Solution to manage your owned libraries

Excel is what I use as well. Especially when it comes to free libraries, I "own" so many that I forget about some very useful / high quality ones. So it's helpful to categorize them.

If you store all of your Kontakt libraries in the same folder, then you can automatically list all of them in order to make a spreadsheet more easily. These are the steps on Windows:

1. Open the command line (search for cmd.exe in the Start Menu and click the first result if you don't already know how to do this).
2. Run this script, replacing the folder name with the name of the folder that contains your Kontakt libraries:
   dir /b /ad "C:\My Kontakt Libraries"
3. Copy all of the results, and paste them into Excel.

I've made a huge Studio One template that pretty much includes all the instruments I own. The instruments are all disabled by default. Then I made a script that converts each instrument from that template into a preset and places them in the same directory structure in Windows as the folders that I put them in within the Studio One project.

So every time I have new instruments I add them to the template and run the script. Et voila!

If anyone is interested I could share the script.

As someone who hoards LOADS of acoustic instrument libraries for maaaaany different genres, I try to put said libraries (mostly kontakt) in folders that denote what kind of instrument it is. Aside from the synthy stuff, I almost have an equivalent for everything in the General MIDI standard...

Before this, my samples were barely organized and put in seemingly random places, and it sucked. I think that you're doing a great thing by trying to organize your stuff.

Brass in the brass folder, keyboards in the keyboards folder, etc. etc.. It's a structure that needs some polishing, as both zithers and violins are in the "strings" folder right now haha. And because I'm silly, saxophones are in the brass folder despite being woodwinds. But I don't spend much time searching for an instrument when I think of it, and that's really the most important thing. Even if banjos/kotos aren't guitars, it's working for me to put them in my guitars folder.

I also have a folder for libraries that contain multiple instruments in one package, because those are kinda hard to categorize. Maybe I could add more layers to my folder structure and/or try to separate the individual instruments somehow?

At any rate, find a way to sort things that works for you - I think plasterbrain's free vst page does a great job of sorting instruments by type, and VCSL is a free sample library that does a solid job of sorting the gigantic collection of instruments it has if you learn what fancy words like "aerophone" and "idiophone" mean.

Reading through this thread shows me though that my current practices don't account well for libraries that come as standalone VSTs, so yeah, a spreadsheet could also help a ton. Attacking the issue from multiple angles is probably the move.

I use a Google Sheet.

The main purposes are: to avoid forgetting what I have; and to be able to sort columns or at least do Ctrl+F searches for key words in order to see all options for a particular sound/effect etc at a glance. A secondary purpose is to encourage myself to use items I'm less familiar with, so that I'm not ignoring some products just out of ignorance or inexperience of what they can do.

Currently my main columns for sorting and searching are: one for the type of instrument/section/effect for alphabetical sorting; and a keywords column for Ctrl+F searches. Another is a column just indicating whether the software is an instrument, effect or utility. Other than that there's a column for format (Kontakt, Spitfire Player, SINE Player, UVI Workstation, Other VST, Reason Rack Extension, Reason Player RE, Reason Refill, REX, WAV etc), a column to indicate what bundle the product is part of, if any, and a general notes column. Keywords not covered by the instrument or effect type can go in the Notes column.

I find that while more columns would enable sorting by more different factors, it becomes more effort than it's worth to fill that many things in at the start. Usually any extra info I need to search by can just go in Notes.

The column for type of instrument/section/effect can be specific. For example, alphabetical sorting to look at saturator options might show this in the Type column for the various device options:


Or, a snippet of the Strings section might show this in the Type column:


Etc etc.

I guess the better you know your equipment, the less detail you need in a spreadsheet. But I find it useful because I've bought more than usual in a relatively short space of time.

For actual computer folders I just store items by developer, and for samples I'll be planning to use Algonaut Atlas once I get started with it.

I use Logic presets to keep track. That would be great except there is a long standing bug with user instrument and channel strip presets that means they don’t always load into projects reliably. But the list is at least there and that allows me to see everything organized by instrument. Then the drives are organized by company.

