Sononym

#1

Sononym

Anyone got experience with this sample library plugin? And is it any good?

#2

This looks cool. I wrote a script to do something similar but it’s nothing like this. I’m gonna try this out.

I’ll post here another time with my thoughts.

#3

Wow, this looks interesting. If I download the demo it’s going to send me into a scripting rabbit hole as well (definitely don’t have the money for the plugin), but those projects tend to be fun when you’ve got the time.

Not sure how it’s going to classify my packs but that part almost seems even more hilarious. I don’t even know how to classify them sometimes, so good luck :smiley:

#4

I’m interested in it because I started using XLN’s XO. XO is great, but it only does this for one-shots, not loops and I don’t think it’s as powerful either.

#5

Why is that? I’m not familiar with your packs (yet). Do you say this because your samples are weird and wonderful?

The way XO manage it is by a sample being more or less “drum like”. But I’ve found it does a reasonably good job of grouping them by pitch.

#6

I haven’t used this one myself, I use Atlas. Like XO, Atlas is more focused on drums, though it definitely has had some longer samples wander into the folders during scans. Those all just get classified as others though, they don’t get tagged and become searchable like Sononym does.

I mostly use samples just for drums so that is good enough for me.

#7

Thoughts so far:

I have about 70k samples (apparently). Took about 30 minutes to load all of them on my m2 mac mini.

At a glance, everything looks ok for the most part as far as categories go. There is some miscategorization, but I was expecting that. For the most part, this seems to be pretty solid so far.

The similarity search seems pretty useful so far, it has a few different sorting options that allowed me to pretty quickly grab some samples that seem to work well together.

I wish you could sort the results of similarity using the default columns, but it seems like you can only sort similarity based on the 5 algorithms they provide, as opposed to sorting by note, length, type, category, etc… I imagine this would kill the purpose of their similarity algorithm, so I get it. That would be a pain in the ass to implement properly.

Basic features are there, such as drag and drop from the UI, and the projects are easy to access and add samples to.

The tempo analyzer gets pretty close but frequently adds in an additional .5 bmp to a lot of loops. It’s funny because, in several of the loops, I’ve noticed that it did that to have the tempo right in the filename. I notice that it also halves the tempo in several instances, again confirmable by filenames.

Overall this seems solid. I may end up picking this up. However, I have never used something like this, so I haven’t the faintest idea how other options stack up against it. Normally i just brows for samples in the finder. My workflow isn’t heavy on samples normally aside from basic drums so i’ve never put much thought into it outside of basic sorting.

@manton, do you have any specific inquiries about it?

#8

Yeah I’ve used it quite a bit for awhile now. have an account actually. I have over 1.5 million samples. I have collected them for over 20 years and have tried to arrange them properly but when you are recording with other people live, eventually you just don’t have time. There are just so many sound files. So many. Aiffffffff…

I have been satisfied so far with Sononym but I will say it’s not perfect of course. Idk. I don’t know what else to say. It’s worth it if you have a fuck ton of samples.

#9

What are those categories?

XO can do this too, but it requires that you copy the sample to another specified directory. Which is shit, because I already save samples to my project folders, which means I end up with three copies of the same sample taking up space, the original, the XO copy and the Studio One copy. Does Sononym try to do this or is it simpler?

This happens in Studio One sometimes when syncing loops to host tempo, I don’t believe it’s a DAW glitch, but something to do with sample rate decimation perhaps?

My intrigue was mainly around how it handles loops. Drums or otherwise. As XO is already great for one shots, but I wanted something with broader scope and less focus on built in sequencing etc.

#10

They are:

  • Overall
  • Spectrum
  • Timbre
  • Pitch
  • Amplitude

It gives you a graphic overview of the number of samples that fall into each category via a pie chart, and when you select one of these options to sort by, there is a bar that appears next to each sample telling you how similar/dissimilar the sample is to the one you’re doing the similarity search on.

I’d say it works pretty well and gives a good amount of data in an easy-to-read presentation.

It doesn’t seem to require duplicating the samples. Looks like the UI builds a local db, which must create a reference to the files themselves, so when you click and drag, you’re dragging whatever sample from its actual location in the folder it’s stored in on the disc.

I can drag and drop files from Sononym to logic with no additional duplication as far as I can tell. The daw of course will create copies of any samples and store them in the logic project file, but that’s an expected behavior for making sure samples are not orphaned.

