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Gp · Guest

Does anyone know of a good software program that will allow me to load in all my music and sound effects and then be able to pull them up and sample what I might want to use? I don't use music all that much but am going thru the process of finishing up my new demos and I hate the idea of having to search thru so many cd's for my selection.
Thanks in advance!

Jeffrey Kafer · Posted: Sat Sep 15, 2007 11:53 am Post subject:

Have you considered something like iTunes or Windows Media player (if you're on windows)?
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Hart · Posted: Sat Sep 15, 2007 2:34 pm Post subject:

I have not found anything that suits my needs either. I refuse to put itunes on my computer (and probably wouldn't do what I want anyway) and WMP doesn't read the proper header info I use in my personal files.

The closest thing that works for me is BSI's free Info Editor. But it's hard to search it how I want.

So,I've played with building a search-able database with Microsoft Access. I like it because I can look for "gunshot" or "classical" and find sound effects or music pretty easy but I don't have any way of previewing the tracks from it. Also I have hundreds and hundreds of music beds and thousands of sound effects. It's hard to get motivated to enter all that stuff and it's corresponding tags, cd and track number etc.
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todd ellis · Posted: Sat Sep 15, 2007 2:50 pm Post subject:

i like Media Monkey

the free version allows you to do almost everything you'd want to do.
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Yoda117 · Posted: Sat Sep 15, 2007 3:12 pm Post subject:

Another vote for Media Monkey.

Though eventually I tossed stuff together into an application database (sadly, no preview here either).
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Kasbah · Posted: Sat Sep 15, 2007 11:16 pm Post subject:

TC · Posted: Sun Sep 16, 2007 7:50 am Post subject:

I use iTunes and am very happy with it. Between the powerful search function and the playlists I create, finding anything I need in my library of over 11,000 tracks is simple.

Gp · Guest

Thanks so much for all the input. I downloaded media monkey and am going to take a look at that today. I'll take a closer look at itunes too.

Donovan · Posted: Sun Sep 16, 2007 11:58 am Post subject:

I have Yahoo Jukebox (formerly Musicmatch Jukebox). It's pretty sweet. It's primarily a media player, but it will divide things up by artist and album. Then you can play the songs (or whatever) based on whatever you set up as the artist and/or album. For example, if you saved a bunch of gun sounds from a CD called "FX Kit" the album would be FX Kit and the artist could be "guns." It would take a while to name everything appropriately, but it would be worth it to have it all organized and ready to play/sample. Then you could play all files in either FX Kit or just in "guns."

It's download-able for free at music.yahoo.com (I think).
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anthonyVO · 14th Avenue Joined: 09 Aug 2005 Posts: 1470 Location: NYC

Soundminer

-Anthony

Bruce · Posted: Tue Sep 18, 2007 11:31 am Post subject:

It's hard to beat iTunes for it's search feature. I have 15,000 SFX and pieces of music on it (8 days worth according to the built in meter) and as fast as I can type it narrows down your search. And, best of all, it's FREE, and well supported. The only trick with any of these programs is writing descriptions of the music to help the searching, which I do in my "spare" time, i.e. "medium piano dramatic" or "fast driving automotive". The SFX all come with good descriptions.

There is a way to create separate libraries through iTunes, but I didn't like it as much as using a simple program called Libra, with which I've created libraries for Personal Music, Production Music and SFX, and Work Files for all of my voice work in and out. The author of Libra asks for a $10 shareware fee and I've found it to be very worthwhile; website: http://homepage.mac.com/sroy/libra/

Bruce
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anthonyVO · 14th Avenue Joined: 09 Aug 2005 Posts: 1470 Location: NYC

iTunes is GREAT, but the problem is integration. Soundminer integrates smoothly with ProTools (as well as other DAW's) - just type in what you're looking for (shoes walking, park, city, music, artists, etc.), preview it or select the part you want to use, then IN your DAW place the cursor on the track you want to import it into at exactly the point you want it and BOOM... done. No need to "import" nor see where the location of the file is, etc. It will keep track of your CD's as well so you don't have to import them if you don't want to.

In terms of workflow, there's a reason why so many studios (at least in NYC) use Soundminer.

Then again, if you don't do lots of production and are on a budget, then yeah iTunes.

-Anthony