Should we use submodules, so people can curate sample sets in their own users/orgs? https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Git-Tools-Submodules

Or shall we make a monolithic set of samples here, with more centralised control to e.g. keep the metadata up-to-date?

Or something in between - separate submodules, but all forked under the same organisation for maintenance?

(longer term, the organisation shouldn't be tidalcycles, maybe toplap or some other umbrella)

I'm a bit worried about polluting the supercollider quarks database with a lot of sample sets. What do you think @telephon ? Maybe at least a good idea to encourage people to prefix the name of their quarks with e.g. Samples- or Clean-?

It would be nice to start with a python script that reads a folder of samples, and writes a metadata file for them.. As a practical tool and also a reference implementation for people wanting to use clean samples in their cool live coding language.

Hi @yaxu, I've updated my sample set to

• not use submodules
• move the cleanmeta file into the subdir containing the samples

Could you give it another update/try please?

Also, I'm still working on the cello sets for the moment, so I've left them out - once I've got their layout confirmed I will move them in -

[edit] Quick question, is the Clean- prefix still required? I'd rather not maintain a separate repository just for this - ideally I'd just like to add the orig sample repos to the quark deps

Hi @yaxu

The cbow set is now complete, I would do a pull request, but it's a fair bit of mucking about for both of us for a one line change ;)

Could you please add to the quark deps:

https://github.com/cleary/samples-cello-bowed

? Thanks!

@yaxu first attempt - things of note:

• the subdirs are git-submodules, not sure how superdirt handles that but let's find out
• I haven't added my set to the quarks database, pending more info in this discussion

https://github.com/cleary/Clean-cleary-samples

I added my ukulele samples to the Clean-Samples.quark dependencies.

Therefore I added a quark and cleanmeta file to my sample repo under https://github.com/thgrund/samples-ukulele.

I know the decision hasn't been made yet, but for the sake of testing here's a submodule example

Adding a new a submodule:

bernie@jobim:~/source/Clean-Samples$ git submodule add https://github.com/cleary/samples-flbass.git
Cloning into '/home/bernie/source/Clean-Samples/samples-flbass'...
remote: Enumerating objects: 68, done.
remote: Counting objects: 100% (68/68), done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (61/61), done.
remote: Total 68 (delta 19), reused 47 (delta 7), pack-reused 0
Unpacking objects: 100% (68/68), 10.41 MiB | 3.48 MiB/s, done.
bernie@jobim:~/source/Clean-Samples$ git status
On branch main
Your branch is up to date with 'origin/main'.

Changes to be committed:
  (use "git restore --staged <file>..." to unstage)
	new file:   .gitmodules
	new file:   samples-flbass

bernie@jobim:~/source/Clean-Samples$ git commit -am 'add flbass as submodule'
[main ceb0ed0] add flbass as submodule
 2 files changed, 4 insertions(+)
 create mode 100644 .gitmodules
 create mode 160000 samples-flbass
bernie@jobim:~/source/Clean-Samples$ git push 
Username for 'https://github.com': cleary
Password for 'https://[email protected]': 
Enumerating objects: 4, done.
Counting objects: 100% (4/4), done.
Delta compression using up to 8 threads
Compressing objects: 100% (3/3), done.
Writing objects: 100% (3/3), 470 bytes | 470.00 KiB/s, done.
Total 3 (delta 0), reused 0 (delta 0)
To https://github.com/cleary/Clean-Samples.git
   d360302..ceb0ed0  main -> main
bernie@jobim:~/source/Clean-Samples$

Clone Command needs to change (and should be updated in the README:

git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/tidalcycles/Clean-Samples.git

To update all submodules in the repo, use:

git submodule update --remote [--merge]

To update a specific submodule in the repo, it's possible but I haven't done it myself explicitly: https://stackoverflow.com/a/45251405/3164018

Hi @yaxu, I was just revisiting the metadata for my various sample repos -

When generating the cleanmeta file, there doesn't seem to be any reference to the --shortname value in the generated file. It does use this to create the filename I believe ie <shortname>.cleanmeta

As a personal preference, I'd prefer that the shortname be independent of the cleanmeta filename (and not have any dependence on the filename beyond a .cleanmeta suffix) - so I can keep the quark and cleanmeta files named consistently (ie samples-flbass.[quark|cleanmeta], plus guarantee that I know the shortname will be referenced correctly by superdirt (rather than guessing that the cleanmeta filename prefix will be used)

Hope this makes sense, had trouble articulating :/

I have a proof-of-concept node.js script that parses the clean-samples quark and then lets you select which repos you'd like to download. Having the download size of each repo would be nice to help users make informed choices about what they're grabbing.

Which made me think that perhaps we should be adding more metadata in general, and perhaps most of this could be automatically added by the Python script so that it wouldn't be a burden on users adding sample banks. I would suggest as a possible starting point:

1. Filesize
2. Number of channels
3. Sample Rate
4. Bit depth
5. Duration

This might enable more selective download scripts in the future e.g. "get all 16-bit mono samples that are under .5 seconds in duration from the repos by yaxu ". Is there a reason not to add more metadata?

.cleanmeta looks like an unused extension: https://github.com/search?q=extension%3Acleanmeta&type=Code

but is there a better, more self-explanatory name we could use?

Thanks for the effort so far!

In ddbc883c324159e2591c4c580d487d68dc1152c1 the README states:

We recommend normalising them to xxx dB

I did some experiments with Dirt-Samples in the past and found that normalization is complicated. What comes to my mind is:

• Some drum machine samples have accent and normal level sounds – don't break the dynamic.
• If a loop is cut into slices – don't break the dynamic between slices.
• Short percussive samples and long pad sounds do not sound right together when normalized by peak, RMS or even EBU-R128.

So my suggestions to rephrase this, are:

• Sample true-peak MUST NOT exceed 0dBTP. EBU recommends -1dBTP at 4x-oversampling.
• Default sample loudness (not level) should mix musically well with audio program that is roughly according to EBU-R128. "Musically" means, those gabba samples are intended to be very loud; some whisper is intended to sound silent. The average non-percussive sample SHOULD be around -23dB RMS.

Probably this could form a new section in the README on "Sample Quality". Also with:

• Samples SHOULD not have DC-offset. Some kick-sounds natually have a non-zero mean, though.
• Samples MAY be ready-to-use bandpass filtered. Consider that playback speed might be altered.

What do you think?