So, just out of curiosity...Did your search for samples end yet or are you looking for new samples all the time.If you think your search is near complete, what products did you settle for and why?What do you use most often?

 

To be honest, I would pay someone to go through my sample library and nuke the nonsense out of there.

The search is never-ending, because I don't sample instruments, so I can't quite gather a good set of the stuff I use and say "I'm done".

Rather I mostly use samples for weird FX, random sounds, speeches, stuff from popular media, something with a message mostly, or at least auditory interest.

And I can always use some more of that.

When I die, bury me in my hard drive collection. By time time I'm dead, you probably won't have to use any soil to bury me.

 

i only store high quality samples. anything that sounds off or low quality gets deleted. the same with plugins both effects and instruments

only the best possible. its about quality.. also i dont collect large size libraries anything over 90 gigabyte for example kontakt library usually gets deleted too.. its better to have smaller libraries. also.... also... i always look for new stuff for the sake of interest

 

I don’t audition samples in isolation.

I pick sounds inside the track. Whether something sounds “good” on its own is irrelevant. What matters is whether it works once everything is playing. A kick can sound awful by itself and be exactly right in the mix. Same goes for everything else.

Spending hours auditioning samples in isolation or building a perfectly curated personal library is, in my opinion, a waste. You are investing time into decisions you are very likely going to undo once real context shows up. You are listening to stuff that has about a 90% chance it will never get used and nearly as likely to just get deleted.

That is the sunk cost fallacy in action.

I would rather stay in the session and make decisions where they actually matter. I grab a pack, break it apart, and throw it into a few broad folders by use. Drums and percussion, vocals, bass, FX. MIDI and presets get the same treatment. Artwork, demo spam, and all the other content get deleted immediately.

Loopcloud offline in your DAW makes auditioning samples in context of the track streamlined.

 

I recently bought some real drum samples from https://yurtrock.com/ was the ultimate pack on sale. And got FromMars drum Maschine samples also. It made me then sit and clean up all my drum samples and reorganise. So now I have a more clean library but also a better sense of where what is.
So there might be truth to the thing about not listening in isolation, but some sounds I just flat out did not like and also just knowing what I have in better detail and where to find it makes it easier when I want to find a specific type of sound. Otherwise there was that plugin called Drum Slot that gives random drum sounds from your library that could also be a great thing. Will have to install that again now I think of it