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I subscribed to Loopcloud last week and will be canceling my three-year Splice membership at the end of the month, primarily for one killer feature… which is what we’ll talk about in this episode: it’s the Splice vs Loopcloud grudge-match!

You’ll Learn

• The Splice-killing feature in Loopcloud
• Why I hated my Splice workflow
• A few reasons you might want to stay with (or try) Splice

Resources

12/29/2022 update: As of version 7 the Loopcloud desktop app is no longer usable unless you are a subscriber. You you can still download your previously purchased sounds from their website. I still think it’s worth the money over Splice.

• Loopcloud trial – this is the Beatport link which includes 30 day free trial, 1gb of genre specific samples, and 300 credits in Loopcloud
• Splice – in case I didn’t convince you or you want to try both for yourself.
• Loopcloud tutorials – start here.
• Producer Life Podcast private Facebook group – come join the community!

Transcript

What’s up Heroes, welcome to episode 28 of the Producer Life Podcast.   I’ve been a happy member of Splice for over three years now, and love their service, and I’ve recommended it to numerous producers.   Three years ago, it was a game changer: instead of buying massive sample packs and only using a handful of sounds, you’d only purchase and download the sounds you specifically wanted.  And they’ve continued to innovate, with rent-to-own VSTs, a collaborative and backup platform, and an active user community.

Despite all that, I subscribed to Loopcloud last week and will be canceling my Splice membership at the end of the month, primarily for one killer feature… which is what we’ll talk about in this episode.

But first, cue the intro music.

I first stumbled across Loopcloud as a free way to organize my massive collection of samples.  Loopcloud’s free application does a great job categorizing sounds and adding metadata such as key and tempo, as well as giving you a set of powerful ways to edit the metadata yourself and to search your sounds. 

So this started off as a way to organize all the sounds I’d purchased from Splice over the last three years.

…but that was just the beginning.  While I love Splice’s features, I was always frustrated with the workflow.

Tell me if this sounds familiar. You’ve got a track going.. But it’s missing something. Perhaps the percussion, or a bassline, or a killer vocal. You go into Splice, sort by key and tempo, and listen to a bunch of tracks on their website while playing your song in your DAW.  They sort of line up, so you download 50 different sounds in the hopes that a couple will work.   After downloading them, you have to copy them… one at a time… out of the splice app….because splice STILL hasn’t implemented the ability to select multiple samples at once.  Alternately, if it’s a BUNCH of files you’re auditioning I’d go to my sample folder, search for *.*, filter by WAV, sort by most recently downloaded, then copy them all into Ableton’s Session view.  Horrible workflow.

So here’s Loopcloud’s killer feature.  They have a .vst plugin that works with every DAW, and it serves as a bridge between your DAW and the Loopcloud app allowing you to audition your samples in the mix saving you a ton of time and money not having to buy samples you won’t use.   The VST and app are both free… so I strongly encourage you to try it out.  Just download the app, point it to your samples, and put the vst plugin on an empty MIDI track in your DAW and you’re ready to go.  

Building on that, if you have a paid membership you can audition up to eight samples at once allowing you to build a “superloop” of sound that work pretty well together as the start of a track.  You could start that workflow anywhere… pick a key, tempo, or genre. Search for a kick you like.  Then lock the key (or just filter by sounds in the key you’re using) and search for baselines, then leads, then hats and claps… all of a sudden you’ve got an idea for a track. 

I’ve been in a trance mood recently, and it took me about t 15 minutes to generate a bunch of 8 bar loops like this, or this, or this, or this…. using exactly this workflow. Now none of those have been mixed or ANYTHING… but I hear something I like in the way those sounds work … so I’ll wind up picking the best to become a track. .

If you’ve got a paid account, you can also add effects to each of your eight tracks to audition them in the mix with some reverb, or delay, or even some awesome built in arpeggiating effects.  You can even pick your effects then swap sounds out. Between the eight tracks and the effects, It’s almost like a mini-DAW. Finally, you can drag those processed (or the original) files over to your DAW to incorporate them into your track.

This whole workflow is especially nice if you’ve got a second monitor hooked up to your laptop so you can look at Loopcloud’s app in one screen while you’ve got Ableton (or whatever DAW you prefer) on the other screen with the VST loaded so they synchronize.   I’m also on a fast internet connection (100mbps download speed), so samples load instantly for me. If you’re on a much slower connection, this workflow might bog down…. But the plugin is free so give it a try and see how it works for you. 

I think loop cloud also effectively kills the old “128” organization technique in Ableton, where you select 128 samples and load them in a sampler so you can rapidly audition each in the mix.  Why would you spend all that time organizing your library into 128’s if you can simply throw a free VST on your production template and instantly have access to millions of sounds meticulously meta tagged?  I think I’m done with 128s, loopcloud is a better way to work.

The searching is really nice, and fast, too.  There are multiple ways to do everything, from typing in the search box to clicking on sliders to selecting trags. It even supports some limited boolean searching if you’re searching your own library. Oh, that’s another thing: you can always tell it to search only your library, their library of samples to buy, or both.

Adding your samples is as easy as dragging and dropping folders, and they also give you the ability to backup samples into their cloud. 

For me, that’s enough. I’m sold. But… Loopcloud 5 has some other free plugins I haven’t even tried yet, including a drum plugin which does drum sequencing and allows you to hot-swap 

samples as well as their PLAY synthesizer. 

If I had to nitpick, there are a few things I’d like. It would be nice to have an EQ in the effects for each sound so when I’m auditioning eight tracks at once I could make it sound a little less messy.  I’d also love to be able to specify a range for how much I’d like Loopcloud to auto-pitch samples. You can either not pitch at all, pitch it manually, or set it to auto and give it a key, in which case it will pitch samples up to eix semitones which often sounds terrible. I’d prefer to say plus or minus two semitones… but you can’t currently do that.

Why might you decide to stay with, or try, splice?  Splice has a much better collaborative platform and also backs up your project and samples automatically… so if you’re not disciplined about backing up that may be critical for you. Also, if you like the rent-to-own model Splice has tons of VSTs for sale this way. Ultimately, that saves you an up-front expense, but I generally recommend people wait on a sale if you can, or buy as a student if you’re eligible, and you can usually get plugins FAR cheaper.  Splice’s rent-to-own just guarantees you’ll pay full price and nothing more.

Beatport currently has a partnership with Loopcloud, I’ll have a link in the show notes but it gives you a 30 day free trial, 1gb of genre specific samples, and 300 credits in loopcloud.  I’ll also link some tutorials. 

Costs range from eight dollars to twenty-two dollars per month after the trial ends, depending on the samples and features you want. 

How do you organize your samples? Have you used Splice or Loopcloud? What’s your experience.  I’d love to know.. Just leave a comment in the show notes at ProducerLifePodcast.com or at Facebook.com/groups/ProducerLifePodcast

Until next week, this is the House Ninja reminding you to remember your face mask…