TAL Drum - how to save samples relatively in a self-contained folder (there has to be a way!)

[swivel]

I think I am missing something, because I cannot manage to save the TAL drum samples in a DAW project folder that I can then move somewhere else and reopen without the dreaded "TAL-Drum missing samples alert "

I recently got a new PC and all my projects were now on the D: drive instead of C:. I had to manually correct the sample paths for all projects that used Tal Drum, so now I am trying to do things the "correct" way to avoid this happening again.

So all I want to do is:
- make a DAW project in folder project1
- add a TAL Drum, add a sample, save the sample in project1/taldrum
- make a copy of the project1 folder called project2
- when I open project2, it should load up taldrum correctly with the sample in project2/taldrum
(to adequately test this, the project1 folder should be deleted after the project2 copy has been made, otherwise it may load the project2 sample from project1/taldrum)

Anyway, I cannot figure this out. The best I can do is save a TAL Drum preset in project1/taldrum, then when the project2 TAL Drum complains about the missing sample, I manually load the preset from project2/taldrum. This is not much better then manually navigating to the sample folder.

Am I missing something obvious?

edit: I have the same problem in TAL Sampler

[DuX]

A great solution for portability of both Drum and Sampler projects would be a zipped container format like many samplers and drum machines have/use. It's a bit surprising there isn't one available. Well, it's either a container format or relative paths option that would do it. Portability of projects and presets is quite important. .talsmpl and .taldrum files should have a "monolith" format saving option. A preset and samples all in one file. Imagine that?

[swivel]

A great solution for portability of both Drum and Sampler projects would be a zipped container format like many samplers and drum machines have/use. It's a bit surprising there isn't one available. Well, it's either a container format or relative paths option that would do it. Portability of projects and presets is quite important. .talsmpl and .taldrum files should have a "monolith" format saving option. A preset and samples all in one file. Imagine that?

OK, so it's not just me missing something...

Combing through the TAL Drum and TAL Sampler manuals, I noticed that TAL Sampler has an "Embed Audio" button:

Saves the audio data inside the preset and finally in your hosts session file if you use
it in a production. This can make your session file huge. It’s not recommend to use
that feature if you are using bigger samples that are a few megabytes big. You
maybe notice that saving and loading sessions can be slow if you embed samples.

I will have to test this tonight to see how exactly it works, but this may solve the portability problem for TAL Sampler if it doesn't impact loading times too adversely.

[swivel]

OK, so "Embed Audio" works pretty well in TAL Sampler, as long as the file sizes are fairly small. It's not a bad practice to hit this for all TAL Sampler instances in a project once a project is complete for archiving.

It would be nice if you could get the samples back out again, because as far as I can tell, you can't.

TAL Drum, doesn't have "Embed Audio" though, which is a little strange as usually I would think TAL Drum samples are going to be smaller than TAL Sampler ones as they would normally be percussion.

So FR to get an "Embed Audio" button in TAL Drum? And maybe a way to extract the samples out again?

[fladd]

Seems to work just fine here.

1. Save preset (by clicking the save icon) into a new empty directory
2. In the menu click in "Copy samples to preset directory"
3. In the menu click on "Reload samples"
4. Resave the preset

The .taldrum file will have the sample folder hardcoded for some reason, but when I move the folder to somewhere else, the included .taldrum file will still load everything correctly. So apparently it can also read the samples relative to the .taldrum file, despite the hardcoded paths.

[swivel]

Seems to work just fine here.

1. Save preset (by clicking the save icon) into a new empty directory
2. In the menu click in "Copy samples to preset directory"
3. In the menu click on "Reload samples"
4. Resave the preset

The .taldrum file will have the sample folder hardcoded for some reason, but when I move the folder to somewhere else, the included .taldrum file will still load everything correctly. So apparently it can also read the samples relative to the .taldrum file, despite the hardcoded paths.

You know I tried your method because I don't think I was doing the "Reload samples" step, but it doesn't appear to work.

I think we may be comparing apples and oranges though. What I'm trying to accomplish is to save my DAW project in a folder with TAL Drum samples in a subfolder. Then if I move the DAW project folder elsewhere (another machine), I'd like it to open up and load all the TAL Drum samples without further manual intervention work to find missing samples or load presets.