Reaper has Track Manager, and my template has everything I own, named, much of it also tagged; searchable instantly from within Reaper, so that kind of does it for me.

jbuhler said:

I use Logic presets to keep track. That would be great except there is a long standing bug with user instrument and channel strip presets that means they don’t always load into projects reliably. But the list is at least there and that allows me to see everything organized by instrument. Then the drives are organized by company.

Click to expand...

I use Logic too, could you please elaborate on how you do this?

I use Excel to track what/where I have stuff, but most of my libs are in my template. Cubase makes it super easy to search for something.

anp27 said:

I use Logic too, could you please elaborate on how you do this?

Click to expand...

You can organize user presets however you like by adding sets of folders to the user presets section. So that’s what I do.



This is mostly organized by library. But you can also search the presets and find all the trumpet presets, for instance. The little dialogue box that’s visible in the lower left gives you the option to include routing and effects when you add your preset.

You have to be careful with presets because they load on the current highlighted track, so you need to create a track and then apply the preset to it. You can also create channel strip presets. I’m not entirely sure how channel strip presets differ from track presets except that you create them from a different menu and Logic keeps track of them in a different folder. But channel strip presets have a similar bug to the track preset bug in not recalling all attributes of the preset correctly.

For some libraries, like SSB, I have track stacks for loading the whole library as a section. This is a great alternative to templates or would be if it wasn’t for the bug I mentioned where Logic forgets the name and various other attributes of the individual tracks.

The presets remain useful, even if they don’t load properly because they still allow me to see what I have. And they do things like load articulation sets, negative track delays, score attributes, and so forth. It’s supposed to keep the track name, color, and icon, but those are the attributes that the bug causes Logic to forget so you often have to reassign them.

In any case even when I don’t use presets for loading libraries I’ll consult the preset list to see what I have available. And looking at my list I see that it’s due for an update, as I haven’t gone through my new libraries in awhile to add them to the list.

jbuhler said:

You can organize user presets however you like by adding sets of folders to the user presets section. So that’s what I do.



This is mostly organized by library. But you can also search the presets and find all the trumpet presets, for instance. The little dialogue box that’s visible in the lower left gives you the option to include routing and effects when you add your preset.

You have to be careful with presets because they load on the current highlighted track, so you need to create a track and then apply the preset to it. You can also create channel strip presets. I’m not entirely sure how channel strip presets differ from track presets except that you create them from a different menu and Logic keeps track of them in a different folder. But channel strip presets have a similar bug to the track preset bug in not recalling all attributes of the preset correctly.

For some libraries, like SSB, I have track stacks for loading the whole library as a section. This is a great alternative to templates or would be if it wasn’t for the bug I mentioned where Logic forgets the name and various other attributes of the individual tracks.

The presets remain useful, even if they don’t load properly because they still allow me to see what I have. And they do things like load articulation sets, negative track delays, score attributes, and so forth. It’s supposed to keep the track name, color, and icon, but those are the attributes that the bug causes Logic to forget so you often have to reassign them.

In any case even when I don’t use presets for loading libraries I’ll consult the preset list to see what I have available. And looking at my list I see that it’s due for an update, as I haven’t gone through my new libraries in awhile to add them to the list.

Click to expand...

This is exactly how I work, too, and the bugs are not too onerous. Just set up a blank template with all routing in place and you’re good to go. It certainly saves living with horrible bloated master templates.

Earlier this year I took a text file I had been mostly maintaining with lists of my Kontakt kits and converted over to Ninox, which is superior to a spreadsheet just for the sorting, filtering and grouping features. I feel like this is as good as it will get. Ninox is a personal database, sort of like Apple's (Filemaker's) old Bento that they unfortunately killed.

jbuhler said:

You can organize user presets however you like by adding sets of folders to the user presets section. So that’s what I do.



This is mostly organized by library. But you can also search the presets and find all the trumpet presets, for instance. The little dialogue box that’s visible in the lower left gives you the option to include routing and effects when you add your preset.

