Posts by Pixels_and_Beats

Awesome! It’s encouraging for us noobs here to see that it can be done!

Today I am kicking myself.

I have been buying samples for years and built up quite a collection. While my DJ friends were buying records with all the money they had, I was buying samples.

It’s easy to keep records in the same way as you bought them. Samples however are a different story! Being a ‘virtual’ item that sits on your hard disc eating up gigabytes and in my case terrabytes, it can be hard to keep them all sorted and navigatable.

About a year ago I decided to tidy up my sample collection, as it was becoming a real pain to navigate through them. Some were getting old and dated. Some were to be honest crap bargain collections that I had bought hoping for a least a few ‘gems’ to be lurking in them (which was indeed the case sometimes!). At that time I had no intention of selling my music as it was purely a hobby for fun.

So to make browsing them easier I decided to remove the old samples from their folders and sort them into collections, deleting the dud ones which I knew I would never use. For example Beats, Guitar, Vocals, etc. That was a BIG mistake! I now find myself in the position of not being able to identify the source of some samples used in my older tracks. Some of those tracks would be great to use here on AudioJungle, but because I can not refer to them in the submitting process, I find that they simply cannot be used!

I hope others learn from this mistake and don’t make the same idot move that I made!

I am now very careful about my samples and bought a NAS (Network Access Storage) device to allow me to expand the collection without worrying about hard disc space.

Now I just need to find an alternative way to organise my samples and locate styles, types etc in an easier fashion than using the browser built into my DAW .

Any suggestions?

bcrutchfield: lol classic!

I use Ableton Live. It’s not free but they do have entry level packages available to get you going! For only 99€:

https://www.ableton.com/shop/more_info?item_number=84360

I do all my editing of samples, recording, mixing and DJing using this amazing software. It also has one of the best time stretching capabilities of any DAW (Digital Audio Workstation).

I got a free copy of Ableton live with my AKAI APC40 which I use for DJing. That cost was about £250 quid but considering the awesome hardware you get and the software makes it well worth the money in my opinion!

I also recommend getting a good ASIO compatible soundcard to complement your software. ASIO is preety much essential to make working with audio an enjoyable experience without to much latency (delay) when playing soft synths and recording live audio.

To be honest many of the packages out there have very similar functionality, and sometimes it can come down to the interface which you like, when choosing a package.

I started out years ago using Sony ACID Pro but found it buggy and limited. After that I tried Ableton Live and never looked back.

There are loads of demo versions out there, so just jump in and give them a go. It has also never been so good to learn how to do stuff via YouTube and all sorts of training packages. Wish all that was available when I started lol!

Anyway, good luck and get stuck in!