Ableton Forum

Hi everyone,

I'm curious about your workflow when it comes to saving audio samples, because somehow I cannot find a convenient way that works for me.

Let's say I bounce something to audio and want to save it in my User Library for future use in other projects. If I just drag and drop it to the User Library, Live just saves a reference to the original audio file in the User Library, but NOT the audio sample itself. This means that if I were to change the name of the current project or even deleted it entirely (the project where I created the audio sample initially), the reference saved in the User Library will not be working anymore. Moreover, all projects I have used that audio sample in the meantime in, also cannot locate this audio sample anymore. That's not cool.

If I want to save the audio sample (rather than the reference file) to the User Library, I have to locate the audio sample via "show in explorer", then I have to delete the sample in Ableton (otherwise Windows won't let me do anything with the audio sample because it is in use), then I can copy the audio sample to my desired location within the User Library, and finally I can undo the deletion in the current project. That's not cool either because it is a hell lot of work and completely ruins any workflow I might be in.

I know that there is a "collect all and save" functionality, but this is not going to help me at all times... plus it is an option I will have to remember to do each single time when leaving a project to be really save. Forgetting about it once can already lead to problems when I move or delete or rename something in the meantime (yes, I do this frequently).

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Can you guys tell me whether I'm missing something here? Is there a third way that is much more convenient and super safe?

Thanks everyone
Daniel

I generally avoid renaming,deleting,moving stuff unless I have a really good reason. It also helps to just come up with a place to save samples like a folder that just says Samples instead of having multiple locations.

Also I rarely try to create interproject dependencies, but if you need to do so, you probably could save multiple songs in one project folder which might help.


I generally don't save samples in user library. I just drag sample folder to the folder location and that works pretty good for me. Any subfolder of the samples folder if I use alot, I just drag back to browser or collections which helps me find stuff quicker as sample collection grows.

So what I do is right click on the sample consolidate the sample and then right click agin and press show in finder window..... on Mac. And then when it pulls up where the sample is grab sample and move it to my sample packs that I created myself .... done

Thanks guys and sorry for the late reply, somehow I didn't get a notifcation...

@Jilgrimes: What you are describing is a workaround but nothing that works around my workflow No idea, but I want to logically separate the items on the file storage and the items I'm using in Ableton - and not constantly thinking about the dependencies between them. But thanks for sharing

@Ligriv: If it worked like this on Windows that would be great, however, once I try to pull the consolidated sample from the file storage folder, I'll get a notification that Live is using this very file right now and that's why it cannot be moved. Hence my description above including deleting the file in Ableton, then copying it to my desired location, and then undoing the deletion within Ableton... Also thanks for sharing and yes, it is interesting to know that this is no issue on Mac.

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Anyone else?

I hate how convoluted it is in Ableton just to do something that should be really simple. After you've recorded or consolidated sounds, and used Find in Explorer, you can just copy the sample to a new location rather than trying to move it. That way the project retains the link to the one you used and you have another copy in your preferred location elsewhere.

Not sure if this will help but...

Have you tried dragging the bounced file to a folder outside your "User Library"? You can add a folder to the Places list that is not inside the user library folder on your disk and use that for your saved files. It works correctly for me, but I might be doing something different to you.

Also, when you say windows won't let you do anything with the file, are you trying to move the file or copy it? Windows will usually let you copy an open file but not move it.