Things to consider when creating your library

Which File Format ?

This may be your biggest decision, and its something you should think about before spending time ripping all your CDs. Here we will discuss the pro's and con's of each format.

SD2 ( Sound Designer II )

The SD2 format will be familiar to most people, since it has been the main professional soundfile format on Mac for many years. However, although it's an excellent format, it is going out of fashion, primarily because it is a Mac-Only format. SD2 relies on extra file 'appendages' called 'resources' which are not commonly supported by operating systems other than Mac. SD2's reliance on resources also means that its not suitable for transfer through the internet without being wrapped in a safety net to preserve its resources. This can be inconvenient, for example, if you wanted to 'audition' your sounds across the internet with some kind of web browser - SD2 files would not work without alot of extra nuts and bolts. All of the other formats supported by LibraryLoader do not rely on resources (although they do use resources, the resources are not essential for these files in most cases, and are certainly not required to simply play the file across an internet connection). So the message here is, 'if you want to ever audition your soundfiles over the internet, pick another format'. With good support for many other formats from almost all software, there is no longer any reason to commit your long term sound library to the SD2 format.

AIFF ( Audio Interchange File Format )

The AIF format has also been used for many years on Macs. It does not rely on resources, so is 'web-friendly', and can be read by most software - even some PC software will read AIF files. The only thing missing from AIF is standardisation of metadata. Metadata is the extra 'non-audio' information stored in a sound file, most importantly the description. This non-standardisation of metadata can also be true of Sound Designer II, to a lesser extent. Although LibraryLoader does embed information in semi-standard description fields for both SD2 and AIFF files, this may not be generally read by software which is unaware of these semi-standards. For example, mTOOLS will read all the descriptions from many different fields in these files, but Digibase will only look in specific places for descriptions. We will cover the detail of what is and isnt read later on. For now, to close on AIFF, its a good format, but the lack of an industry standard description means that only some software will be able to read the metadata in AIFF files made by LibraryLoader.

BWF ( WAVE - Broadcast Wave Format )

The BWF format is an extension of the very common WAV format used on PCs for many years, and which has recently become more common on Macs. Although the basic WAV format holds no great value for Mac users, the BWF extension to this format finally brings a universal, industry standard way to store and retrieve the metadata which we need for a sound effects library. Most software which can read WAV files, can also read BWF files, and those apps which understand the BWF extension will also gain access to the metadata. BWF does not rely on resources, so once again, its 'web-friendly'. Of the 3 formats above, in most cases, we would strongly recommend choosing BWF for your library. The only reason NOT to choose BWF would be if your audio workstation was not able to read BWF files, and you are not using an intermediate solution like mTOOLS to deliver your Sound effects to your editor.

MP4 ( AAC - MPEG 4, Advanced Audio Codec )

The MP4 format is a comparative newcomer, but is rapidly gaining favour as a 'better MP3'. it offers better sound quality for the same bit rates as MP3, and although it is by no means as widely supported as MP3, things are changing, and Apple's QuickTime 6.1 can read and write MP4, fueling it's uptake for the future. You might choose to rip CDs into MP4 format if you dont want to use so much disk space for your library, or you planned to serve your library across an internet connection from one studio to another, and your available bandwidth does not support uncompressed sound. Unless you have a very good reason to decide otherwise, we recommend using one of the uncompressed sound file formats, rather than the compressed MP4 format. Sounds in MP4 format will never sound quite as good as uncompressed, although you may surprised just how good they do sound in a fraction of the disk space. At the present time, a MAJOR reason to avoid MP4 is that Pro Tools Digibase DOES NOT support MP4, so you would not be able to use an MP4 library with Pro Tools. The OS X release of mTOOLS will support MP4 files, so if that is your sound effects system then MP4 is OK.

Which Sample Rate and Bit Depth, Split or Interleaved ?

This is a question which many people spend far too much time worrying about. The fact is that all Sound Effect CDs are stored as 44.1kHz, stereo interleaved, 16-bit data. In some cases, this will also be the format which you are working with, but equally, you might be working at 48kHz, 24-bit, or even 96k. Consequently, its very unlikely that you will be able to predict what sample rate and bit depth you will need in the future. Most people who use 48kHz 16-bit today (this is the most common post production format), will end up using 24-bit in the near future, and will probably use 96k at some point in the next few years. For this reason it has always been Gallery's advice to store your sound effects in their NATIVE FORMAT. That is, 16-bit, 44.1kHz, interleaved sound. Transferring your CD's to hard disc in this format has ZERO affect on the sonic quality of your sound, and is the smallest format to preserve all the original data. Virtually all sound effects management system, including mTOOLS and Digibase assume that they will convert and copy the files before placing them into the editing timeline. In most cases the time taken to convert split and copy, versus a simple copy is virtually the same, yet gives you the ultimate flexibility to work 44.1/16 one day, 48/24 the next and 192/24 in the future, all without compromising the base quality of your stored library, without incurring any extra steps in a typical sound effect delivery, and without using more disk space than you need to.

For the reasons outlined above, LibraryLoader has been designed to only transfer into 16-bit 44.1kHz, Stereo Interleaved Sound Files. Conversion to your target format will be done AUTOMATICALLY by your editing software or Sound Effects management system, at the maximum possible quality available at that time, not whatever was available when the library was originally created.

Where to store the files ?

Clearly, if you are going to be creating hundreds of Gigabytes of data, you want to think carefully about where to put it all. Our number one piece of advice, is to get this all sorted out BEFORE you start to rip. Running out of disk space, or constantly shuffling data around will really cramp your rhythm when you are in mid-rip, so get all this organised well in advance.

Internal IDE drives

Most modern Macs can accomodate several extra internal IDE drives for storage, and this is most often the cheapest way to add large quantities of storage for your Sound Library. However be aware that drives larger than 120GB require a controller with special extensions to the IDE spec. Many Mac's cannot talk to drives bigger than 120GB. If this is the case with your mac, either use an external drive or get a PCI IDE card which supports '48-bit addressing'.

Firewire drives

Large external firewire drives are also fairly cheap and very easy to add to your system. Once again, there are 48-bit addressing issues with firewire drives, so either buy a pre-built drive and enclosed combination, or make sure the enclosure you buy will support the drives you want to put into it.

SCSI drives

Large SCSI Drives tend to be very expensive, and dont offer any real advantages over IDE or Firewire drives.

RAID 5 System

Here is the thing to consider - If you generate 300Gigabytes of data, that's alot to lose if your drives fail, and alot of system rebuild studio down-time, even assuming you had a backup somewhere. This is where RAID 5 systems come into play. The basic principle of Raid is realising that its not a question of 'IF', but 'WHEN' will your drives fail. its probably going to happen, sooner or later to most people and you are either prepared for this, or your get a shock. RAID 5 systems are designed to fail. They have built in fault tolerance and redundancy, such that when part of the system fails (drive, power supply fan etc), there is a spare there, waiting to take over, and data is distributed across redundant drives so that one drive can completely fail, and you will not lose any data. In fact you will not even need to stop working. You can replace the faulty drive at your leisure and the system automatically rebuilds itself with no down-time. You can read more about Raid system at the mTOOLS RAID web site.