EDIT :  I changed the title of this thread (from "Sonar X2 multisamples") to better reflect what the thread ended up dealing with.
Also, I suggest reading through to the end of the thread since I posted while I was figuring out how to do things and made some mistakes along the way.
 
I've been poking around in the various Sonar sample repositories with the intention of setting up a central place with all my samples. Well, at least the sfz, wav and flac files. This should make it easier to share samples between instruments if I put the collection at the top of a disk. No more hunting around in the depths of Sonar.

I have discovered some issues that complicate my plan. A few examples :

DimPro samples are flac files and its sfz files point to flac files.
SD3 samples are flac files but the sfz files point to wav files, with same names as the flac files that are present.
Rapture and DropZone samples are wav files and their sfz files point to wav files.

These are the only synths I've looked at so far.

Rapture and DropZone can't read flac files.
Both DimPro and SD3 will look for a flac file with the same name as the wav file in the sfz file.
So the orignal wav files were replaced with flac files,then the programs modified but not SD3's sfz files.

I've done some trials. I converted some DimPro multisample flac files to wav files and fixed the sfz files to point to them
if necessary (So far only DimPro has pointers to flac files in its sfz files).

Having done that, I can play the same multisample in DimPro, Rapture, SD3 and DropZone. It's pretty cool to have SD3 play a beat with a Hammond B3 for a kick drum :-)

That's not the best example, but it's what I happened to load into SD3 while testing.

Paul P

DimPro samples are flac files and its sfz files point to flac files.

Strange!  My DimPro multisamples are all WAV files (with SFZ files pointing to WAV).  No Flac files whatsoever amongst them, even in the later updates.

From your signature, your running Sonar 7 ?

That surely has something to do with it. I'm on X2.

Paul P

From your signature, your running Sonar 7 ?

That surely has something to do with it. I'm on X2.

True that my original copy is older, but my installation includes later updates too.

I make a habit of reading all the posts about DimPro in this forum and I have never seen any mention of the multisample file format being changed.  This seems like a major overhaul.  How did I miss that?

Kev999, do you have DimPro 1.5 ?

In my case, some of the flac samples are probably from Cakewalk's DimPro free sample packs 1-3.
I have to look at some file timestamps when I get the chance to see which ones.

Session Drummer 3, though, is all flac (it used to be wav) and I haven't added anything to it.

Paul P

Kev999, do you have DimPro 1.5 ?

In my case, some of the flac samples are probably from Cakewalk's DimPro free sample packs 1-3.

No, I'm sticking with 1.2 for now.

I have the 3 expansion free packs (which are all WAV), plus a few additional purchased packs from the Cakewalk Store (again all WAV).  I've also created a few of my own multisamples and sfz files.  I therefore need to leave the sample content's folder structure intact and would never want to reinstall it all again from scratch.  I keep it on a separate harddrive (along with content for other softsyths such as Battery3 and SampleTank) and have a backup copy elsewhere.  Whenever I have reinstalled these softsynths or migrated PCs, my 85GB of sample content remains unaffected.

367 of my dim pro samples are .wav files and 12298 are .flacs.
the only wavs are in the holiday pack.
this had something to do with sample protection iirc - several of the flac files will not play in the sequencer if you drag them onto a track and you cannot convert them to wav files
specific examples are pretty much any sample in the following directory:
C:\Program Files\Cakewalk\Dimension Pro\multisamples\21 - Vocals\Jacyn Riffs

best way I've found to manage the location of the samples is to move the folder and create a symbolic link in the original location to the new location.

swamptooth, I'm not sure what you mean by not being able to convert the flac files to wav.

I did that easily with the open source fre:ac audio converter. It'll batch convert an entire folder.

I still have to find a way to do it recursively. I've used a recursive grep to change the file types in the sfz files.

You know, since the flac files are compressed, they have to be decompressed everytime a sample is loaded.
That must slow things down.

hrm. . i think my confusion started when i tried to preview or load the jacyn riffs from the dim pro multisamples via the media browser and sonar would hang or crash.  oh, well they work fine via studio one's media browser and winamp so it must be a sonar issue...

You'd think that when Cakewalk decided to switch to flac files for its samples, they'd have patched the X2 Media Browser to be able to read them.
They did after all patch DimPro and SD3.

So another reason to convert everything to wav.

I've started the process and have so far done DimPro's drum samples. It's pretty quick with fre:ac, just browse to a folder and hit convert
and it converts all files in the folder.

But there are a lot of folders ! It'll take me a couple of weeks or so, doing an hour or two here and there.

The wav files are roughly three times bigger than the flac files.