Hi. Just found a crate of my old Akai sample CDs, and am delighted that I can import them into Halion 7 (macOS).
Done 2, and I see that the instruments are listed as expected in my user mediabay. However, there is no tagging information, just the abbreviated patch names.
Is there any way I can at least apply tags per CD, so that I can find things more easily? Obviously automatic tagging would be great, and I can scan the audio files themselves in Atlas and XO, but it would be great to manage the user patches in some way. I see that the files from each CD are organised in folders, but can’t find a way to usefully display even the path in my media bay, as doing so just displays the vstpreset files, which are all in one folder.
Am I missing some way to select multiple instruments and apply a (say) content set tag to them all at once? This way I can at least separate the CDs.
Tags are entirely up to the user to add. Those cd’s predate any of that, and Halion has no clue what you are ripping aside from its an ‘S1000/S3000 series sample cd’.
Select a whole bunch of files in MediaBay, edit whatever fields you want in the little inspector window on the right.
I would recommend getting very comfortable with the manual on it. Mediabay is its own beast altogether and works across the entire Cubase ecosystem. You have about 100+ other fields you can make visible in that window view, you can choose whatever way to tag those as you like, whether its the category/tempo/genre/library name/manufacturer/etc…
That looks perfectly normal for an AKAI import. Those samplers didn’t have jack for 8+ character filenames up until the mid 90s, and the format never changed so everything is going to be in a bunch of 60MB partitions, all capital letters, etc, depending on how the person setup the banks that were made into that cd.
Are you a Cubase user as well? The Media Bay in Cubase is much easier to batch edit tags in your patches.
In case anyone else has trouble, I was able to sort this in Halion.
I selected the patches I wanted to tag, then clicked in a Category field. This popped up a menu from which I could choose a category, or add a new Category and Sub-Category (using the + icon to the right of the new sub-category). Choosing this then applied to all the selected patches.
LOL that works too! I use the Library Name and Manufacturer fields to separate mine, so my libraries show in Media Bay directly as like ‘Distorted Reality Vol 1’, ‘Jungle Warfare’, etc…
I still haven’t ripped those particular discs yet (I have the same sampler on my desk), but I would’ve done the same, put Akai in the manufacturer field (I cant remember the exact name of it) and the S3000XL as the Library Name. That way when you use Media Bay’s default layout, you’ll see the icons for the entire library right there.
