Audio sample catalogue software?

[jestermgee]

This is something I have been needing to properly solve for over a decade!

I do foley sound recording, ambience, effects etc and have been building a catalogue of thousands of sounds of all kinds for years. I use a simple mobile system that fits in a small camera shoulder bag:
- Zoom H4n
- SoundDevices MixPre Preamp
- USB Battery pack

I will sometimes use the onboard mics but mostly I use a Rode NT4 Stereo mic or Rode NTG3 shotgun depending on what i'm recording.

When I record location sounds I have a diary where I log the info of where the sound was recorded (with GPS coords to create a google map of locations), photos of the sound or location and other info such as time of day, date, mics and equipment used etc.

When I catalogue my sounds I use a XML file I designed which uses some scripting and such to make an entry for each file I place in my library with all the info in it. This has worked ok for years but has been cumbersome because I cannot drag/drop files out into a DAW but instead have to click a link to open folders then locate the file etc. It also relies on MS Excel which I really want to get away from as I have been finding it laborious to catalogue sounds this way and have actually stopped recording sounds until I can find a better solution.

I've looked at professional catalogue options which are insane in cost for small time use (baseheads) and have tried some solutions in the past such as ifoundasound (depreciated) but none have had enough flexibility to enter enough info for the files I want.

So does anyone have any suggestions for audio catalogue software (windows) that could do the following (or as much of it):

- Allow simple entry of a new file (grabs metadata from file and enters it automatically... scans for new files in watched folders for example)
- Attribute tagging to allow categories for sounds
- Custom fields for data to be stored such as equipment details, GPS/location details, image links
- Ability to play the file with a loop function to test loop edited files
- Drag-n-drop functionality to load a sound straight into a DAW
- Optionally have a VST plugin for direct DAW integration

That's probably the main features I am looking for

[[jur]]

Well, Audiofinder works very well, is very affordable and answers your needs... but mac only, and it seems to be the case for the most part in this area.
Soundly is free and works on Windows, but I'm not sure how open it is for personal cataloging.