Smart Sample Manager
An acoustic-similarity sample browser and organizer for VST3, AU, and Standalone hosts. It listens to your library the way you do, groups what sounds alike, and gets out of the way.
The actual Smart Sample Manager window, shown before a library has been scanned.
Built around how you actually dig for sounds.
Find Similar
Select a sound. Smart Sample Manager surfaces acoustically similar samples from your whole library -- by how they sound, not by filename or folder. This compares audio content directly; it isn't a text search, so there's no "type a description and find a sound" mode.
Visual map
Your library laid out as a 2D map, positioned by sonic similarity. Sounds near each other on the map tend to sound alike -- a different way to browse than scrolling a folder tree.
Ableton workflowExperimental
Tags and reorganization can write into standard XMP metadata that Ableton Live's own sample browser reads directly, so your library stays organized inside Ableton too. This feature is marked experimental in the current build while we finish validating it against a range of libraries -- it's not an official Ableton partnership or integration.
Fully offline
Every scan, every embedding, every similarity match runs locally. No sample audio, filename, or library path is ever uploaded during ordinary use.
What it runs on.
Windows support is planned but not yet available.
Where it's been tested.
We'd rather tell you exactly what's been verified than list every major DAW as supported before we've confirmed it.
Verified
- Standalone app
- Audio Unit (AU) -- passes Apple's own AU validation
In progress
- VST3 in individual DAWs
- Ableton Live
- Logic Pro
Questions
- Does it work with Logic, Reaper, or other DAWs?
- Smart Sample Manager ships as VST3, AU, and a Standalone app, so it loads in any host that supports those formats. The Ableton XMP workflow is Ableton-specific; other hosts get the same Find Similar / visual map / organization features without that particular metadata integration.
- Can I type a description and find a sound?
- No -- similarity is based on the audio itself (acoustic similarity), not natural-language text search. Select a sample you already have, and it finds sounds like it.
- Does anything get uploaded?
- No. Scanning, analysis, and matching all happen on your machine. See our privacy notes for detail.
- Is Windows supported?
- Not yet. Smart Sample Manager is macOS-only for now (VST3/AU/Standalone). Windows is on the roadmap, not currently available.