How to use the sample browser as intended?

[wayfinder]

I'm looking for suggestions on how to work with the sample browser. I have given up on my Live 8 workflows, since they are impossible in Live 9+ (eg using aliases/symbolic links to organize, switching between sorting by name/size/date to find files), and Ableton have been as clear as they could in telling us that they are not willing to bring back this functionality. I would like to profit from the upgrade, but so far it's only made me keep Live 8 around for when I use samples in a track.

How DOES everyone use the sample browser? What are the intended workflows like? Am I missing anything or is the browser objectively bad?

[cotdagoo]

I recently started testing out ADSR Sample Manager to help with browsing samples in a more efficient way.
https://www.adsrsounds.com/product/soft ... e-manager/

So far I'm loving the tagging, key detection, loop/one shot searching capabilities and realizing how much Live is slacking on their browser system and making content easy to find.

It's free too

[wayfinder]

I tried that a while ago, and it wasn't for me. :/ But it's been updated since, maybe the new version fits my needs better, I'll check it out.

And I guess I'll put one mark in the "objectively bad" column

[wayfinder]

Bump

Does anybody use samples in Live? What are your workflows?

[wayfinder]

hey, thank you for the in-depth reply!

i as well have organized my samples in a sensible folder structure (there are apparently too many for Live's liking, though - any tips on how to avoid the program becoming unresponsive for 5-20 minutes at a time while the sample indexer chokes on my collection?)

i also sorted some of my favorites into a separate folder structure using symbolic links (OS-level file shortcuts), but between Live 8 and Live 9, Ableton deliberately started ignoring those (again, because of the Indexer). it's more than a little frustrating, the data is RIGHT THERE but they will not index it, and there is no direct disk access, so my literal months of work sorting my collection by usefulness are now unusable

do you sometimes sort your samples by size or date? do you have any tips on how to add both of these columns (and not just one at a time) to the browser in Live?

[Citizen]

Wait a sec?

They STILL haven’t addressed this (IMO critical) aspect of the Live workflow? Sample selection - and therefore taggging and organisation - is such a big part of any workflow.

This was the main reason I never quite gelled with Push, coming from Maschine’s excellent tagging and searching. Manually creating 128s, and loading them to browse samples via Push was pretty labourious.

So there still isn’t a bette way, and you guys are just manually dropping in samples from your OSX browser?

[jlgrimes]

I'm looking for suggestions on how to work with the sample browser. I have given up on my Live 8 workflows, since they are impossible in Live 9+ (eg using aliases/symbolic links to organize, switching between sorting by name/size/date to find files), and Ableton have been as clear as they could in telling us that they are not willing to bring back this functionality. I would like to profit from the upgrade, but so far it's only made me keep Live 8 around for when I use samples in a track.

How DOES everyone use the sample browser? What are the intended workflows like? Am I missing anything or is the browser objectively bad?

The main thing I do is drag in my favorite sample folders in the library. I usually can get to any sample I need pretty fast. I have one big folder I keep all my samples in and drag it in. Sometimes I find a folder I'm constantly going to within that folder I will drag that in as well and keep from having to navigate to it.

Tagging would probably help but the collections can be used to promote your favorite files, devices, VSTs any way you please.

I really dont sort by date or look for all my kicks as I have probably 10s of thousands of kicks and would be useless navigating all of them. (And some kicks might not be named kick)

But I would say create a collection for just kicks and any kick you like just drag to collection. Probably easier than tagging it IMO but I never really used tagging in Maschine as it takes awhile to setup and seems to be somewhat convoluted. If they expanded the collection function (more collections, nestable), I could see myself using it more.

When I want to search by date or something (not too often) I just use the Windows Explorer which works pretty good with Ableton anyways.

[jlgrimes]

Wait a sec?

They STILL haven’t addressed this (IMO critical) aspect of the Live workflow? Sample selection - and therefore taggging and organisation - is such a big part of any workflow.

This was the main reason I never quite gelled with Push, coming from Maschine’s excellent tagging and searching. Manually creating 128s, and loading them to browse samples via Push was pretty labourious.

So there still isn’t a bette way, and you guys are just manually dropping in samples from your OSX browser?

Drag your commonly used folders into Abletons browser. Much more quicker than using OSX or Windows browser. Those would only be needed for more complex searches.

I think their collections was a response to make their browser sort of "taggable" but it is not quite that. I think they mentioned awhile back that the musicians they interviewed really didn't use tagging alot.

That said I agree Push isnt the best in terms of browsing but Ableton's browser is pretty good (IMO).

