Production Expert’s Damian Kearns has an exclusive first look at 6 features under development for Soundminer V6, the popular database, search, metadata tool and sampler used by sound effects and music professions the world over.
Will Soundminer V6 change the way you work with your sounds? You bet it will. The real question is: How many ways will Soundminer V6 help you design the sounds of your dreams?
What is Soundminer?
For years now, Soundminer has been the foremost database program of choice for serious sound editors and designers everywhere. From Hollywood to home studio, its vast userbase has come to rely on Soundminer’s intuitive user interface, its capacity to search through up to hundreds of thousands of files instantly and to paste all or portions of selected files into a DAW’s timeline with sample accuracy. Soundminer is more than the sum of its parts.
Soundminer allows the user to edit and author metadata inside sound files, either on a single or multi-file basis. Whole sound libraries or individual files can be renamed, have artwork attached to them, have keywords, dates, times, which microphone was used to record and other sorts of data manipulated for search refinement. There are dozens of metadata fields that can be edited and these metadata can be embedded into the sound files, meaning the information can travel from one editing system to the next, retaining critical information used to narrow searches and even prove ownership. I have a few personal libraries I’m building so I can attest to the fact that these metadata are vital to proving my ownership, as well as being very handy during the search process. When you’ve got a massive sound collection, being able to zero in on that handful of ‘right’ sounds really speeds things up.
Prior to version 5, Soundminer’s advanced audio signal processing was done through its comprehensive DSP Rack plugins window. In V5, Soundminer added its integral sampler, Radium.
Radium is an extraordinary addition to the software package’s creative side, as it allows for multi-voice, temporal, pitch, and other signal processing; layering and bending and blending of sounds forward or reverse; even randomly cherry-picked audio from morsels of soundbites can find their way into being. Radium is typically triggered by a keyboard and as we shall see, Radium is about to become the ultimate front end for sound design in the Soundminer ecosystem. This terrific sampler software allows for the use of third party plugins as well as its own formidable manipulation tools, making Radium unbeatable for sound effects creation. If you’re on Soundminer V5 and never tried Radium, break out your trigger keyboard and some sounds and have fun. Anyone I've told about it learns to lean on Radium for the seriously cool SFX it can deliver.
Soundminer V5 currently comes in four iterations: Basic 64, PLUS 64, V5 (Standard), V5pro. In my studio, I currently have two purchased copies of V5Pro, to monitor my multichannel libraries in surround and access all the signal processing capabilities. As versioning for Soundminer V6 hasn’t happened yet, it remains to be seen what versions– and what’s included in those versions- will be available in which iteration of SM6.
6 New Features In Soundminer 6
Soundminer 6 has so many new, updated or radically improved features, I decided to narrow the scope of this article to 6 of what I believe are the fundamental, paradigm-shifting new features that I am excited about. Retina display and simultaneous builds for Windows, Intel and Silicon users are things to rejoice about and one can argue these are major features in and of themselves but as a user, I notice stuff like this for about 10 seconds. There’s so much more to Soundminer 6 than display and platform support.
Since being invited to SM6’s Alpha development stage a few weeks ago by chief software architect, Justin Drury, I’ve been ‘geeking out’ and ‘freaking out’ on just how much Soundminer V6 is going to offer to the sound community. I’m going to predict right now that we are going to be hearing soundscapes and sound design elements we’ve not heard yet, as a direct result of the developments happening right now.
Here’s my shortlist of favourite new features and functions.
1. Sound Creation Is At The Core Of Soundminer 6
I mentioned Soundminer’s Radium sampler above. Well, the thing that blows my mind the most about V6– as it is now, in Alpha- is the Radium effects are now integrated right into the main UI window, by hitting the little ‘FX’ button on the left, just above the waveform window. In this example, I’ve engaged the Shifter and the Downgrade functions. I’ve bitcrushed this sound and changed its pitch with ease. Shifter will go + or - 4 octaves. Downgrade will crush a sound down to as low as 4 bits (as high as 16 bits) and the user can vary the amount of the effect, like a wet/dry sort of control, to texturize any effect to the point where simple 8 bit video game sounds can be emulated from almost anything in the user’s database.
There are 20 different types of effects that can be added here and I believe the idea is that this chain and the selected timeline sound can be transferred directly to the Radium sampler, or the sound can be sent straight to the timeline in the user’s DAW. I think at some point these effects chains will be savable, so they can be recalled later. And remember, Soundminer Pro also has a DSP Rack (renamed in V5 from the former VST Rack in SM4) that hosts 3rd party VST and AU plugins that can also be applied to these sounds as well so the possible combination of elements in processing chains is limitless. Needless to say, I’ve been using this new feature on all my projects for weeks now and it’s been an absolute joy.
