How To Organize Your Sound Effects Library Like A Pro

[@StephenAlvarezSound]

Can't tell you enough how valuable this information is to the sound design community. This along with all your videos. Great work as always man, keep 'em coming!

[@AftertouchAudio]

Thank you Stephen, I'm glad you enjoyed the video =^.^=

[@kuro1848]

Before creating a playlist, do you think it would be a good idea for me to add a prefix to all of my libraries's main folder with a very rough indication as to what type library it is? For example for General libraries: "GEN | Boom - Boom One" "GEN | PSE - Odyssey Collection" or Science Fiction ones: "SCI | Soundmorph - Future Weapons Bundle" "SCI | SmartsoundFX - Futuristic" That way I can have all libraries sort-of-sorted by families by default. Technically I could just make folders but like you I want to avoid subfolders and having to click around too much

[@maxmedema]

Not a sound designer but a video editor and this is sooo helpful! Now I just need to research drives to move my collection to! 😁

[@AftertouchAudio]

I'm glad this has helped =^.^=

[@TheHeavy136]

as usual I've learnt more in this 10 minute video than in my entire semester in a sound design uni subject

[@AftertouchAudio]

Hey =^.^= I'm glad you enjoying the videos =^.^= I spend a lot of time on the pre-production stage to make sure I I pack as much information as possible into a short of a video as possible.

[@TUSH4R451]

Hey man, very nice video! I watched it a while back and came back to it to start organizing my sound library. But I see that the Google Docs link is broken. Any chance of giving us a new link?

[@PufftasticJames4]

I currently have an External Hard Drive, but I'm planning to get a RAID (NAS), since my EHD is dying. Plus I need to share my sound library since I have a team with music composers, sound designers, and musicians and it keeps growing and growing, and my library's expanding. I'm planning to start with a 2-bay with 2 8TB drives.

[@AftertouchAudio]

I run most of my libraries off of a NAS drive and 8TB should be more than enough. I would be carful about multi-user licensing though most sample library companies are very touchy about having one user share libraries even within a company.

[@cactuzzsound]

I use Soundly for cloud sfx and Explorer for my RAID libraries (bought and recorded). I mostly use pre-organised cloud libraries, but you’ve inspired me to start digging through my not-so-big local one and clean my shit up. I also think I need to steal your playlist’s names :)

[@AftertouchAudio]

Haha I'll include all of my playlists in the description =^.^=

[@jamesmeustache7740]

Those headphones are seriously epic :D

[@AftertouchAudio]

Verum Ones, planar magnetic headphones. I seriously love them =^.^=

[@Louis_Beri]

This channel is precious, thanks mate.

[@linasmak9199]

Regarding metadata, i have a saying, if you can’t find a sound it’s the same as it doesn’t exist. Metadata is somewhat more important than the sound itself.

[@AftertouchAudio]

I say the same thing, you could have the best engine sound ever, but if you can't find it, you might as well not have it.

[@80slimshadys]

Hi mate, thx for the video, very helpful. Though I need a question answered. The file structure you named ''Files recorded for SFX library''. Do you put stuff YOU have recorded in it? As in it's only personal stuff you have created?

[@AftertouchAudio]

Yes, they are only sounds I’ve personally recorded. It is usually for a planned library. If for example I wanted to make a slot machine sfx library and I started planning recording sessions to get these sounds those sounds would go in there.

[@80slimshadys]

@@AftertouchAudio Ok fair enough. Thx.

[@PatrickKoski]

Hey Tyler, what a wonderful system. Definitely going to implement some steps into my own organization. I was wondering though how you define the folder labeled "Recorded sound effects"? Is this a folder for Sound effects that would not be processed in any way (and has a similar sub-folder structure to your personal library) and used "as-is" sfx, or would this be more of a "Source Material" type of folder for containing original recorded audio files? Or do you mainly work with synthesized sound effects and want to keep your recorded sfx separate from them? Or is it something totally different that i am not thinking about. Much love from Finland, amazing content, have been watching and using your content as a source for both research and inspiration through out my time as a sound design student and will continue to do this once i graduate.

[@ishrakkabirzesan3720]

really great work

[@O_____________O]

Do you think you could provide a list of your playlists? A few screenshots work as well. They do seem to follow a different categorisation from UCS and I'm curious about your choices

[@AftertouchAudio]

I just posted them in my discord under the General Chat.

[@O_____________O]

@@AftertouchAudio Thanks! Though there are a few missing playlists from the "EXT" category in your screenshots (not in the ambiences!) it's imo better than just using UCS which has so many specifics that it makes having to select only one playlist at a time on soundminer counter productive lol

[@matiasgibbs251]

What hard drives do you use to store your SFX? Thanks, great video

[@AftertouchAudio]

I'm working on a video/blog post to help describe how I use a variety of drives but I'll break it down here. SSDs are used for anything that I'm streaming directly from disk like virtual instruments, operating systems, or anything that needs a live playback. HDDs 7200rpm are used for my main sound effects drive. I use a RAID system in RAID 0 to give me more space but also faster speeds, and a separate duplicate RAID drive in RAID 5 to give me not only 1 backup of my main drive, but a 2nd backup due to the redundant drives RAID 5 offers. HDDs 5400rpm are used strictly for backups, they are too slow to be read from at any speed for a workflow, but are perfect for archiving data that you don't need to access on a regular bases.

