Do I need Soundminer?

[Mitch Griffin]

I bought Soundminer Ripper recently, I have Audio Finder, is it imperative I buy Soundminer as well? Yes, I'm being cheap.

[José Luis Díaz]

Hi Mitch,
I only can say that I could not live without SoundMiner.
May be Miniminer would be enough for you, don't know.
Soundminer not only is a great product but the support is the best.

[dj_grimmace]

I love Soundminer, but a cheaper and well made alternative is Basehead. I actually like it better than Netmix.

[minister]

If Audio Finder works for you, then great. Whatever works. I have it in one of my rooms and I switched to SM HD. Soundminer came out with some lower cost versions which I like better than AF.

http://store.soundminer.com/mac-win-hd-product.html

[reichman]

Don't forget to look at the very reasonably priced Soundminer HD products. Cheap, snazzy, powerful. Not everyone needs the full version of Soundminer.

[lexaudio]

Originally Posted by reichman

Don't forget to look at the very reasonably priced Soundminer HD products. Cheap, snazzy, powerful. Not everyone needs the full version of Soundminer.

If you haven't used Soundminer V4, this might be an option.

Coming from soundminer, there were operational things that HD didn't have and it made getting through things difficult for me.

I started with miniminer, a good way to start. I eventually upgraded to SM v4 Pro.

[bad jitter]

Pitch shift?

[antonis]

I have both Audiofinder and Soundminer V4 Pro, and I am currently in the middle of re-databasig my SFX library. The more I use Soundminer V4 Pro the more I realise it simply rocks! It is much more than just a SFX database and it is a serious metadata handling/ manipulation tool: It can batch rename files, batch append, copy and paste metadata from one category to another and then save all this info in BEXT to be available in any other database. This might not seem like a lot, but if you have SFX coming from a lot of different sources and/ or if you make you own sfx, sound design in big projects, etc., it helps a lot having all these tools in one central app.

But I believe that these features are exclusive to V4 Pro and are not available to the rest of the Soundminer product line though. So, if you were thinking about purchasing Soundminer HD, HD PLUS, etc, then I am not sure I can see a major difference. But I haven't used any of the other versions, just general knowledge here and what is written on the Soundminer website..

On the plus side for AudioFinder, it can handle REX files where Soundminer V4 cannot. But if I am not mistaken the new Soundminer HD range does support Recycle files. But feel free to correct me if I'm wrong. V4 indexes REX files but cannot play them back (mine crashes on the spot).

Once I am done with the Soundminer databasing, I plan to migrate everything to Audiofinder as well. I will try and update this post if I make any significant finding that is not already covered.

[Mitch Griffin]

Hey! Thanks so much,. Your feedback is really helpful.

[emf1138]

+1 for Basehead. Cost-effective, great support, clean interface. Not a ton of bells and whistles, does just what you need. Great metadata support.