Sample libraries

What it is

Your samples are scattered. A Splice download folder, the packs that came with FL Studio, an Ableton user library, a folder of your own one-shots. Sample libraries turn all of that into one searchable hub that's backed up in the cloud and shared with your team.

You point the Aden desktop app at a folder. It reads the names, sizes and folder tags inside, works out the tempo and key where the file name says so, and that's it: the samples stay on your disk. From then on the folder stays in sync. Drop a new Splice pack in and it's indexed automatically.

Uploading the audio is a separate switch, per folder. Turn on Upload to cloud for a library and Aden hashes each sample and sends the ones the cloud doesn't have, so your team can play them and you have a backup. Leave it off and the library is a local index you can search from anywhere.

Everyone on the team browses the same library. If your bandmate already synced a pack you both own, it costs the team nothing extra: identical files are stored once.

Sample libraries are on the Max plan. Below it the desktop Samples tab shows the plan and an Upgrade button, and every sample-library API route refuses.

Using it

Add a sample folder. Open the desktop app, go to Samples, and hit Add folder. Pick your Splice folder, your FL Studio packs folder, or any folder of samples. Aden measures it first and tells you what it holds ("48,213 samples, 214 GB") before anything starts. Confirm and it indexes the folder, which takes a few minutes on a large library and uploads nothing. You can keep working while it runs, and the row shows live progress.

Folders past 50,000 samples are indexed up to that point, and the row says so. Split a folder that size into smaller libraries.

Upload a library to the cloud. Open the library's "..." menu and tick Upload to cloud. Aden says how much will leave the machine and how much team storage is left, then hashes every file and uploads the ones your team doesn't already have. Anything a bandmate synced costs nothing extra, so a folder bigger than your headroom may still fit: the warning is an upper bound, and the server does the real arithmetic. Hashes are cached per machine, so a later re-sync only reads the files that changed. The manage-folders panel carries the team storage meter.

Find a sample. Your libraries and their packs sit down the left; pick one to see only what is inside it. Above the list, search by name and narrow with the Type, Key, BPM, Tags and Saved chips. The options come from what is actually indexed, so a filter never offers something that can only empty the list. The list loads the next page as you scroll, so it is always your whole library.

Each sample is one row: the pack's cover, the name (underscores read as spaces), its pack, type, key, BPM and size. Click a column heading to sort by it, again to flip the order. Click a pack name to show only that pack. Group by pack puts every pack's samples under a header with its cover, its sample count and Save all.

Favorite a sample. Hover a row and click the star, or pick Add to favorites from its menu or from the sample's row in ⌘K. Favorites are yours: teammates keep their own. Turn on Favorites above the list to see only them. This works for cloud samples too.

Preview before you use it. Press play on any row, or hit space to toggle what is playing. The up and down arrows play the previous or next sample, skipping presets and MIDI, so you can run through a folder of kicks without the mouse. With nothing loaded, space or down starts the first row. If the sample lives in a folder linked on your machine it plays instantly off disk; anything else streams from the cloud.

Get a sample onto your disk. Hover a row and hit the download button. It saves into the library's local folder when you have one, otherwise it asks where to put it, then drag it into your DAW from there.

Share a folder. A new library is private. Hit Share on its row to let the team browse it.

Stop syncing a folder. Hit the bin icon on the library. That deletes the cloud copy and stops the sync. The confirmation asks whether to take the folder with it: leave the box unchecked and the files on your disk stay where they are, tick it and the folder goes to your Trash, where Finder's Put Back still undoes it. Aden refuses to trash your home folder, Desktop, Documents, Downloads, Music, or a whole disk, whatever the library points at.

On the web

Everything you sync also shows up at Samples in the web app sidebar, so you can dig through your library from any machine, no desktop app needed.

The libraries you can see appear as chips across the top; click one to browse only that folder. Search by name, filter to one-shots, loops, MIDI or presets, and press play on any row to hear it. Playing a sample turns its row into a seek bar so you can scrub through it.

The web page is read-only: adding a folder, re-syncing it, sharing it with the team and deleting it all happen in the desktop app, since that's where your files actually live.