Filtering out Duplicate Elements in Online Master Interface

Support
#1

Hey all,

When I’m trying to customize a sound set or mood in the online master interface, I go to the “library-elements” to look for different music/ambient sounds that I can add to the soundset/mood I’m working on. The process is generally simple and straightforward, which I am hugely grateful for. The somewhat frustrating part of the process is finding duplicate elements under different names in the library. For example, clicking on many differently named elements and discovering it’s the 3rd or 4th time I’ve heard that element, just now with a different name.

Is there any way to filter the library to return 1 copy of each base element (regardless of what name it is) instead of the multiple copies under different names? If there currently isn’t a way to do that, is that something that can be technically possible? (Look for dev responses for this particular question if the first is question’s answer is “no”)

If I’m ignorant of an easier way to do this, then thank you in advance for educating me and making my Syrinscape life much easier! Cheers!

#2

@joeykahrs could you give me the names of some duplicate elements and the soundsets they belong to, so I can investigate?

Generally speaking, an element is a collection of samples and a set of rules on how to play them. For example, play samples in sequence or randomly, play each sample immediately after the last, or after a random delay between 30 and 60 seconds, play samples with a reverb effect applied or not, etc.

Some elements may appear to be duplicates if they play the same samples (or some of the same samples) even though the rules on how to play them are different. It’s not obvious without digging into the element property inspector to compare those rules to see the extent to which two elements are the same.

There will also legitimately be exact duplicates if you duplicate an official soundset to customise.

It might be possible that we could do a better job of identifying and filtering out identical duplicates. I can’t make any promises, but I’ll note this as a feature request.

Keep in mind that even this would still not filter our “near” duplicates.

Also, we already display the soundset name in addition to the element name to help disambiguate elements with the same name, and when you play an element from the library it will play as it would play in its soundset (with the configured reverb and other settings).

#3

I understand what you’re saying. I’m willing to guess they’re most likely “similar” rather than identical. Thanks for the response!