[@matiasgibbs251]

Great stuff, thank you!@@AftertouchAudio I'm in the market for a 6tb or 8tb HDD with 7200rpm, do you have any suggestions on brands/models? It would be used for sound libraries.

[@1MinuteGaming]

Those are some dope headphones I love them

[@AftertouchAudio]

They are Verum Ones =^.^=

[@XXROGUE]

I know this is an older video - but have you switched over to Soundminer V6 yet? Looking to get some opinions if it's worth switching over from V5 right away or not (I will eventually).

[@AftertouchAudio]

If you have V5 Pro, I'd say no V5 Pro is still fantastic. HOWEVER, Justin is working on some really cool features that will be released (for free) in V6 that will be awesome to use =^.^=

[@XXROGUE]

@@AftertouchAudio Ohh sweet, looks like I'll have to switch over to V6 pro then 🤘I'm currently on V5 Plus (windows), but I'm happy V6 has pro for windows now. Thanks for posting these videos, I love seeing a community of sound editors on TY. I'm the only one in my post-audio house that's passionate about organizing in SM 🤣

[@pgreens]

Great video, thanks!

[@MichaelCarson1]

This is great. Thanks! Curious, what headphones are you using?

[@AftertouchAudio]

They are called Verum Ones Planar magnetic Headphones. Small company in Ukraine that makes them by hand.

[@MichaelCarson1]

Nice! Very cool. @@AftertouchAudio

[@quinnhawse]

Another great video man! very insightful.

[@AftertouchAudio]

Thank you Quinn =^.^=

[@AskonDBZ]

THANK YOU, dealing with four million files here

[@AftertouchAudio]

Aye!!! Happy organizing.

[@bakamotion9486]

Do you ever run into trouble differenciating what is a "music samples" library and a "sound effects" library? There are a bunch I don't know where to put

[@AftertouchAudio]

Sometimes, but I usually rely on creating "packs of sounds" that I then organize within Sound Miner. From there I can tag the sound with multiple attributes.

[@bakamotion9486]

@@AftertouchAudio I'm thinking about doing that as well, I can't imagine how long it's going to take though. Thanks!

[@AftertouchAudio]

It took me about two months, but I also had to create this system.

[@MrPandabros]

How long did it take you to make all those playlist? I have like 12gb of sound I'd have to org lol

[@AftertouchAudio]

I've been collecting sounds over the last 10 years, but I started this organization system around the 8TB mark and it took me about 3 months to get a working system and organize everything.

[@MrPandabros]

@@AftertouchAudio oh wow! That's long haha. Was it worth the time for the workflow?

[@AftertouchAudio]

I had a lot of sounds to go through when I started organizing which is why it took so long, but yes it was 100% worth the time spent as now it is just maintenance which is really easy to do. I market my self as a fast/quality sound designer so having this system cuts hours out of my sound design process just sifting through sounds.

[@MrPandabros]

@@AftertouchAudio gotcha! I guess I'll give it a shot then. Thanks for the tips man!

[@sicgenius]

This will take hours and hours to organize. I'm so busy working, when do you have time to make all those playlists?

[@AftertouchAudio]

It is something I struggled with for awhile cause my SFX library was 10TB in size when I started this. I work as a contract Sound Designer so I go through chunks of time where I'm very busy, but I also go through periods of time where I have more free time. So when I'm not working on client projects I'm usually recording or organising personal recordings. Also some purchased libraries are a lot easier to organize as they will have sub folders organised already for me, where other libraries like the Core collection are a lot harder to organize just because of the shear size of content and wide range of types of sounds in the same folder.

[@prashantkamble4178]

the download link is not open!!

[@AftertouchAudio]

The download link is in the description, Where is the link you are clicking on that is not opening?

[@falstmusic]

Anyone had experience with trying to organize their library with obsidian, the note app?

[@AftertouchAudio]

This would be the first I’m hearing of it??

[@ERICDIZZYASMR]

Are we not going to discuss the beautiful masterpiece you have covering your ears?

[@AftertouchAudio]

Haha, the headphones are called Verum Ones, they are planar magnetic headphones and are fantastic openback headphones.

[@김정찬-p7q]

2:34

[@seanmartinflix]

Thank you. Great video. to anybody reading this that may know.. Can any of the software show the wave form next to each Sound effect so you don't have to click on each one to show it at the bottom. Davinci resolve does. this in their sound library for example. you can see the wave. along with the label. Thank you.

[@MainStream-Tech]

My BRO

[@AftertouchAudio]

My Dude

[@Schallkoma_Rockenberg]

i bet u are a marvel and or tony stark fan ;)

[@AftertouchAudio]

Hahaha what would give you that impression 🤣

[@Schallkoma_Rockenberg]

@@AftertouchAudio your glasses :p... and dr. strange on your monitor. as random tony stark cosplayer i have round about 15 glasses ^^

[@AftertouchAudio]

@Schallkoma_Rockenberg but are they prescription? ;)

[@Schallkoma_Rockenberg]

@@AftertouchAudio haha, no. just plastic ^^