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CR8 Creative Sampler by Waves Audio

COSMOS Is A FREE Sample Finder By Waves Audio

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Waves Audio releases COSMOS, a freeware sample management software for Windows and macOS. The company also released CR8 Creative Sampler ($9.99 launch price), a creative sampler VST plugin.

COSMOS is a sample finder utility that scans all your audio samples and categorizes them into one database. The software will auto-detect and apply tags to each sample and loop using AI. You can then use the software to quickly search and locate any sample in your collection.

How is that better than using the plain old file search on your computer?

Well, COSMOS lets you search the samples by instrument, key, BPM, and other musical characteristics. This enables you to narrow down your search to drums, snare drums, or any other tag you have in place.

I try to keep my sample collection as tidy as possible, sorting all sample packs into folders by category (drums, orchestral, brass, etc.) and by sample label (Goldbaby, Wave Alchemy, 99Sounds, Flame Sound, etc.). But even so, finding a specific file can be a tedious task if you have hundreds of thousands of samples on your hard drive.

That’s the problem COSMOS aims to solve, and I’m looking forward to testing the software. And if you’re looking for more options, be sure to check out the ADSR Sample Manager, too.

“COSMOS brings all the one-shots and loops on your hard drive into one easy-to-search place. It uses advanced Waves Neural Networks technology in order to analyze, auto-tag, and sort your entire collection of samples into one unified database where you can easily find everything. No matter where you placed your samples, or how the files are named – COSMOS will find them for you.”

One thing to keep in mind is that COSMOS doesn’t yet support MP3 files. However, it works just fine with WAV, AIF, OGG, and FLAC files.

Waves Audio also released CR8 Creative Sampler. It’s a creative sample player with eight layers with BPM detection, time-stretching, modulation, and a few other cool features.

It’s not the most versatile sample player on the market, but it certainly looks like a fun little sample mangler.

“When you’re cooking samples, you want to get creative quickly. The Waves CR8 Creative Sampler takes everything fun and exciting about sampling, and puts it all inside a fast, easy workflow.”

CR8 Creative Sampler is currently on sale for $9.99 (the full price is $34.99).

Waves Audio runs a 50% OFF sale on all plugins and bundles this week. Use the code HALF to apply the discount to your order.

More info: COSMOS / CR8 Creative Sampler / Waves Audio

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About Author

Tomislav is a music producer and sound designer from Belgrade, Serbia. He is also the founder and editor-in-chief at Bedroom Producers Blog.

51 Comments

    • Illford

       on

      Honestly though, this seems pretty nice. I have a fairly sizeable library so having something to find it quickly is neat. Last few freebies were good as well

    • mtelesha

       on

      Waves plugins sound good. They still support all their old legacy plugins at good price.

      I never update any plugins (except when I updated my 1999 Gold Bundle and added all the new stuff)

      I think Waves isn’t perfect but they are much better then the haters like to say.

  3. ambedo

     on

    Damn, so this is like xo or atlas but for free. Im not gonna ever pay for anything from waves again (not a fan of their business model) – but this freebie has me impressed. Gotta give it a go to see how well it works, but quite an awesome offering for a freebie considering the cheapest offering from a competitor is $100+

  6. Steven R

     on

    Currently, I like the ADSR sample manager more. It supports nesting folders, which saves some time when I’m looking for a pack of sounds designed to go together, and COSMOS doesn’t do that. I do like the weird COSMOS view that shows a dot matrix of the samples, but it doesn’t seem super intuitive off the bat.

    Maybe they’ll provide a UI update at some point, but for right now, I’ll stick to ADSR

    • Jamie M.

       on

      I agree with the point on folders, but I think the cosmos view works pretty great for my standards; if this was just a list and no spread dots view I probably would have skipped it.

    • Aiden Lewis Macleod

       on

      Oh, but Cosmos DOES do that. On the left side you’ll find a list of all folders you’ve imported, (you DID remember to import your samples as seperate folders, right?). You’ll also see a toggle switch on the left side of the title and before the name of the folder you imported.
      If you want a certain pack, first toggle off all your folders and THEN toggle ON the folder in question. Cosmos will now display only the samples within that folder.

      Just because you don’t know something doesn’t mean that something is bad.

  7. Jed

     on

    Waves COSMOS uses a lot of storage on C disk for indexing + wavespluginserver.dll can just make your CPU cry…. I prefer the FREE ADSR sample finder.

