Just out of curiosity, how big is your HDD where you store your material for making music (such as libraries, loops, construction kits, etc.)?

I was fine with 320GB, now it's 500GB but since I've removed a lot of unnecessary content, the overall size is just 220GB (440GB total, keeping one backup) and it's not increasing anymore.

 

15 terrabytes. and over 13 terrabyes is used. eat your heart out.

 

crazy guy , how many years do you have collected

 

6.68Gb loops and samples (mostly drum hits?beats? what ever you call a sample of a drum hit once)
20.1Gb of Native Instruments stuff

Do you's all actually use all that stuff? Other than the drum samples I never find myself re-useing samples.

I do have a stupidly large HDD of songs that I use to DJ and they are often cut up to make a sample or 2, do they count?

 

i have about 4 tb and trying to a rack with 4 HD 3 tb apiece why so much well for a big verity and its kinda like a addiction for Me LoL if i see a good one i have to download it''i'm downloading right now

 

My whole sample pack collection is about 25gb. Not long done a fresh install and got rid of everything I never use. Even then I'm still holding on to some things that could probably go the journey.

I've wasted far to many hours of my life skipping through sample after sample when really, the one I have already in my drum rack is good enough!!

 

8 hard drives is not overkill. apart from the audioz stuff i collect house and trance cd's, video game sound, audiobooks and documentaries. i also try to keep 100-150gig free from any disk i have as you know the speed drops as more full it becomes. course i don't use it all but i have a 500gig plan per month and can download at 8-10mb/s so i think it silly to waste all that quota.

 

had 4 or 5 Tb.....of which I realized I used very little, ...so I took about 10 days to listen to ALL the stuff I had and got rid of a lot of it...now I have about 4/500Gb, mostly drum loops, kits and instruments..I have become very picky since then! lol

 

I've got about 900gb worth, most of which are Kontakt Sample Library's. Most of it is stored on a 2tb drive, but I keep my favorite content on an 80gb SSD in order to prevent performance issues when I'm using it.

 

I see that people love Tera and terabytes, but don't have a good course of music, so they use ready to use samples, collage and drop and listen. So the music is not yours, you did nothing, you don't have any contribution done. You are ready for die. Just remember your friends to put your tera HDs in your grave. Maybe, you use Drums of the hell for the first time in your new home.

 

Yeah and you edm guys, you have to synthesize your own drums too. Oh you can't even use recorded one shots, make your own. Infact why stop there? Why not make your own synths and program your own daw on your own os for the pc you made with your very own componants that you designed all by your self! Is your guitar home made? Did you grow your own tree and carve it out all by yourself?? How dare you use something that you didn't make!!

Only then you can say the music is yours *yes*



Remember kids.. ready made samples are the devils children!!!

 

Haha I wanted to answer something like this but you were faster than me smartlad...

I'm not for the use of samples, so I'm closer than edweste ideas (Not as extreme though lol) but sometimes it can be useful here and there as arrangements but NEVER as main melody or something important ! Because I would feel very awkward to say "Hey ! You want to hear my music ??" because I wouldn't feel it's mine ! lol

But I'm in rock music and co. so we don't need to use samples in that kind of music anyway...

 

I don't need any more space. If I say that to my friends they are quite amazed

If you have "little" space it keeps you to think whether to download THAT or not. You are also "forced" to clean up the content and keep it well organized. It's the same as with OS (for example W7) - if it's running fast, there's no need to clean it. And at certain point those people start to call me that their computer is slow.

If you have 15+ TB HDD it is almost unlikely that you go cleaning or organizing the content as it may be time consuming and you always have some space left.

At least this works for me.

I'm fine with two external drives (320GB and 500GB) and another two for backups (same capacity). Internal drives on my computers and laptops never exceed 160GB.

Digital content (samples, loops, ...) as well as live instruments are here to HELP you make music, nothing more.

And in fact even if you record live, the music is still not 'yours'. These are just vibrations generated by strings you've just played (for example on guitar) and then picked by microphone, converted by A/D converters to ones and zeros, recorded in memory and stored on HDD.
The music itself cannot be 'yours'. You just have the opportunity to hear it.

You can make music 'yours' only inside your head.

That's why they're ofter refered as music INSTRUMENTS (not music makers). Composing is a process of making music by connecting small elements (eg. notes, samples, whatever) into a larger complex usually called a song or track. And I think that composing is definitely some kind of contribution. Without it, there would be just isolated elements (notes).
(just my opinion)

 

@ Edweste,

At first, I didn't really want to intervene in this article, but some parts of your recently posted comment may be questionable... that's the reason of mine.

