Managing Apple Loops files?

Wow. Who would have thought that this thread will grow into a storm while I'm away for a few days (trying to select the best EXS24 successor for Ableton... it's much harder to find an old Halion for $50 than an old Ableton... wish I could keep the EXS24 as an AU plugin.)

JDubd, I'm glad the time delay problem vanished. The XML file you inquired about is the System HD/Username/Library/Audio/Apple Loops Index/Search Index *.txt file, if you are still curious.

I totally concur that one's tool influences one's creative flow. Ableton does it too, but less because it's streamlined. Tracks are hardwired to channels and there's no Environment. (YESSS!) In my book, whatever will help you communicate what you want with the fewest mouse clicks is my winner. Then again, it's just my 2 cents.

I ultimately settled into using Ableton 5 with Kontakt 2, and all my loop issues were solved beyond my wildest dreams.

I still open my Logic Pro often to look up things, I didn't wave bye to it. I certainly got my money's worth out of it, already. EXS24 saved me about 1400 hours of CD-Rom shuffling. compared to reading my discs in my Akai CD3000 and Emu ESI.

Kontakt 2 has a module called Script Editor which deals with MIDI, but it's as complex as learning a computer programming language (and I quoted this from its manual.) It reminds me of ActionScript editing in DreamWeaver.

What you described however exactly fits what Ableton 5 does, gracefully and intuitively. So while Kontakt 2 isn't your answer by itself, running Kontakt 2 as a plugin inside Ableton 5 (like I do) will fulfill your wish list. Or, you could just get Ableton 5 by itself and use its Impulse drum sampler if you like its sounds. Or Ableton 6 with Ableton Sampler if you don't, and want to import your own drum samples.

The reason I personally keep using Kontakt 2 (besides that I scored one cheap 🙂 is that I have all kinds of East West, and Zero-G collections, and with Kontakt I don't need to drag their player plugins around, I just play those libraries from Kontakt 2. 🙂

If we define "ethnic" as coming from a musical culture foreign to me, then the "ethnic" library that inspires me the most is a collection of rave sounds. If we constrain "ethnic" to mean centuries old, non-US instruments, once you heard more than thirty talking drums, baglamas, bouzoukis, or anklungs from various libraries, the difference becomes more or less a blur, and it pretty much boils down to what YOU can do with either of those to inspire people.

I know, there is this perennial dream of finding that elusive exotic sound collection from Gondwana that will enlighten and inspire us into composing the best composition of the world. The eternal allure of the unknown; the reason why people always visualized heaven in places they haven't visited. This is why I moved to Hawaii too, it's an island heaven, right? Yet, once you drive past the inhabited areas, it's mostly dry brushes on rocky hills. This is a perfect illustration of my answer: heaven and its cousin which you seek, inspiration, is something WE create, mostly.

Hello Shaun,

Sorry for the late reply, nowadays I rarely check this thread. Yep, I'm still plodding along with Ableton Live 5.0 and Kontakt 2, and quite happily too since Kontakt 2 reads my EXS24 programs on the fly. It also plays all my Zero-G, East-West and other sound libraries too without having to bother with their dedicated plugins which often caused validation headaches in Logic.

Warp in Live works. If a jump into Live still makes you hesitate, I heard of an AU plugin called "Phatmatik Pro" which supposedly offers better loop-handling that the Apple Loop Browser, and still works IN Logic. Unfortunately, I know nothing more about it than this, I haven't tried it.

Sometimes when I convert yet another of my ethnic Akai CD-Rom libraries to EXS, I remember your earlier inquiry, what's the best. The answer, 200 Roms later, is still the same: it's pretty much a level field. From what I experienced, the newer $$$, xx Gigabyte ethnic (and other) sound libraries have no special advantage over some of the better Akai / Emu Roms. Quite a few of them are the same Akai files, resaved to 24-bit Kontakt format, with a higher price tag, and the file convertability lost.

Today I just found an answer to how to install Garageband JamPack Apple Loops selectively in OSX 10.4

Insert the JamPack DVD, find the GarageBand JamPack.pkg installer file on it, right click that file and select Show Package Contents from the popup menu. You get a window labeled Contents, and in it one of the files is Archive.pax.gz. Drag that 2 Gigabyte Archive.pax.gz file to a hard drive where it can be expanded. (BOMArchiveHelper.app, the free OSX thingy expands it just fine.)

The archive will expand into a folder called Library, which will contain all the individual loop files in its Application Support/GarageBand/Apple Loops for GarageBand Jam Pack subfolder. You can play through the loop files in OSX 10.4 while in column view. Select the loops you like, and drag them over the loops utility to install only those out of the kajillion. Et voila, done.

So far I tried this only with JamPack 1, but it should work similarly with the others too.