I have a lot of samples and love using sononym. I use the most current Mac release from Hciso, I love the software and how it operates. That being said I do have some problems that occur often and slow down my workflow if I would like to use Sononym. When I open the app it almost never originally shows my samples, I get an error, usually saying Error in Location status: Maximum call stack size Exceeded. Usually to get rid of that I have to click back and forth between the library page and explore page a few times to reload my samples correctly and remove the error code. Sometimes the code doesn’t leave however my samples do end up loading.
My other problem is that sometimes my samples simply won’t load when I open the app. I have to do as I mentioned before and go between the explore and library pages to get the samples to start loading and showing up on the library page. The same thing happens often when refreshing the library or doing a hard refresh of the entire folder. I love sononym and it’s perfect I just can’t seem to get around these issues I’m having. I would love if there were a solution to prevent this but I haven’t found one yet, If anyone has advice or any ideas about for going about fixing this that would be awesome!
Mac OS Catalina 10.15
Sononym 1.5.6

 

How many samples do you have in the library you loaded into it? What are the specs of the Mac, processor (i5,i7,etc), RAM, and so on? What firewall are you using and do you have it blocked from outbound connections?

 

looks like electon can't handle large numbers of samples
How much space does the entire collection take?

and how deep is your folder structure?

 

Last edited: Oct 11, 2025 at 10:03 AM

I cannot answer your question, but I had issues, too, when trying Sononym.
I guess it had to do with the size of the sample library (about 2,7TB ... so to speak a quite excessive collection, I know).
The library file Sononym created was more than 10gb in size - it slowed down the workflow so much, it doesn't help my workflow.
I did not find a working solution yet and stayed with Windows Explorer and Reaper's Library. And Algonaut Atlas for drum related one shots. It works fine this way, but to my thinking there is still room for improvement.

 

I didn’t really like Sononym deleted it because it felt too slow, so I can’t test this myself. But try deleting the sample database (if there’s an option for that) and start by indexing a small folder to see if the issue shows up. If all goes well, add more folders one by one maybe just one of them is causing the problem.
Electon uses JavaScript which is simply not made for these kind of hard resource-intensive tasks

 

Last edited: Oct 11, 2025 at 10:43 AM

I see slightly similar kind of things happen from time to time on the windows side. I have a few TB's (more than two) of samples cataloged into it also. However whenever I see anything close to what you described (never seen computational errors like stack-overflow or runtimes - just messages about scanning for samples, etc...), I just wait a few more seconds (usually like 2 or 3 more seconds) for it to read the database and initialize itself. The errors go away on their own as it's simply reading the DB and setting up the display. I have many sample libs that are offline as well and still the errors clear themselves by just waiting a few more seconds for things to finish initializing.

Sononym will give a yellow triangle "warning" for stuff that is offline, but it's a warning only as it obviously cannot reach out and touch stuff that resides on offline drives. It figures out pretty quickly what it can and can't initialize. When the drive(s) with the libraries are connected those warnings go away quickly and the auditioning of those samples becomes live.

I have noticed that the initialization process goes much quicker when the "folders" display is minimized for any libraries. Another thing that speeds up the initialization process is to leave Sononym selected to a library that resides on an online drive. Never had it not load any samples for audition except for those that are offline (obviously). Running r4e's "patched" version - "Sononym Sample Browser 1.5.6 Patched-r4e (Win)" here under win10 pro 22H2...

Sononym, like anything else will run faster or slower depending on what kind of system resources it has to work with - i'm sure that applies just as much for the apple side as it does for the win side.

 

Last edited: Oct 11, 2025 at 11:32 AM

AudioEase Snapper can do a good portion of what Sononym does, but without scanning a library. It just attaches to your finder windows, but for that same reason it is kind of annoying. They haven't updated it in a long time, but then Altiverb 8 was not released for the better part of ten years after v7. Snapper is also Mac only, and I do not think they have any intention to do anything about that, or even updating the Mac version.

The thing I do not like about Sononym really, is that it runs as an external application to your DAW. Sononym's scan is also very slow. XLN XO is a better "drum machine plugin" but it is better suited towards smaller libraries. It's fine for drums, but then the whole "similarity" universe idea behind XO is sort of less useful then. I've never really thought "this is a nice drum, but i'd like to try out dozens more that are almost identical". You can already get that just by opening a drum samples pack and using some plugins anyway.

I never have gotten into the workflow of Atlas, but it's pretty much the same story for all of them. It's like you need more than one to do everything, If one does not do everything and you need another app to fill in the gaps, it reduces the usefulness; but it also means you have to maintain multiple library databases. So when they scan as slowly as they do, going back to just using the Mac Finder starts looking more practical.

Loopcloud is the closest "all-in-one" option for me. It just needs more development and they should sell it as a standalone product. Any of them being tied to a online sample service makes using them feel risky in the long run. If people stop buying new samples, do they just abandon the program? It's happened before. But having a basic little midi trigger keyboard program loaded into your DAW as a plugin and then connecting to the samples mothership is the best option available currently, for my uses anyway. Being able to lock everything to project key and bpm sync to project tempo when auditioning is the real benefit of it fitting into the DAW workflow.

 

Last edited: Oct 11, 2025 at 1:59 PM

What I like about Atlas is how quick & easy it works.

I have quite a few libraries compiled for myself, which I often like to "abuse" ... for example load my "downtempo" map over a house/techno midi pattern. This way it works as some kind of quickstarter. Hit the random button a few times, something interesting happens and from there it is very easy to substitute some samples if needed.