    • Aiden Lewis Macleod

       on

      Exactly where is your COSOMOS storage besides the source you provide when importing your samples? I don’t use Waves Central, and if your PluginServer is creating havok on your system, then maybe it’s your system, because I’ve never heard anyone even mention it before. The only thing Cosmos requires is MicrosoftEdgeWebView to be installed on your system, and MSEWB is completely safe.

  8. Jed

     on

    I think that Wavespluginserver.dll exploits the CPU for distanced Mining, even if your scan is complete. It is so hungry, kurwa…..

      • Jed

         on

        No. Because my CPU load goes 100% even if the COSMOS.exe is working in the background (without scanning), but the GPU is stable. + the fact that you should be logged in to your WAVES account every time you want to use their program is also suspicious.

        • Shymon Paris

           on

          I would be suspicious too with software that does this,especially when the company is based in the same country that gifted the world the Pegasus spyware.

          Maybe some hacking and IT forensics experts can look into this?

          • Jed

             on

            Waves Central is doing something like this every time you use their plugins ” Iv deleted it a long time ago with all WAVES plugins, because they contain a Third part connection threads in their shell32.dll “.
            Even my *AVAST antivirus blocks the backdoor connections of every WAVES thread. They have many backdoors for data collecting concerning the Whole system process, not even the usage of their plugins. I do not know why do producers still use WAVES plugins without being concerned about that…
            * When launching the COSMOS program, AVAST antivirus shows a Ransomware warning immediately with the full address of the thread that is trying to connect to WAVES servers.

            • Donnie

               on

              Wtf if that is True. Do other AVs Block or detect such a thing? I’m really hesitant installing this now… :-/

              • Johnny

                 on

                I noticed something interesting, I bought CR8 sampler and when Cosmos was scanning for the first time, the CPU usage was 95-100%, but the next day I unplugged my Internet cable and scanned again – CPU usage was 60-80 %. So I guess that distance mining may be a thing… However my Avast never blocked anything from Waves. Maybe the solution would be to use Waves plugins without Internet connection if someone is concerned about some possible fishy business going on?

                • Jed

                   on

                  It wont help because they still collect LOG files and usage data in their “data” folder in offline mode + Waves central launches everytime you start your pc, even if you are not using waves plugins in the main time. Once you connect to the internet, the log files will be synchronized. I have already made some monitoring on TCP port. + You can not use COSMOS without an internet connection “you should be logged in to your WAVES account” so, i do not know how did you made that scan Offline mode. I am using WIN 10 “the latest version”. Try to update your Avast virus database and relaunch the COSMOS without and administrator permissions, and you will see that warning.

                • Waves Audio

                   on

                  Hey there, please note that COSMOS is a local application and does not report any data back to Waves.

        • Aiden Lewis Macleod

           on

          Lol, I don’t even have a Waves account and I use their plugins just fine.
          Paranoia will destroya.

    • Johnny

       on

      “You can not use COSMOS without an internet connection “you should be logged in to your WAVES account”” -> I logged in and then unplugged the Internet connection and Cosmos didn’t stop working. I keep everything up to date and have premium version of Avast and no warning appears. I had some kind of Avast warning with Steven Slate and XLN manager though, so I don’t know. I think that the best idea would be to stop using third party plugins altogether but what’s the point. I mean, any audio company can decide at some point that they want to do some fishy business with our devices and hide it so carefully that most people would never find out but I think it’s unlikely and worrying about it would most likely lead to paranoia and a waste of time that could have been spend on making music.

      “Waves central launches everytime you start your pc, even if you are not using waves plugins in the main time” -> I switched its ‘starting with pc’ off in taskmanager. Waves Local Server starts when I load Waves plugins though.

      Anyway, I understand your worries cause I also tend to worry too much unnecessarily

  10. Gavz

     on

    Reading the comments in this thread reminds me of my student years, house sharing with a load of mates who smoked too much and believed the TV was watching them….Waves Central triggering AV seems to be an issue that’s widely discussed online, as is AV finding ‘Trojans’ that are in fact some sub process in the Waves installation that the AV doesn’t recognise. I don’t believe Waves are some nefarious force out to plant virus’s on peoples machines. That doesn’t really make a lot of sense to me.
    That being said, if you get a Trojan that keeps trying to charge you for an upgrade you will know it is from Waves :-D
    Regardless, how does this compare to Loopoud?

