I use Media Browser a LOT and think it's far from useless. However, I would like to see the search features enhanced as well. To make it truly useful in this regard, they would probably need to create some sort of cataloging system ala Cubase or Pro-Tools. Cataloging systems have a lot of overhead and only get slower with larger sample libraries. However, since SONAR is a Windows-only product they couple probably leverage Windows built-in indexing feature fairly simply.
As has been mentioned, the best way to avoid needing to search is to practice good organization skills. I have my one-shot samples separated from my loops and I also have samples organized by Genre and even sub-genre in some cases. One of the things that I do is put a couple of '++" signs at the beginning of folder names that contain content that I consider above average, that way they show up at the top of the listings in Media Explorer
Despite it's current limitations and quirks, SONAR's Media Explorer is still probably the most powerful one available on a DAW. The MIDI browsing features are actually fairly unique, although they could still be improved in a few minor ways that could easily make it an industry standard.
 
-e.B

The essential problem with this system is that we are using a simple browser to search a very large and complex database.  And it wasn't designed to be a nice, orderly, structured database.  While some sounds have clues like instrument, key and tempo info in their titles, many do not.  
 
It would probably require a whole new industry-wide standard to get genre, instrument, key, tempo and whatnot information coded into these files, but it could be a basis for solving this situation.
 
Meanwhile, back on earth, what about a way to at least mark good stuff once you have stumbled across it?  The humble Cakewalk Sound Center has a system for marking sounds with a 5 star rating system, in addition to a category/sub-category organizational system.   
 
It is frustrating for me to know that there is so much wonderful stuff hiding in my gigabytes of sounds, and I don't have a really effective way to get at it all...

While I would really like a tag based system in the long run, such as used by Maschine for instance, for now it would already help if the search went through subfolders. Most samples are labeled reasonably so that searching for "kick" will find most kicks and relatively little other stuff.

Later on, tags would be great, and I think some kind of auto indexing/analyzing could sort samples into loops vs one shots.

Mesh
I found this in the software forum and thought it might help and is Free. The developer is also always open to ideas and suggestions.....
 http://www.jamsoft.co.uk/samplesortinfo/
 

This program has potential, but it's not useable as it is.  It would be really nice if findjammer could find the time to finish it up (but s/he hasn't charged for it, so I have no business expressing such an opinion).
 
I spent quite some time with this program to get it to work, but it kept crashing on me and I reluctantly gave up.
 
 

Paul P

Mesh
I found this in the software forum and thought it might help and is Free. The developer is also always open to ideas and suggestions.....
 http://www.jamsoft.co.uk/samplesortinfo/
 

This program has potential, but it's not useable as it is.  It would be really nice if findjammer could find the time to finish it up (but s/he hasn't charged for it, so I have no business expressing such an opinion).
 
I spent quite some time with this program to get it to work, but it kept crashing on me and I reluctantly gave up.
 
 

 
What do you mean? What's this "findjammer" you mention? The software in the post you quote is Samplesort by jamsoft, and it's made by a guy (male). By the description, it sounds like a good tool, especially for free, though it could support more file extensions (like the old Akai). I'm about to give it a try.

I find the browser frustratingly useless in one particular sense - I cant get it to preview entire wave files as it seems to stream the first 20/30 seconds or so before stopping. WHY OH WHY ?
 
Here's the scenario - I'm in the middle of tracking and suddenly want to listen to an older demo mix of the current song. Due to the fact that my monitors are pumped up higher than usual (I track to -20db or there abouts) I cannot play the demo mix from the desktop as it is waaaay too loud and I cannot route it through my monitor mix to headphones etc within Sonar.
 
In short, I'd love to preview entire wave files within the tracking environment via a bus with a -20db pad.
 
I guess this is a scenario that the browser is just not designed around. Oh well.

thomasabarnes

Paul P
 
This program has potential, but it's not useable as it is.  It would be really nice if findjammer could find the time to finish it up (but s/he hasn't charged for it, so I have no business expressing such an opinion).
 

 What do you mean? What's this "findjammer" you mention? The software in the post you quote is Samplesort by jamsoft, and it's made by a guy (male). By the description, it sounds like a good tool, especially for free, though it could support more file extensions (like the old Akai). I'm about to give it a try.

findjammer is the user here who wrote SampleSort.  See this thread for details.
 
Glad to hear jammer's a guy.  Hard to tell on the net...
 
And as I said, the program looks great and has potential, but it doesn't work.
 

Hi Paul P:
 
OK Posting the link to that thread was illuminating.
 
The newest version is version 0.7.0 released Feb. 14, 2014. It seems to be working OK for me, as far as finding and auditioning samples goes. When did you last try it? What was not working for you? That thread was started in 2010. Maybe updates since then fixed some thing that were not working for you. It is a free piece of software that appears to have some useful features. 
 
I just messed around with it for a bit, but aim to get back to it soon I plan on using the RanDrum feature to build me some kits for samples I have.
 
I'm going to go read the rest of that thread you gave the link for. Maybe it will be helpful.
 
Thanks for posting, though.

Generally agree.
 
It's not so much a browser we need as an organiser that lets us organise information in a way that's meaningful to us.
Sometimes by instrument, sometimes by sound quality or emotive abstracts. And doing that with the real files can then have a consequence on the actual software plug-ins trying to use/find them. Also it can take a few goes before you get things organised exactly how you want. If only they allowed short-cuts so we could create a virtual file system. I bet it's easily done.
 
SampleSort (mentioned above) seems the thing, but I'd like it working with-in the DAW.
 
 

As an aside on the searches issue.
 
In windows7 you can do a search for midi files (lets say) in a global context such as Cakewalk folder and save the search. as say cakewalk.midi. This search result file can be seen and accessed by the media browser. Not quite ideal but something I can work with till I get my short cuts.