Here, I can guess that's your 'pure' vision of a certainly well educated musician that speak, isn't ?
If you simply change (or a least try to do it) slightly this 'vision', this fact is far more complex. Effectively, and here's where I'm not agree with you, even if I'm a very 'paltry' musician, it's that the Samplers (the engines themselves) have become with the time more than simple 'recorders'. I mean, in their early days, Samplers were mainly used to 'record', 'replicate' and 'reproduce' existing musical instruments (or any kind of recorded material !), that's seems their logical function and utility. But with the time and the numerous improvements of some of them, they have become far beyond than simple 'recorders' and 'reproducers'. In fact, they have become pure instruments by themselves, and there is the big difference !

Where I'm not agree at all with you about your 'quoted' sentence is the part : "So the music is not yours, you did nothing, you don't have any contribution done.". You can trust me that some Samplers' users have done something, and even in some cases, they have certainly 'spend' hours to arrange some parts of their 'sampled' creations, so their contribution is, in my opinion, more than effective !
In the other side, if after your 'vision' they don't are 'pure' musicians, they have at least the merit, for some of them, to become good arrangers, that's certainly not a common thing among all the 'pure' musicians. Yes, the fact to 'pick' some samples here and there, then to put them together ('collage') in a harmonically and musically fashion, I name this making an arrangement (but maybe I'm wrong ?). Here is where I see the relation with your sentence. Don't some 'traditional' arrangers make some collage ? They take the musical material they have at their hands : musical parts played by 'real' musicians, they certainly try to combine all these parts in some particular or often personal ways, they can decide that maybe this part should be placed just after the chorus, for example, in place of its original one... the possibilities are somewhat endless. In fact, some Samplers' users have become, in some sense, pure 'Conductors', they are the only 'master on board' of their creations. In this sense, they are the 'modern' counterpart of 'classical' or 'traditional' Conductors in classical music ! Like these, they have at their disposal various sample parts (equivalent to various classical musicians), then they decide for example that only some samples will play this part (e.g. only the Cellos in a symphonic orchestra), then that in another part, the used samples will increase in volume for some measures (e.g. a Conductor that asks to his musicians to make a 'Crescendo' over some measures).
My conclusion then, is that Samplers' users are the equivalent of a Conductor with his symphonic orchestra. They know more or less what they want to listen, then they use all the means that they have in their hands (or in some cases, along their Samples & Loops CD Collections !) to try to reach their musical objective...

A last word is related to the fact that, after you, some Samplers' users aren't 'pure' musicians : "but don't have a good course of music" and more : "So the music is not yours".
Well, how many musicians can really pretend to create their own 'pure' and 'never heard' music ? If you find some, sorry to be a bit 'harsh', but either they are rather pretentious or, and it's also possible, in this case they are 'pure' genius... Even the most 'well-known' and musical Genius of our time are all influenced by some predecessors ! The most talented of them have certainly found their own way of expression and originality, but at the base, all were influenced, more or less, by another one (or even several).
We don't have all the luck to be 'pure' genius, to have the 'aura' and all the 'skills' of some prestigious musicians as Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Jaco Pastorius, Jimi Hendrix, John Coltrane, Chick Corea, Al Di Meola, Herbie Hancock, Marcus Miller, Wayne Shorter,... and Louis Armstrong ! (affectionately named 'The Pope' by many, and especially by Miles Davis).
I stopped this list for space considerations and also because I can to continue till tomorrow night !!!
You can even find in this short list of 'famous' and 'Masters' musicians some that have used Samplers. Ask to Mr. Herbie Hancock what he thinks about Samplers after creating his famous 'Rock It'... you'll certainly be very surprised of his opinion.
As stated, all the people aren't 'Musical Prodigies', then some of them must do what they can with what they have... but this doesn't prevent them, IN ANY WAY, to have fun and to create music, and that even with the help of Samplers' Engines...

P.S: Sorry to 'Andrew' because my comment is a bit 'off topic', and mainly written in relation with a previous comment (in some sense also related to the 'Sampling World'). I hope that it doesn't mess up too much the main purpose of this article... *yes*

 

I already had more than 50 terabytes of stuff that I collected over the years.
But now, I'm just deleting them from my HDD's, and hosting most of the samples on my FTP.
Really, did you already notice that on these days the audio scene is just based in sample packs release?
Now I'm just creating my own sounds in drum machines and VSTi's.
I'm tired to ear over and over the same samples everywhere. Especially Vengeance ones. Everyone use them.

