i’ve bee using Groove Agent One a little bit for programming drums parts and some cutted sounds [one-off samples etc]
and i’m never quite sure where to save the samples.
as they’re only ever present in the project i’m working on.
i’ve saved as .vstpreset
but find i have to continually search for the location of the samples if i use the same patch in another project, albeit in the previous project where the patch was used or in my sample library, which is getting larger by the day.
surely there must be a way for Media Bay to remember where the original files are located without having to reference individual locations from project to project.
I can’t help you from 1st hand experience but I’d be interested in the answer to this myself. I guess if you save the samples to the project pool they are only local to a given project (and not transferable) whereas the generic samples for GA1 are sealed in protected/packed files by Steinberg from what I understand, so whether GA1 would automatically find and load them from the VST folder - I’m unsure (you could try)!
Better Solution:
One thing to look at is if you refer to the help PDF (Saving the Groove Agent ONE Setup p.156) it refers to 2 different types of save process (an individual preset only OR a preset and an Archive) and it seems that the archive (file extension GAK) also stores the sample data with it - which essentially saves it as a Groove Agent ONE kit so its sounds like that is what your after (as this is transferable)!
“…You can save all Groove Agent ONE settings, and the sample files referenced by the current configuration, as a Groove Agent ONE kit”
I agree duplicating samples is not ideal, I think GAK its designed so that you can transfer your kits to different machines or store all the essential files for a release for later recall etc, but I’m sure there is a way for Cubase 7 to reference common sample files too, we just have to work out how! I wonder if the input of a common filefolder address/URL is required somewhere to instruct Cubase 7 where to look etc? If I work it out I’ll be sure to post the answer! Kat
I just ran though the scenario that you introduced at the start of this thread and everything seems to work fine in a couple of projects that I’ve tried it in (i.e. I quickly created a new GA1 preset based on a few samples from an Yamaha RY30 Drum Machine) so I’ve just compiled a quick list of the procedure I used to check against:
1) Make some drum samples store them somewhere on your HDD.
2) Open MediaBay and locate the folder where your samples are stored and MAKE SURE YOU PLACE A TICK IN THE BOX ON THE LEFT HAND SIDE (i.e. or Cubase will ignore this folder from its resource search path). [refer to ‘MediaBay_RY30.jpg’]
3) Create an instrument track for GA1, then within MediaBay select the folder where the samples are stored and drag & drop samples from the adjacent search results window onto relevant GA1 pads. [refer to ‘MediaBay_GA1.jpg’]
4) Save the resulting GA1 kit setup as a relevant preset. [refer to ‘GA1_RY30.jpg’]
5) Create a simple MIDI sequence/manually trigger drum pads to test that it works.
6) Save your project and exit then start a new project with an instrument track using GA1 with previously named preset.
Now all of the custom user defined drum samples should trigger as expected in GA1 (i.e. either by hitting pads manually or triggering them via a quick MIDI sequence)! I gather there are a variety of ways of defining samples on GA1 namely:
…You can drag files to Groove Agent ONE from the following locations:
-MediaBay
-Project window
-Pool
-Sample Editor (regions)
-Audio Part Editor
-LoopMash slices (if LoopMash is supported)… (refer to p.155 - Plug in Reference.PDF)
However from what I can understand it is ONLY if you define a resource folder in MediaBay as above - and drag your samples from there (i.e. using Define Locations) that the resulting samples will be project independent so if you’ve used another approach that could explain why your samples were unavailable when you switched projects etc.
Anyway give this a try and hopefully it will be fine from herein!
Regards Kat
PS: You should (in theory) be able to update your existing projects that had problems by defining a specific user sample folder and reassigning the samples to your existing presets (using the procedure above) then saving the changes; but I’m unable to test this! However, if you decide to try it be sure to make a back up of your projects/presets beforehand in case any corruption occurs!
Thanks, I’m happy to help as I’ve been playing around with GA1 too and think it rocks and it would be awesome to get some custom kits together! Note: even if you need to heavily process sounds within Cubase before assigning them to GA1, it should still be fine provided you ultimately bounce/export them as tiny wave files to your referenced MediaBay Sample directory then assign them to GA1 from there.
The problem is with dragging sounds from anywhere else as it describes in the GA1 Plug In Reference (i.e. the pool, sample edit window, project window, Audio Part editor etc) is that they ALL reference the local project you are currently working on. However provided you add a ‘defined location’ in MediaBay for each and every project where you do this, Cubase should still continue to find the samples utilized by a user defined preset elsewhere.
The only problem is however that the more entries you add; the more background folders Cubase has to scan/re-scan, so its definitely beneficial to have a common area to save user preset samples to in order to make it faster/cleaner and easier to maintain etc!
Anyway let me know if all is well when you get chance to test your setup!
… aaand wwwwhat ddo yyou ddddo to them thththere? 
and it would be awesome to get some custom kits together! Note: even if you need to heavily process sounds within Cubase before assigning them to GA1, it should still be fine provided you ultimately bounce/export them as tiny wave files to your referenced MediaBay Sample directory then assign them to GA1 from there.