soens

bitflipper
Thanks, Keni. Yeh, maybe those lotto investments are about to pay off.

Yikes! It's one thing when thieves break in and take yer money. But now yer jest givin' it to 'em.

I was just kidding. I never buy lottery tickets. I agree with Bill Nye's definition of the lottery as "a tax on people with bad math".
 
On a tangential but relevant topic, building a new DAW has given me the opportunity to re-think how I organize sample libraries. The obvious method would be by instrument category, e.g. strings, pianos and percussion. But what do you do with all the collections that don't fall neatly into any one category? Where does a glass marimba go, or a carillon? 

bitflipper
Thanks, Keni. Yeh, maybe those lotto investments are about to pay off.

Sorry to be off topic for a moment, but I will gladly share my PCH winnings with you if I win!

My first thoughts on enhanced startup screen:
http://forum.cakewalk.com/Enhanced-start-page-in-development-what-do-you-feel-should-be-there-m3229584.aspx
 
And one could pickup some things from Cubase MediaBay, like rating of files(5 levels) which can be used as differentiating between which stage projects are in. Then you won't have to bother where on disk they are - more like setting a number of search paths where to look, and then ability to filter on category or just rating you gave it.
-embryo
-mixing
-mastering
-done
etc
Or any other way you feel like handling it.
 
They overworked it a bit in Cubase I think, difficult to grasp everything it can handle  but very flexible as such.
But something like a ProjectBay maybe in Sonar with similar abilites - maybe incorporated in startup screen - and some presets to quickly filter out what you want to see.
 
Depending on what I feel like working on a day,  to finalize a mix or just work on song embryos. To be able to categorize and filter out easily - yes, that one I didn't work on for a while.

Mine is by project type, then album (for those who remember what that is), then song. But, I realize I've broken this rule a lot. Soundtrack stuff is in a "Soundtracks" and then broken out. I use a pretty big "MISC" folder for stuff, one-offs and the like. I also keep a "New ****" AND a "Totes Random" folder around for messing around before it gets relocated based on what it turns out to be.

I don't know how you guys manage it. After 2 or 3 albums, my hard drive is full.
 
So I move completed (Completed?!? Joy!!!) material to external hard drives.
 
I make 3 copies to hard drives from different manufacturers for added safety, and label them.
 
As storage technology advances, I aggregate old drives onto larger ones. .

I know this is an old thread, but I couldn't see starting a new one.  Ready to do some clean up and organization before moving all this to the new DAW machine.
 

Cactus Music
A picture would be easier to understand. 
 
I have a  1 TB data drive for all my Studio files, there are other data drives for back up etc. 
The studio data drive is what I point Sonar to always open and save to. Wave Lab also works from there. 
 
There are 20 or so main folders at the top of the tree. Some of these are what I call Album folders. They are named for either a band, solo artist , originals and the biggest one is all my solo performance backing track project files. 
These folders are dedicated to either Sonar projects, mix down files or live stereo recordings. 
 
The Sonar "album" folders contain a folder for each song on the album. in that folder is everything to do with that song, CWP, MID, lyrics, mp3 of original cover tune or rough demo. but  minus the stereo mixdown which I keep in their own top of the tree folder. Within the mixdown folders you'll find a WAVE and a MP3 folder of the album. 
 

 
2 Questions...1st, trying to understand how Sonar is finding audio files associated with a CWP file.  I, too, set my global audio folder to my studio data drive audio folder established during the Home Studio II days.  But when I attempt to open and then save those files under X1, Sonar likes to create a new audio folder per project.  So...it's not using the studio data drive audio folder for that song anymore, I guess.  So what's the really the point of having a global audio folder if Cakewalk doesn't intend to ever use it?  
 
2nd, I love the idea of per song folders with all associated files, including its own audio folder.  Is there any consequence to system performance when burying the audio files several levels from the root?  I'm thinking  D/Cakewalk Projects/Album 1/Song 1/Audio Folder.  I like that structure, just don't want to degrade audio performance when I go to record.   
 
 
 

Bristol_Jonesey
 
Nesting never goes beyond 4 levels, including Root

Just curious, why?  Similar to my question above, does it have anything to do with degrading PC performance?

I have always assumed that cwp files are using relative pointers (i.e., where the audio file sits relative to the cwp, e.g. one directory down, in the "Audio" folder). The Global Audio folder still exists for projects started with no name given (for that it is still "required" since there is no project folder (yet)), or where per project audio is not used. From an organizational perspective, per project is far easier to manage and find over global audio. Back in the old days, the global audio folder was a mess... not only was everything in there, but they all had cryptic names to them as well if you just let CW name them for you.
 
The system isn't going to perform quicker either way, that is solely dependant on the drive seek times and where data is located. Your OS drive is pulling data from all over the disk most of its life.

I'm not burying audio files very deep at all. Only 3 folders deep. It would look like this 
CWP-Solo Act----------------
                     ------ Proud Mary
                                         ------------  Audio 
 
Sonar is set to open at the ROOT of my DATA drive which is a 240 SSD labeled Sonar Data ( G) 
I've changed a little bit since this thread was started but it's still the same system. 
Because it is a smaller drive now I have all old stuff stored to the original working drive a 3rd 1 TB.  I only keep active projects on the Sonar Data drive so there's been lots of room so far. 
 
I've also started using One Drive as my working folder and the Sonar data drive is sort of the local back up. 
At this point the One drive folder is on C drive but these are 100% midi projects at this point. When I get to the audio recording I will use the local G drive only. Audio would choke the internet. 
 
But my new naming system is simple, This is what you see at the root of the G drive. 
 
CWP- Solo act
CWP- Originals
CWP- Uncle Ruckle Band. 
Then there are a few other folders 
MIDI files
WAVE- Solo act
WAVE-Originals
WAVE- Uncle Ruckle Band 

Badly lol. I have 3 hard drives, two back ups and an SSD drive for working off. All my back up drives use a year designate and the individual compositions are labelled accordingly. I'm in the process of creating a third portable backup as well, because 20 gig folders aren't practical for up-loading to the cloud.

THambrecht
With Numbers 00001 ... 19496 instead of projects names. And a database (Access) that contains all informations.
 
 

Wow, I like this method. I believe I will use it to manage my mess strung out over two computers and three hard drive.