Hi, actually that’s a great idea because I own some rare samples on CD-R. I even remember having the original CD that contains the samples Timbaland used. It included loops from an Indian library and also the string samples from the '90s that he used in Justin Timberlake’s productions. I still have those in Akai format. I’d have to head down to the basement and sort through some of those hidden gems.

 

Producing a song doesn’t really take that much time The real secret lies in finding the right sounds.
You’re constantly searching for something new – either to stand out from the crowd or to create something truly original that doesn’t sound like the usual cookie-cutter stuff. That’s why it’s so important to keep digging for fresh sounds and to keep evolving your sound design.

I produce a lot of Urban, Pop, and Rap music – and in those genres, sound selection is everything. Sure, I could make a track using just one kick and one snare…

But I’ve got over a thousand sounds on my drive for a reason. For me, it’s not about playing the right notes – it’s about finding the right sounds.
That’s what makes the difference in the end. So yeah, having a big sound library and always hunting for something new is key.

 

Okay, I'll make sure to pass along this invaluable "real secret" insight to all the composers and songwriters I know.

 

at some point you might find yourself inspired to learn to play a musical instrument. Then you can make your own sound, the way you want it to be, and inspire people to recycle your notes and phrases into "sound libraries"

 

I had a lot but my samples drive went kaput and tbh, I've not really missed them.

It's easy to fall into the trap of hoarding packs and never really using them. Kinda wastes the storage space and it makes searching for a sample even harder.

I tend to only really use one shot drums and FX occasionally vocals from sample packs, everything else is either from a Kontakt bank or using Synth VSTS.

I probably could do without sample packs entirely but it's nice to have easy access to drum samples.

 

Do you move drum folders from “Packs” to the “Drums” folder? I’m rebuilding my sample library to be more organized and keep running into tough decisions like this.

 

Auf jeden Fall! Ein Instrument zu spielen ist eine solide Grundlage – es hilft enorm, Harmonien, Melodien und das musikalische Gesamtgefühl zu verstehen. Ich spiele selbst Klavier Aber ja, gerade im Urban, Pop oder Rap geht es heutzutage oft mehr um Sounddesign, Groove und Vibe. Trotzdem ist es definitiv ein großer Vorteil, beides zu beherrschen – ein Instrument zu spielen und zu produzieren.

 

You know what's funny? The obvious stuff is often laughed at – until someone turns it into multiple Gold, Platinum, and No. 1 albums. And then it's the same people who clapped before that end up looking real stupid. But don’t worry, you’re not the first who didn’t get it

 

On MacOS, in the Finder; you can do Command+F to do a Finder Search. You can + to add more layers of filters for the results. When you refine your search filters where they will find exactly what you want; you can Save the search you built as a Saved Search. You can rename them to reflect what your search is built to find, and add them to your Sidebar. When you click that Sidebar Item again, it will redo the search with all the fresh results included. It isn't saving the results; it is saving the search filters.

All of these organizational gyrations mostly become a waste of effort and time. Samplism may be the fastest scan available, of all the Mac sample manager apps I have tried; but scanning a multi-tb drive still takes way too long if you are impatient. Logic has a great file browser, but Finder searches are still way faster for me. It's not even close.

 

It's a tough decision for sure.

So from the sample packs I own inside "packs" which mainly consist of composition and stems, up until now, I didn't touch any drum sounds that came with these packs and copied them elsewhere. This is mainly because I have some favorite drum packs I often go back to. It could be done though so that everything is in its correct place. It takes a lot of detail work though and at the moment, I'm not sure if it will pay off though for the reason that distinct drum packs are often of higher quality than the drum sounds that come with musical sample packs.

You know what I mean?

 

477 Kontakt libraries, plus 58GB between SFXs and loops... and counting!

 

Last edited: May 7, 2025

Oh man, in Kontakt libraries alone I have 11.67TB on three hard drives, that's not counting separate samplepacks, kits, and loops folders on each hard drive which I'd imagine is probably another TB(currently calculating: 1.7TB). Separate to that again would be presets for vsts, I can't calculate all that because it's not centralised but I know Serum alone is like 40Gigs. Admittedly it's unnecessary gluttony.And Kontakt libraries are so overpriced.

 

8 TB

 

Endless (16TB and more...)

 

16 TB of Kontakt libraries alone + the rest, about 20 TB in total.

 

I do know what you mean, particularly “It could be done though so that everything is in its correct place. It takes a lot of detail work though…”

The minute I started extracting drums from sample packs, I had the feeling this would be another laborious and difficult to maintain rule I’d have to follow. I’m trying to get rid of those, not invent more. Thanks for helping me think this through.

 

Once you start taking stuff out of packs, you lose most "traceability" of the samples. You end up with duplicate files you can't get rid of, or renaming samples to store them, or them accidentally overwriting samples with same filenames. Invariably, you will end up with stuff you either have no idea where they came from, or making it harder to find stuff. If you have favorites you want available together, copy them into their own folder.

It's way less work to leave them as is, in their own packs. It's easier to find stuff, because most packs have subdirectories with the various types of instruments already separated. If you keep all your sample libraries on an external, when you are in your DAW you periodically save your project to the system disk with all the audio and midi files collected into that local copy. You will get better read/write speeds with the entire project on the system disk. You will also never get "locate missing file" messages when you re-open projects.

Delete the formats you know you won't ever use, artwork, info spam and other text files, and then call it a wrap.