It’s also worth noting that Sononym has its idea of a “project”. This as far as I can tell behaves like a relational database in the backend of the app (think SQL). You can create an empty “project” in Sononym, and then when you add a sample to that project, it appears in that project with no duplication. I assume this is just adding a new entry in a “projects” table of the DB and creating a relationship between the project and the sample. This is the default behavior.

There is a setting for automatically exporting new projects. This creates a duplicate of the sample in a new folder that gets assigned the same name as the project. This however is not the default behavior and must be enabled.

You can also manually export a project, which again, creates a new directory and adds duplicates of each sample in the project to that new directory. Nice if you want to create a collection of samples without having to dig through your files.

Regardless, it works well with no duplication that I’m aware of. There is even an option to find and consolidate duplicates, so if you have duplicate samples, the app can remove duplicates automatically, which is nice.

Yeah, I wonder what is happening in the backend as far as how it processes these samples and makes those determinations. Not sure, either way, it’s usually pretty close and most of the time gets it spot on.

I’d say it has some pretty robust features as far as handling loops. It automatically sorted all of my samples into one-shots and loops. Each of these has multiple subcategories (too many to list here). In addition to the classes and subcategories that it populates by default, you can add your own categories and change the class type for a sample yourself. If you have a one-shot it thought was a loop, you can change it easily. Or if sorted a snare sound as an atmosphere, that can be changed as well.

It has a built-in player as well, where you can:

  • Preview a whole sample
  • Select a start point to begin the preview
  • Select a section of the sample to play
  • loop either an entire sample or a selection
  • a search bar with many detailed settings for searching. It will search all data present in the app, including file metadata and filenames.

You can even record a new sample with your computer’s microphone and have it find similar samples. I can imagine this would be useful if you had an idea of a sound you wanted. You could just make the noise using your mouth/voice and have it find something close to that. Pretty neat.

At a glance, as far as I have seen, I dont see any features for built-in sequencing. Seems like the idea here was more around categorizing and sorting samples to make it easier to browse and manage your library.

That was a lot. Let me know if there’s anything else. I could also record a video and give an overview that way if there is interest in something like that.

#11

Wow dude, thank you for that detailed right up!

Amplitude is such a waste of a category. It’s the one thing that’s most certainly going to be changed anyway.

Yeah, this is sounding really good.

  • loop either an entire sample or a selection - this is where it’s at! Does it sync to DAW tempo? I assume it would.

I wanna buy it now. Just wish it wasn’t so expensive.

#12

Hmm… Maybe I dont fully know what you mean about syncing to the DAWs clock/tempo. As far as I can tell, there is no DAW integration of any kind in this app.

Are you thinking for instance that if a sample is 120 bpm and you want it to stretch out you can set it to a lower bpm? I don’t see anything like that in the player.

You can search based on tempo, so if your tempo is 120, then you can search for 120 samples (or a range, so for instance samples that have a bpm of 80-120)

I would say just download it and give it a shot, you get 30 days free and don’t have to input any sort of payment info or anything to download. It will just lock after 30 days unless you input a license key.

#13

Oh right, I though it was a VST as well as stand alone, like XO. If only standalone I see why you’re like wtf you talkin about ha.

I’ve downloaded it and it’s scanning my HDD’s now. 20 minutes in and only 2% done. Something tells me you’re M2 MAC is lightyears faster than my 7-year-old Intel 7700K. haha

#14

Haha! Yeah, that makes a lot more sense, I was hella confused.

Yeah, it’s pretty fast. It’s also possible that you have a bigger sample library than I do. Mine is fairly large, but not insane. haha.

#15

I don’t think so. Mine is around 30K (i think) but I’ll find out once it’s finished and get back to you

#16

Ok so i have 465000 samples. Took about 10 hours to scan.

It did a way better job of scanning than XO.

Sononym has percentage complete and a live sample count which is really good.

XO has a progress bar but it’s pretty vague and always crashes. Hopefully they improve that in the impending update. I also had to rescan my library after using the demo and purchasing it which was very annoying. That said I still like XO for its UI.

#17

Just weird, probably. Also if anybody wants a shitload of stuff to run through something like Sononym, they’re all free. Although some of you might have more than enough samples already :smiley:

Holy mother of god. That’s impressive

#18

@Manton Have you still been using sononym? what are your thoughts so far?

#19

#20

That’s why I need a program like sononym, ha ha Ha

I have used it a bit yes however, I have not had much time for my own production in amongst the net label stuff.

Haven’t yet gathered my thoughts on it