[jlgrimes]

hey, thank you for the in-depth reply!

i as well have organized my samples in a sensible folder structure (there are apparently too many for Live's liking, though - any tips on how to avoid the program becoming unresponsive for 5-20 minutes at a time while the sample indexer chokes on my collection?)

i also sorted some of my favorites into a separate folder structure using symbolic links (OS-level file shortcuts), but between Live 8 and Live 9, Ableton deliberately started ignoring those (again, because of the Indexer). it's more than a little frustrating, the data is RIGHT THERE but they will not index it, and there is no direct disk access, so my literal months of work sorting my collection by usefulness are now unusable

do you sometimes sort your samples by size or date? do you have any tips on how to add both of these columns (and not just one at a time) to the browser in Live?

I'm on a SSD drive and dont have any indexing issues. But I could see this happening on a mechanical HD.

That said, I doubt if tagging would fix this.

I rarely sort by date and probably never sort by size as I know a kick or snare will be pretty similar in size anyways. (But I can see the usefulness of having this in Ableton's browser).

[wayfinder]

Good for you if these issues do not impede your work. I can't meaningfully use Live like this, however, and that SUCKS.

[haloidesign]

Hello,

I think i found a solution to this "global" problem. I'm currently testing it but for now results are good.
In my opinion the question is not about Samples Browser or/and M4L browser but only "the browser".

I'm terribly sorry for others but i've been testing only on macos, but it might work on any other UNIX like system with tiny adjustments using a similar approach.

We were fighting to get SYM Link back into Ableton "kind of browser" , Symbolic Link or Soft Link or whatever.
As a developper i understand Ableton approach to preserve browser performance (but it sucks anyway so...)
But as a user it can't be the right approach for a software claiming their workflow is the better/faster/smoother

"Samples" browser, or "Plug-ins" browser or "Instruments" browser are all the same, we want to organise our ableton preference to fit with our workflow organisation and not only based on builtin tools.
Plug-ins gives the list of all effects/instruments/midifx of other the Ableton.
All other folders in Categories are dedicated to Ableton tools.

I'm sorry in going to the "Plugins" category : Garbage (joke)

So let's go into it, and as it is written in the ableton live manual keep in mind that there are consequences to add a folder full of messy files in the a Ableton Root browser entry.

So we have 3 sections in the Ableton Live 10 "kind of browser", good...
Collections (jajaja, only 9 allowed)
Categories (ok ableton tools and a Garbage folder for other)
Places (omg a normal way of thinking)

I don't care about the 1st two sections, because it's Ableton's only flavour and they can change it in the next version. "Places" can do every thing for me.
Places doesn't allow you to use SYMlink, aliases but you can use the hard link approach instead.
My approach is to use mount points but without being forced to use a real hard drive dedicated for samples, another one dedicated to clips, another one for presets etc...

I was looking for Hardlink solution, but mount point approach seems better, especially the "bindfs" approach.

In going to add folders in "places" browser entry.

Now let's make a folder on the desktop to create a simple tree for what i want to organize
In want my clips that i've been saving other the years in Ableton 7,8,9,10 User library dedicated to a "version" to be consolidated into a single folder called "Clips" which contains :
Clips (Ableton
Clips (Ableton 9)
Clips (Ableton 10)

use mac ports to install bindfs or...
use the compiler instead. I've been choosing the compiler one, but have a look at the website if you prefer to change the method : https://bindfs.org
WARNING : bindfs use Fuse, so you need to be careful when you're upgrading your macOS. you need to deactivate the port, before upgrading then activate it again after.

Download the latest source tarball here: bindfs-1.14.5.tar.gz.
Extract it and go to the folder.
cd Downloads/bindfs-1.14.5/
Compile & install:
./configure && make && sudo make install.

open a terminal and create the root folder on the desktop.
mkdir ~/Desktop/Ableton Clips
... or use the finder to do it

open Ableton and click "add folder" in Ableton Places, then select your "Desktop/Ableton Clips".
go back to terminal window and type :
cd ~/Desktop/Ableton Clips
mkdir "Clips (Ableton "
mkdir "Clips (Ableton 9)"
mkdir "Clips (Ableton 10)"

Now it's time to mount our " clips folders" into each folder
sudo bindfs -o perms=0770 "/Users/myusername/Music/Ableton/Live 8/User Library/Clips/" "./Clips (Ableton "
sudo bindfs -o perms=0770 "/Users/myusername/Music/Ableton/Live 9/User Library/Clips/" "./Clips (Ableton 9)"
sudo bindfs -o perms=0770 "/Users/myusername/Music/Ableton/Live 10/User Library/Clips/" "./Clips (Ableton 10)"

Now Ableton is starting indexing folder.
Later on you can click on the Ableton Clips entry in "Places" and start to browser your Live8/9/10 Clips.

i'm going to look forward, on a solution to organise files instead on folders which going to let us create folders in "Places" like
Audio Units/Reverbs/Convolution
Audio Units/Reverbs/Plate
which are going to list : AU, VSTx plugins target.
For now Plugins only allow you to organise by brand ( and again we don't f***inkg care about plugin's brand, we are searching for :
all pingpong delays in my plugins.
all Ring Modulators in my plugins.

etc...

My 2 cents