2. Tabs
Searches are now getting a massive new tool. In the picture above, I’ve created a new tab by clicking on the icon in the top toolbar. Then, I opened one of my playlists (For all you long time Soundminer users, you’ll be thrilled to know my databases and my playlists from V5 populated into V6 with no issue, the first time I booted the software). The new tabs default to ‘locked’ so when I opened my playlist and did a search, only the items in the playlist were searched, not my entire database of 145,444 sounds. Very quick. I can have multiple tabs open at once and even rename them so I can easily tell what I’ve used them for.
There’s more potential here for tabs if they can be saved and recalled later. It would be nice to have them repopulate when the program is opened again the next time as well. But for now, tabbed searches make a long day’s sound edit much, much easier. I’ve already used this feature on two 45 minute episodes of a series I’m currently editing and mixing. It’s so brilliant to have access to so many searches, within a click or two.
3. Reverse
There’s now a reverse feature baked right into the toolbar directly above the waveform display and it even has its own cool icon: It’s just below the middle of the screen, centre-right. Reverse seems to work in real time or very close to it. One click reverses a sound and another click puts the sound back to its original state. This is such a timesaver. Being able to audition timeline selections in reverse really helps narrow down which sound selection might build a decent whoosh effect, or other sound design layer.
4. Monitoring
ReWire is dead in Soundminer V6, as the stewards of the technology, Reason Studios (formerly known as Propellerhead Software), are no longer updating it. Because ReWire is no longer being maintained, this has opened up the possibilities for various IO selections which can be accessed from the Soundminer pulldown menu at the top left of the screen and selecting “Setup [sic] Output Device” or even better, by using the new Soundminer Monitor Plugin inside a DAW.
In the picture above, I have a 5.1 sound effect playing in Soundminer, with the Soundminer Monitor Plugin in Pro Tools positioned next to it to show it working. The monitor plugin can go all the way up to 7.1.2 so all you Atmos users can database your multichannel elements and play them out easily. Beyond monitoring, Soundminer V6 can actually transfer up to 48 channels from its database to a DAW.
Losing ReWire does beckon the question: What’s going to happen to transport control then? In Mac OS, ReWire always meant transport control from Soundminer. For years, versions of Soundminer were able to issue play commands to a DAW so that sounds could be auditioned in situ. All I can say at this point is there is a plan to bring transport control to V6. More, I will not say.
5. Radium AAX Native
Okay, I probably should have mentioned this one earlier in the article but there’s a new iteration of Radium! As an alternative to using the Radium sampler inside Soundminer or the new Radium effects bar in the main Soundminer V6 UI, Radium will also be offered as an AAX Native plugin for use inside AVID’s Pro Tools.
In the picture above, I’ve loaded a sound into Radium’s SLOT 1 from my timeline simply be having the sound selected in Soundminer. I’m using my MIDI keyboard to trigger the sound. Note that the library’s artwork populates into Radium with the sound. Very cool. I then engaged the new TSE SURROUND panner and designated how I wanted the sound to pan in 5.0. No LFE content is created using this panner, as it is meant for generating dynamic moving content with lots of randomization so don’t think of it as a traditional surround panner. It’s more akin to an effect being applied to a multichannel image.
There are some huge advantages to working with Radium as an AAX Native plugin, not the least of which is having all the MIDI data directly available in Pro Tools. In my opinion, Radium is now going to be the foremost sampler for Pro Tools available on the market. In fact, there’s a serious case for buying Soundminer V6 for this feature alone.
6. Metadata Editing
V6 now offers easy access to metadata editing on the right side of the screen. It’s quick, intuitive, and much nicer to look at than before. If you’re a metadata manipulator like me, this is huge. And...necessary. In the picture below, I’m typing in some metadata to the ‘Category’ field for one of my proprietary assets.
Some readers will likely and rightly suggest that Radium’s TSE surround panner should have been my 6th feature choice, seeing as how I’m a mixer, as well as a recordist and editor. I’ve a different point of view. The TSE panner is a wonderful new addition but I’m much more likely to get daily use from the 6 features I’ve outlined, including the metadata editor panel, and to me, that matters more than anything.
Work Is Continuing
I am really looking forward to this software release and I feel extremely privileged to be once again involved in the further development of Soundminer, this time starting in the Alpha stage of V6’s development. I was a beta tester on V5 so this early access to V6 has really given me a lot of insight I didn’t have prior.
This article could only have been possible with the support of Justin Drury and the Soundminer team, including my fellow Alpha testers so thanks everyone. I’ve not been able to write about software during its development before and I’m not sure other companies would be so inclined to share at this stage. It’s a bit of a gamble but I believe giving readers extraordinary access to the development of a product like this really speaks to the strength and commitment to Soundminer’s development.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this tantalizing look inside Soundminer V6, a product that will continue to evolve and take shape before its release. Who knows what the end builds will look like? At this stage, no one. If the features I’ve outlined above are any indication, we’re all in for a rethink of how we work and as always, that’s a very good thing.
For now, there’s a great online Soundminer V5 documentation resource here. If you’re at all into post audio or databasing SFX or music sound libraries, it’s well worth getting acquainted with Soundminer’s many attributes.
From November 1, 2022 any new purchases will be upgraded for free when V6 is released.