ninshu.bar Sample CD Indexing Project
Mon Jul 3, 2023 · 626 words · 4 min

One of the things I've started to do over the past few years is to collect sample CDs: audio CDs published in the late 1980s and early 1990s featuring raw instrument samples for musical production in sampling synthesizers. Sample CDs usually allow the user to seek to a track, each of which might contain multiple samples from a single instrument, but it is generally not possible to easily seek to an individual sample in that track. As such, I have decided to index those sample CDs I've collected such that anyone with these discs can more easily search them.

Each of the files linked below was derived from the hand curation of each instrument sample's initial non-zero value as visually identified using Audacity as a time from the beginning of the disc in hours, minutes, and seconds, plus an offset into that second assuming an audio sampling rate of 44,100 audio samples per second. These offsets were then automatically validated for errors and then shifted to a reasonable location between each instrument sample before a final visual review. As a result the offsets of instrument samples that are the first such sample in their track are generally not aligned with the known start of that track as reported from each CDs table of contents.

The instrument samples below are all indexed relative to a rip that has been calibrated to (AccurateRip offset) - 30 samples, due to evidence that this is the true start of audio on most professionally mastered audio CDs. In other words: To use these offsets to split a file that has been verified with AccurateRip (or ripped with a drive offset for submission to AccurateRip), 30 samples must be subtracted from each listed offset (or, alternately, re-rip the CD with an AccurateRip drive offset that is 30 samples less than the accepted value for your drive and then split that file on the offsets provided).

Changelog

2022-12-12 - Initial release
2023-07-03 - Added Percussion 1 and Electronic 1 from the Prosōnus Sound Library, and document the existence of Stringed 3 from the same.

List of Indexed Sample CDs

Releases that are not linked are known only from textual sources and eBay, but are hoped to be added in the future should I ever acquire them. At this time, however, I do not currently own copies of those releases from which an index can be derived.

McGill University Master Samples

Prosōnus Sound Library

Discovery Firm


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