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What have you found to be the best/fastest/easiest/no problems way to listen to sample packs? What applications work best for listening through hundreds of megabytes of samples?
I've found that windows media player and vlc are terrible for short samples, especially drums. They seem to cut off a part of the beginning or just skip it altogether if too short.
What I've been doing is just dragging the samples into renoise and just playing each one with the built in sampler. It's just that I can only do 255 samples at a time and I'm sure there's a faster way.

I use Media Player Classic sometimes for small packs, although it skips instantaneously to the next sample so on short hits you have to be watching the file names.

Otherwise I just use FL's browser, it so easy - open the navigation to your sample folder, click through to listen to hits.

http://www.icedaudio.com

This, absolutely love it!

with your ears

outbound wrote:http://www.icedaudio.com

This, absolutely love it!

+1

That or the demo of Reaper.

+1 for audiofinder

Of course I use my ears, but the process in between is what I'm concerned with
That audiofinder software looks pretty good, but I'm on windows.
ah yeah I forgot how much I liked FL's browser. Reaper's works pretty good too. I actually forgot renoise has a browser with pre-listen.
However, FL's is faster, plays soundfonts and a lot of other file types, and ultimately easier to navigate with the keyboard. Tip: Alt+Up Arrow moves up one folder level. This has saved me a lot of time, navigating with keyboard shortcut, the arrow keys and enter to move through folders.
Between this, the sample library and instruments, I'm getting so much use out of the FL10 demo without actually knowing how to use it to make a tune!

Thanks guys!

^ FL Studio is amazing for this, nothing else seems ergonomic enough

Who wants to listen to entire sample packs? Sounds boring as fuck to me! Just grab a few sampels and make a tune init?

Gribble wrote:Who wants to listen to entire sample packs? Sounds boring as fuck to me! Just grab a few sampels and make a tune init?

Oh shit, why didn't I think of this?

Benji wrote:

Gribble wrote:Who wants to listen to entire sample packs? Sounds boring as fuck to me! Just grab a few sampels and make a tune init?

Oh shit, why didn't I think of this?

just sayin, why listen to a whole pack? build up a favorites folder of a few good sounds... else you lose the flow.

Gribble wrote:

Benji wrote:

Gribble wrote:Who wants to listen to entire sample packs? Sounds boring as fuck to me! Just grab a few sampels and make a tune init?

Oh shit, why didn't I think of this?

just sayin, why listen to a whole pack? build up a favorites folder of a few good sounds... else you lose the flow.

You must be joking

Benji wrote:

Gribble wrote:

Benji wrote:

Gribble wrote:Who wants to listen to entire sample packs? Sounds boring as fuck to me! Just grab a few sampels and make a tune init?

Oh shit, why didn't I think of this?

just sayin, why listen to a whole pack? build up a favorites folder of a few good sounds... else you lose the flow.

You must be joking

i have over 50gb of samples - i use a lot of them like a lucky dip and just browse through every now and then. if i listened to them all it'd take weeks and depress me.

why am i joking?

Because that's retarded

I never listen to all my samples? I have my folder and I just kind of intuitively go through various subfolders and scroll randomly and prelisten to whatever's highlighted. 1 out of 5 kicks is gonna be usable

I feel inspired working on tunes. I feel uninspired listening to 1 second clips.

Genevieve wrote:I never listen to all my samples? I have my folder and I just kind of intuitively go through various subfolders and scroll randomly and prelisten to whatever's highlighted. 1 out of 5 kicks is gonna be usable

I feel inspired working on tunes. I feel uninspired listening to 1 second clips.

Obviously you don't listen to all of them every time you make a track, but you have to have listened to them at some point to know where to look. You don't just pick a few samples and hope for the best right?

Genevieve wrote:1 out of 5 kicks is gonna be usable

exactly!

Benji wrote:

Genevieve wrote:I never listen to all my samples? I have my folder and I just kind of intuitively go through various subfolders and scroll randomly and prelisten to whatever's highlighted. 1 out of 5 kicks is gonna be usable

I feel inspired working on tunes. I feel uninspired listening to 1 second clips.

Obviously you don't listen to all of them every time you make a track, but you have to have listened to them at some point to know where to look. You don't just pick a few samples and hope for the best right?

you're never going to remember the contents of a sample pack, the names of each snare or kick lol! and you wont know if its any good for your tune until you have all the other sounds there, so it's best to just throw in an "ok" kick or snare to get things going, then worry about the perfect sample later.

Oh nah, when I folder them I'll have a bit of a listen. There's really no 'system' to it, but I know where I can find the acoustic kicks or the punchy low-end ones or the top-end kicks. Sometimes it takes a biiiit of guessing, but usually I know I'm within 10 samples of what I need. I don't know how because it really is a mess :p

Could just be a way of doing things.

Gribble wrote:you're never going to remember the contents of a sample pack, the names of each snare or kick lol! and you wont know if its any good for your tune until you have all the other sounds there, so it's best to just throw in an "ok" kick or snare to get things going, then worry about the perfect sample later.

Maybe your memory isn't too good, I'm sure most people can remember which samples they like

Genevieve wrote:Oh nah, when I folder them I'll have a bit of a listen. There's really no 'system' to it, but I know where I can find the acoustic kicks or the punchy low-end ones or the top-end kicks. Sometimes it takes a biiiit of guessing, but usually I know I'm within 10 samples of what I need. I don't know how because it really is a mess :p

Could just be a way of doing things.

Different strokes and all that, I'm crazy OCD with how my sample directories are organised so I know more or less where I need to be looking. It can be pretty tedious looking through a lot of samples if you're trying to layer a few snares or whatever but it's all part of producing I guess