Like many I have lots of loops from various libraries.  The issue I have is trying to organize thousands (if not tens of thousands) of loops/clips/stems - whatever you want to call them.
 
There are so many with cryptic unhelpful names. Anybody found a way to get these under control?

I sort mine by developer.  So many of them cater to certain genres.

right click - rename them by content, style, instrument, maker
or number them so they show up in an order you want
or use a combination (whatever works best 4U)

I kept the install directory structure intact most times but even then they are incredibly cryptic. I have one library sub-directory that is just labeled drums that has about 400 loops from a sony collection. There may be 50 files that say something like rock-processed-01 to 50.
 
Then there is the issue of all the libraries, like rock or top40 or acid beats or drum sessions or EDM glitches or ... and always having to drill down into the different directories to, again, end up as above.
 
I'm guessing there is no way other than to catalog them all manually. Like that is ever going to happen. :) To say the least, I have quit buying loops. I get so tied up looking through the loops that I lose time and the motivation/inspiration. I was just hoping there may have been a silver bullet somewhere that i missed.

DrLumen
I'm guessing there is no way other than to catalog them all manually. Like that is ever going to happen. :) To say the least, I have quit buying loops. I get so tied up looking through the loops that I lose time and the motivation/inspiration. I was just hoping there may have been a silver bullet somewhere that i missed.

Unfortunately that is the only way I have found to do it, and that is not ever going to happen for me either, especially for those with the cryptic names.
 
The only thing I have done (for samples that are not dependent on the player they were created for) is to use Geist, which allows you to no-destructively load and slice loops and then save those as pads or even whole kits. The upside to this is you can use just the kick from a given loop, and blow off the rest if desired. As long as you keep the relative path the same to where the samples are stored, you can create pads/kits from (even extracted slices of) samples from anywhere (although Geist does have a nice autosearch to find things you may have moved). This is about the only way I have used to find the "cool samples" for a second time, and the browser in Geist can preview nicely for the first pass (but again that can time consuming). The browser also lets you search all paths you have put in the browser (for those which do not have non-descriptive names), such as "cajon" will return all samples with cajon in the name. But... you can get yourself into non-descriptive names of your own when saving kits .
 
There are also sample players that allow you to give star ratings to things you have played, but not all have good search functionality, and I am not sure which would suit a sorting endeavor such as this. Maybe someone can offer advice for which of those might work.
 
Bottom line though... you can spend the rest of your life sorting samples and never find time to use them, so with a broad enough set "discovered" you can often work more quickly using the audio tools we have available to manipulate those into what you want/need.
 

mettelus, I will look into that.
 
I'll be glad when the neural interfaces are out of alpha!

DrLumen
 
I'll be glad when the neural interfaces are out of alpha!

Yes!! This^

Been trying to organize loops and midi files across a couple of different DAWS. Cubase ‘s loops and midi seem to be hidden under some proprietary naming system. Any one know where they are and how to uncover them for use outside of Cubase? Thanks

I don't know if it will help in your particular case, but I use a batch renaming utility called Advanced Renamer (https://www.advancedrenamer.com/). Free to use and try. It's donationware. I donated. This one's worth it. I use it all the time to clean up filenames. Super flexible.

TheMaartian
I don't know if it will help in your particular case, but I use a batch renaming utility called Advanced Renamer (https://www.advancedrenamer.com/). Free to use and try. It's donationware. I donated. This one's worth it. I use it all the time to clean up filenames. Super flexible.

Thanks. I will take a look at it!