You have to be careful with presets because they load on the current highlighted track, so you need to create a track and then apply the preset to it. You can also create channel strip presets. I’m not entirely sure how channel strip presets differ from track presets except that you create them from a different menu and Logic keeps track of them in a different folder. But channel strip presets have a similar bug to the track preset bug in not recalling all attributes of the preset correctly.

For some libraries, like SSB, I have track stacks for loading the whole library as a section. This is a great alternative to templates or would be if it wasn’t for the bug I mentioned where Logic forgets the name and various other attributes of the individual tracks.

The presets remain useful, even if they don’t load properly because they still allow me to see what I have. And they do things like load articulation sets, negative track delays, score attributes, and so forth. It’s supposed to keep the track name, color, and icon, but those are the attributes that the bug causes Logic to forget so you often have to reassign them.

In any case even when I don’t use presets for loading libraries I’ll consult the preset list to see what I have available. And looking at my list I see that it’s due for an update, as I haven’t gone through my new libraries in awhile to add them to the list.

Click to expand...

Thanks for sharing this very detailed response!

If starting this daunting task on Mac, open Terminal and paste

replacing with your username and paths. It'll create a list like the following


which can then be loaded into a spreadsheet or searched for "Violins" for example.

Or, if you're savvy with the command line, just search directly there.


Note in the 2nd example, -ipath is case insensitive.

There's likely a similar command in Windows PowerShell. Or the suggestion from @QuiteAlright above.

eakwarren said:

Or, if you're savvy with the command line, just search directly there.

Code:

find /Users/eric/Temp/"Kontakt libraries"/ -type f -ipath "*violins*.nki"

Click to expand...

Happy on the command line with find but I still use the wonderful "Find Any File" more often than not.

jbuhler said:

I use Logic presets to keep track. That would be great except there is a long standing bug with user instrument and channel strip presets that means they don’t always load into projects reliably. But the list is at least there and that allows me to see everything organized by instrument. Then the drives are organized by company.

Click to expand...

Sorry one more question, what do you mean by “Then the drives are organized by company”?

anp27 said:

Sorry one more question, what do you mean by “Then the drives are organized by company”?

Click to expand...

On my SSDs, I have everything organized by developer, or as well as I can. Until I reorganized a few weeks ago, libraries went onto drives in the order I purchased, so most drives had a SF folder, and an OT folder, etc. But the new computer was an opportunity to organize more thoroughly and now almost all SF libraries are on one 4TB SSD, and all OT libraries are on a different 4TB drive, and all instruments that ship with Komplete Ultimate are on a 2TB drive and so forth. This is another way of indexing and so finding libraries. Of course I can search Kontakt as well for player libraries but that’s a very limited subset of my libraries. Logic presets give me the best view, though I’m somewhat behind on getting the presets made for recent purchases, so in those cases I’ll use the file structures of the drives to find things.

jbuhler said:

almost all SF libraries are on one 4TB SSD, and all OT libraries are on a different 4TB drive, and all instruments that ship with Komplete Ultimate are on a 2TB drive and so forth.

Click to expand...

Right, so you must use some sort of TB dock/hub or something, yes? Can you tell me which one you use?

anp27 said:

Right, so you must use some sort of TB dock/hub or something, yes? Can you tell me which one you use?

Click to expand...

Several in fact. The main one is an older OWC TB3 hub that provides 4 or 5 USB3 ports, a display port out, a USB-C port, a TB3 through and some others besides. There’s a newer version that provides TB4 functionality and more TB4/USB-C ports and this is what I’d likely get if I was buying now. Reports are that the TB4 ports are as fast as the built in ones on the Studio.

Then all four of my monitors have USB3 hubs built in.

I also have two Thunderbay enclosures, each of which houses four SATA SSDs and these connect through TB2 and TB3 and also support a display port.

The Studio itself has 6 TB4 ports and 2 USB-A and an hdmi out. This is the first time in years that I’ve had a set up where I’m not desperate to find additional slots to plug devices into.