Instrument Manager™

Instrument Manager™ is a Mac and Windows application that organizes, manages, and views properties of any Instrument or Sample file. This includes most every software samplers and hardware samplers, must most every commonly used sample format, either as a standalone file or embedded sample.

Instrument Manager™ is designed to meet every real-world need related to instrument management with ANY software/hardware sampler. It supports practically all Instrument file formats: Kontakt, Structure, EXS24, Reason NNXT, HALion, MachFive, Independence, GigaStudio, SFZ/Dimension, workstations such as Motif, Fusion, and Fantom, and old samplers such as Akai, Roland, Emu, Ensoniq, Kurzweil, and many more.

Use as a Browser.
Type in a simple search query in the iTunes-ish interface and your results come right up, reminiscent of Giga's QuickSound but more powerful. Drag anything off the interface and drop it onto any software sampler that supports dropping of files (Kontakt, Structure, etc.). Four individual customizable views allow total complete ease of use.

Windows and Mac. Any Instrument Format.
Whether you use a Windows or a Macintosh, Instrument Manager™ is compatible. No matter what sampler, or what file, Instrument Manager™ supports it. There isn't a computer or a instrument file that Instrument Manager™ can't handle.

No more bad links.
Using brand new innovative technology just developed, Instrument Manager™ can re link samples quickly and easily when the links are broken. But that's not all: re-direct links to new samples, or change link/sample names using Find-Replace techniques, plus other innovative re-linking schemes.

Power Databasing.
Any Instrument can be given metadata tags, and searched upon using those tags. Instruments can be grouped under user-defined groups for later access. Multiple databases are supported. Instrument Manager™ databasing can be synchronized with other sampler's database schemes.

The other stuff.
Use the Bank Builder to make your own custom Banks. Merge Instruments using the Object Merger. Rename Instruments, whether they are files or objects within a file. Audition sounds. Read, write, and browse proprietary disks such as Akai, Roland, Emu, Ensoniq, and Kurzweil.

Unlike other management programs, Instrument Manager™ works with all formats, including those on proprietary disks such as Akai, Emu, Roland, Ensoniq, Kurzweilweil, etc. And when combined in Chicken System's SamplerTools™ bundle, you can convert sounds on the fly.

Features include:

• Database any sampler file and disk format
• Integrated intelligent Search Engine; search for sounds or categories of sounds using keywords and regular expressions
• Create Groups and assign Instruments or Samples to those Groups
• Multiple views: List, Category, Column, and Folder
• Sample Reference Management - fix broken Instrument-Sample links, assign new sets of samples to Instruments with different names, remove duplicate samples and sample data
• Read and Write to Proprietary disks (Akai, Roland, Ensoniq, Emu, etc.), create your own compilation disks
• Drag-n-Drop loading of sounds from the main interface
• Auditioning ability
• Macintosh and Windows-compatible

In this document, the term right-click is used for both Control-Click on the Mac and actual right-clicking. The screenshots come from the Macintosh version, but they all look similar on Windows.

Some of Instrument Manager™'s dialogs are "sheets" on the Mac, meaning that they animate down from the title bar and are attached to the dialog which they correspond to. Some screenshots reflect this in the document. On Windows these dialogs are separated but they still are "modal", meaning that they must be worked with or cancelled to return control back to the parent dialog.

The standard Preferences/Options dialog is commonly called "Preferences" on the Mac, whereas on Windows it is commonly called "Options". In this document, it will be referered to as Preferences.

Instrument Manager™ works with many formats. Most US keyboards and software regards middle C key on a keyboard (MIDI note 60) as C4, while most non-US styles denote this as C3. By default Instrument Manager™ displays middle C as C4, but you can change this in Preferences-General to align with your personal preference.

If you are a registered owner, you are qualified for free updates for the life of the program. You can download these from your program using the Check for Update feature, or from the Chicken Systems Update Area.

Instrument Manager ™ is consistently supported by Chicken Systems, with updates appearing frequently.