Very nice prototype! Kudos for releasing it. I tried it on Fedora 32 (Wayland) and it's a great start. Drag and drop to Bitwig worked out of the box. I tried the sample manager from ADSR (via wine) but that didn't work very well. The one from Sononym.net was great but quite expensive. You are definitely on to something. My answers to your questions:

Do you think you need such a tool?
Yes :-)

If you are already working with many small audio files:
I have thousands of samples. The Leviathan sample pack alone is (iirc) > 5000 samples

What is your current workflow?
Open DAW, mess with synths until I have something I like, then add kick, etc.

What kind of meta-data is important for you?

• Key
• BPM
• Duration
• Format
• Sample Rate
• Peak Level
  (Key and BPM are by far the most important to me)

How do you find the file you need for a specific project?
If samples are properly named with 'type' (e.g. Bass), 'BPM' (e.g. 124) and 'key' (e.g. Cm for C minor) in the file name then it's pretty easy. But if samples are not properly named (happens with free stuff) then it's quite challenging. It would be great if sampledrawer could analyze samples and add the Key and BPM similar to Mixxx https://github.com/mixxxdj/mixxx

Is there any specific file processing useful before importing files to a library
Not sure. I never came across the need to process a sample before adding it to an audio track.

Is there any specific file processing useful before using samples in a project (before pasting them to a DAW)?
Not sure either. Never did any processing before using them.

Are there any serious errors in my current idea?
Don't think so. It's a great start.

Usability suggestions:

• ability to increase the font size. My screen is 2560x1440px and the fonts are quite small.
• in the Files section when showing a bunch of sample files: auto-expand the 'name' column to something like 30 chars or possibly the width of the longest name (with a max of xx chars)

Feature suggestions:

• Key & BPM analysis and show them both in the 'Files' section. File size is less important to me.
• when you have a bass sample selected with Key A minor and 124 BPM then it would be cool if sampledrawer could show other bass samples that are also 124 BPM and in A minor. And expand that to showing guitars, drums, loops, toploops, etc that are also in that Key and BPM.
• Sononym has the cool ability to show similar samples as the one selected. Select a kick sample, click 'show similar' and get a bunch of other kick samples. That's a great feature. They have a free Linux demo at https://www.sononym.net/

I don't have PA, so sampledrawer should be able to use at least plain Alsa.