I think what you're saying is that if you try this and you've saved things as you said, in order to get the TAL Drum samples loaded in this newly relocated project, you have to manually open the preset you saved. If there are multiple instances of TAL Drum in the project this can quickly become a pain.

[DuX]

Fladd, how do you know TAL-Drum is loading samples from the new location instead of the default sample folder defined in TAL-Drum?

[fladd]

Seems to work just fine here.

1. Save preset (by clicking the save icon) into a new empty directory
2. In the menu click in "Copy samples to preset directory"
3. In the menu click on "Reload samples"
4. Resave the preset

The .taldrum file will have the sample folder hardcoded for some reason, but when I move the folder to somewhere else, the included .taldrum file will still load everything correctly. So apparently it can also read the samples relative to the .taldrum file, despite the hardcoded paths.

You know I tried your method because I don't think I was doing the "Reload samples" step, but it doesn't appear to work.

I think we may be comparing apples and oranges though. What I'm trying to accomplish is to save my DAW project in a folder with TAL Drum samples in a subfolder. Then if I move the DAW project folder elsewhere (another machine), I'd like it to open up and load all the TAL Drum samples without further manual intervention work to find missing samples or load presets.

I think what you're saying is that if you try this and you've saved things as you said, in order to get the TAL Drum samples loaded in this newly relocated project, you have to manually open the preset you saved. If there are multiple instances of TAL Drum in the project this can quickly become a pain.

You are right, this doesn't work automatically! This seems like a huge oversight... I hope this gets fixed very soon!

[fladd]

Fladd, how do you know TAL-Drum is loading samples from the new location instead of the default sample folder defined in TAL-Drum?

Because I moved them from the default sample forlder to another location. But this all seems to work only if you manually load the .taldrum preset again for each instance. It will not work automatically after opening the DAW project (TALdrum will complain about missing samples). Only once you reload the .taldrum preset (from the new location within the moved DAW project folder though) in the DAW, it will work. Don't know why it is like this. I guess the DAW project also has the path to the currently loaded preset in each plugin saved additionally or so, I don't know...

[swivel]

Maybe this is a tougher problem to solve than I at first thought because vst plugins don't necessarily know the path of the DAW project. Sometimes the project may not even have been created yet... I can see why TAL came up with the global sample path to try to alleviate the issue.

I remember having this same "missing samples" issue with shortcircuit back years ago. Like TAL Drum, It's also more of a sampler where you tend to use your own samples, not big libraries, so saving the samples locally is more common. I don't know how other samplers handle this issue.

I do quite like the "Embed Audio" feature in TAL Sampler. It's maybe not so good while a project is being worked on, but for archiving a project when done, transferring a project to another PC, or sharing with someone else, it's seems pretty foolproof (as long as the samples aren't massive).

At this time, it doesn't seem like embedding is reversible, ie. there isn't a way to get the samples back out. This could be solved with an "Unembed Audio" button which could prompt for a directory to place them in. Then if the samples paths were stored as absolute paths this would be ok - just remember to archive/embed the audio before moving or copying the project.

At this time, TAL Drum doesn't have "Embed Audio" like TAL Sampler. So this would be my suggestion: add "Unembed Audio" (with prompt for where to put the samples) to TAL Sampler, add "Embed Audio" and "Unembed Audio" to TAL Drum.

[fladd]

It should just be possible to specify samples relative to where the .taldrum file is saved, without any absolute path. This would solve everything.

[swivel]

It should just be possible to specify samples relative to where the .taldrum file is saved, without any absolute path. This would solve everything.

Let's hope TAL have another crack at it and sort it out.

[audiojunkie]

I don’t think he monitors KVR much. You may have better luck emailing him directly. I’ve emaiked him several times in the past, and he has always gotten back to me within a day or so. He’s very responsive, even if it is to tell you, “No.”

[fladd]

@EmptyVessel should be monitoring this forum though...

[audiojunkie]

@EmptyVessel is not employed by Tal-Software though. He’s just an enthusiastic volunteer that has done a lot of beta testing for Tal-Software. Don’t get me wrong—he’s been a fantastic help. I just don’t think you should rest your hopes on getting this fixed on whether or not @EmptyVessel “might” see your request and pass the information on to Patrick.