Create your own loops and sounds, and your music will be far better. More than you can imagine.

 

But, composing and arranging are different things. A Composer must be an arranger, but an arranger do not need to be a composer. Both words comes from latin, and have etymological differences.

Things I mentioned in my post, was the fact of using "pret-a-toucher" measured samples, like vengeance for example. Not the alone samples, as orquestral or one shot drums.

Great comment Darth Vader

I meant if you use those ready to use one measure hip-hop samples, another one you use the same measure in another commercial record, then you may be disappointed, cause someone used the same material, THAT IS NOT YOURS, you got it ready to drop.

I didn't talk about the contribution of those who record the samples for musicians, I like them, they work hard and contribute to much, but you have to have discernment to separate things, if you use those materials as a reference library, can be very useful. You can change the measures and sounds of these libraries for your own, re-arrange, then you have your own.

I remember in the 80´s when orchestra musicians fought against those keyboards with orchestral instruments samples, they were against the usage in music business, tv advertisement, radio etc. They lost. But at that time, there were just instruments to build your own music, many keyboardists composed many commercial hits.

But today non musicians are working in studios, they just click the mouse and the music are done, you as musician lost again, they don't need you anymore.
In 2008, I met Shep Pettibone in a studio in New York, he talked about those BackTraXX packs, you could find all kinds of music gender and styles variations read to drop on video materials, advertisers and programmers of video were doing collage with read to use material, so for what musicians. Musicians could fight against this.

I visited more that 18 studios in L.A in 4 years, I saw non musicians dropping ready to use melodies, blues, country on ready packs of drums.

The same thinking I applied for BiaB, you can have that as a instructor or a library of ideas, but if you use that, you CAN'T consider yours.

Get just one measure of a Beethoven's sonata and drop into your sonata, perhaps having heard enough, maybe not fool yourself that it is yours.

I'm not against one shot samples, and really don't want to discuss Parmenides. But these forums are great to grow up reading different points of views.

One more thing, if you have 15 terabytes of samples, remember to create another 15 terabytes of backup, because the larger the height the greater the fall.

 

Audioz version of Hoarders: Buried Alive



Me? about 1TB of Loops\One shots, bout 2TB's of Setup files\Libraries.

Juuust.. right :dancing:

 

I have had tons of shit (Nearly 1.5TB Softs and Sound Libraries) -- but a far cry less it seems than most of you cats.
I still grab new shit here and there -- but in reality, I'm trying to trim back all the unused sounds and softs
and bolster a solid and definitive collection of tools -- much of these samples are quite redundant in my opinion
I did some house cleaning a few months back and deleted hundreds of GB of obsolete PlugIns, old Updates and redundant
Libraries. I had so much shit -- I found that I had duplicates in nested folders Etc. -- Insanity

My plan is to trim my existing sample libraries to the 'essentials' and dump the lot on to a couple 32GB or 64GB
USB2/3 Thumbdrives or Hi-Speed SDCards -- Then wipe my external HDD to free up space for productions

All PlugIns and Softs have been archived to clearly labeled DVDs for recall/reinstallation if necessary

Personally, I've found that 'less is indeed more' -- that manufacturing your own sounds and samples is more rewarding --
and, when you eliminate the multitude of choices that often trips up timely production, the results are often much better

2¢

 

Yes, that's the point, redundancy. Mathematically you will never use all of it.

But, what I'm afraid is: hard drives technology are getting worse, if you read the rules of Seagate use, it says there could be crash if you exceed 350 GB. Perhaps to defend themselves legally.

I recommend using lower volume Hds up to 1 tera, so you mount your favorite audios banks. Do a backup to another HD the same size to not cry later. Hds medias are not 100% reliable. Some countries have a suddenly break and fast return electrical power, this damage a component inside Seagate Hds, logical boards still works, the disk continues perfect, but you never get it working again.
Seagate do not repair components to avoid problems, they give you another Hd back.

Is the same thing when you buy a Microsoft OS, you are unprotected for life, you have to buy an anti-virus and firewall, being that they should protect you from threats against the company itself.
Only after many reviews in American magazines, Microsoft decided to create a free protection, it took a lifetime to do that. But who won with it, Apple.

Let's do the same with Seagate, our data audio banks are precious, ha, ha!