Anyone who uses sound libraries and loops has a love hate relationship with them. Over time as our sound libraries and loop collections grow that can become a real creativity killer. Why you ask, surely the more stuff you have the more choice you have? And that is the problem.

Sound libraries and loops collections become so big that it’s like trying to find a needle in a haystack and the longer you trawl through you collection the quicker your creativity is killed.

Surely it’s not that hard on a modern computer? All you have to do is use the search function and all the samples and loops appear? That’s OK if the following are true;

• The samples were labelled right in the first place, what if there’s a pile of kicks on your hard drive that are all called Kik, or kick, or kicks, or K, or even worse some random label linked to how the sound library was created. See above image as an example.

• The samples are labelled with all the information to make a meaningful search such as key, BPM, style, genre, etc.

When you’ve got several TBs of samples and loops then you are as likely to find the right sample fast as you are win the lottery.

Enter Waves Cosmos

Waves Cosmos is the software that many musicians have been waiting to have for a long time.

Waves Cosmos analyses every sample in a location using the Waves neural engine and sorts, labels, and tags them all so you can make meaningful searches. What do we mean by meaningful searches? Well it’s not looking for the file name, the filename could be K£mgoofl but if the neural engine has been across it and recognises it as a kick drum then it will appear in your search for kick drums. Even better, it doesn’t just lump all the kicks together as one set of sounds, it knows if it has saturation on it, is a rock kick, or if it’s been sampled from vinyl. Yep, it’s magic!

You can find one shots and loops… but that’s just the start.

COSMOS lets you find samples and loops by BPM, key, relative key and even a range of those things. So if you are looking for a sample in C and choose relative key then COSMOS will also show you all the samples and loops in Am.

So far we’ve been talking about sorting and listing samples in powerful ways. You’d think that would be enough to make life easier but let’s talk about the name COSMOS.

COSMOS can as it’s name suggest create an entire COSMOS of all your one-shot sounds and present them as a galaxy of dots, sorted in different ways. It can sort in instrument group, brightness, space, saturation, dynamics and instrument. This is of course as well as by the usual tags and key etc.

When you first try COSMOS there’s an element of scepticism about how good the neural engine is. We spent some time clicking around the universe to check the quality of the grouping and they are surprisingly accurate, for example the COSMOS based on space had bone dry samples on the left moving to samples living in huge spaces on the right… it really does work.

Enter Waves CR8

Waves CR8 is the companion sample player. Another sample player we hear you say, we need one of those like a hole in the head. If CR8 were just another sample player then it would be a hard to disagree with that sentiment.

However, Waves CR8 is a little powerhouse of a sampler that is tightly integrated with COSMOS, CR8 offers the following;

• 8 sample layers to create rich sample textures

• Stack and mix the 8 layers, or split them across your keyboard

• 5 stretching options: Voice, Beats, Melodic, Harmonic, Classic

• Play and Launch modes

• Root and BPM detection

• Drag & drop 4 LFO/Sequencer and 4 ADSR modulators on any CR8 control

• Individual Cutoff, Resonance and Drive for each sample with 4 assignable group filters

• Assign keyboard functions to CR8 controls for extra playability

• Internal sample mixer to easily mix the sample layers together

• Integrates with the COSMOS AI-powered Sampler Finder

• Over 2500 free samples (with the built-in COSMOS)

• Packed with over 800 creative sampler presets

Put COSMOS and CR8 together and you get to build some powerful sound creations, using either one-shot samples, loops and by mixing both. The time-stretch algorithms allow you to mix and match loops and samples and keys. Even better, CR8 is synced to the BPM of your DAW so if you want to speed things up or slow them down, CR8 does this without even thinking about it.

CR8 also offers different playing modes for the samples so you can play them like a regular synth part or trigger loops and one shots without having to mess around setting up envelopes.

Talking of envelopes, in CR8 there’s a veritable selection of modulation sources to choose from if you want to link parts of the synth engine side of CR8 to things like Mod Wheel, Pitch Bend or Aftertouch. You can also use the built in modulators and assign them to any part of the engine to bring movement to the sounds you are using, finally there’s a set of envelopes you can use on your sounds.

In Summary

We’d pay good money to get the kind of sample and loop library organisation offered by Waves COSMOS, but here’s the best news… it’s FREE!

That’s fantastic news. One small thing about all the data processing going on, Waves state that COSMOS is a local application and does not report any data back to Waves. So if you have any privacy concerns that should help allay them.

The Waves CR-8 Sampler is a great partner for those using COSMOS. You probably already have sample players coming out of your ears, but for the relatively low price of $34.99 (currently $9.99 at time of writing) then CR-8 is well worth investing in.

Waves have looked at a problem all of us using samples and loops in music have and solved it. Even better, the solution is elegant, powerful, and free. You would be insane to ignore this powerful tool.

Waves COSMOS and CR-8 come highly recommended.