    • Jed

       on

      Nobody talked about Trojans. You can set any *dll thread to Mine on distance without any virus integration, The antivirus will detect a BEHAVIOR sequence, not a trojan file.
      Every audio company nowadays has its onw “*** installation portal* : Izotope, arturia , ik multimedia …etc. Why do antivirus detects only the Waves one ?
      Btw, do you work on CNN ? lol

  13. koko the monkey

     on

    ADSR seem to look for File name and tag it accordingly so if a file name is C#M 125 BPM ADSR set the tempo to 125 and pitch to C#M while Cosmos actually scan the audio and get input according to AI algorithm, that takes time and hence the high CPU and after restart you still need to scan further.

    Take a file call it it Ebmin7/5 set its name to 120 BPM and see what ADSR finds…..

    • Aiden Lewis Macleod

       on

      Exactly. ASDR’s naming conventions are a little to be desired.
      Even if you take a file named Charlie.wav, then ASDR doesn’t know what to do with it. Cosmos actually analyzes your files to determine its attributes.
      Cosmos is the best thing to happen to Sample Library hoarders since the Sample Library was invented.

  14. Rox Roll

     on

    Great Free AI Sample Finder!The intro price of CR8 it’s nice,too.And Zampler released a free sample pack for samplers like CR8.
    h ttps://zamplersounds.sellfy.store/p/waves-cr8-sample-pack-by-zamplersounds/

  15. bachzee

     on

    Aw, isn’t that so nice. Waves will look through my entire drive, check my every single file? And for free? Gosh, I can’t wait!

  16. Vvoytek

     on

    does anyone have the same as me. when lounch it im stuck in conneticng to sample database page and it takes forever for 2 days its all the same.

  17. animus

     on

    Seems pretty cool, especially the various “cosmos” galaxy cluster views… however, a significant majority of my sample library does not show up (even though it says they are scanned). Hmmm.

    • Michal Ochedowski

       on

      Perhaps folder path and file names are too long. I’ve had this situation before, but in another program. I had to re-organize folder structure to keep it under 256 characters.

    • Animus

       on

      I’ve figured out that Cosmos does not like nested folders whose names start with underscores (it ignores them). By loading those folders each individually, it successfully scans them.

      • Aiden Lewis Macleod

         on

        Files/folders starting with “_” are usually hidden from the user/program, and as far as my research goes, only affect Unix-based OS, like Linux and MacOS. Windows doesn’t have this issue as far as I can tell.

  18. Wing Yee

     on

    I have both ADSR Sample Manager and Cosmos Sample Finder, but I don’t really need them because I’m well organized I know where to find my samples. Besides, in Shortcircuit 2 you can search “snare, kick etc” for example and all the results from your shortcuts will show in its Sample Browser.

  19. Wing Yee

     on

    CR8 Sampler has all the basic features found on most samplers, it lacks built-in effects but not bad for $10. For $35 I want multi outs x8.

    • ferro

       on

      >CR8 Sampler has all the basic features found on most samplers,
      polyphonplayable realtimestretch that sounds actually good is quite rare

  20. Numanoid

     on

    I’m buying it, I didn’t realize it cost just 10 bucks! Beyond the sample mangle possibilities, it comes with 800+ presets, thinking about how much I have spent on Kontakt libraries over the years, this is sure bargain!
    Get 10% off with waves.com/r/892141

    • Aiden Lewis Macleod

       on

      I’ve been using Kontakt since v5. CR8 is a wonderful sampler as well. They both do their things really well. Kontakt’s libraries are the best in the business, and CR8 lets you manipulate your samples in a VERY intuitive and streamlined manner. It just requires a different mindset when using either.

  21. Oldskool

     on

    Thanks waves, but cpu is terrible. (Cr8) … it is performing tasks my 90s laptop could do, just with 100000% the CPU..

    Hope you can fix the schoolboy code:)

    Thanks:)

  22. ferro

     on

    COSMOS is no longer free and one needs to logionto a waves account even to browser your own files locally.

  23. Giles Wood

     on

    I contacted them about Cosmos and an issue where it just corrupts its own database to the point that it and CR8 cannjot be used at all. They gave me a work around wich took I day out of my life wich did not work. 6 Months later I am excited to get the update of Cosmos , Suprise it had exactly the same issue. I went on their website but the site would not let me Submit a support Ticket, I emailed their support email and got no reply. And whent on the online chat on the website and was told to submit it to Tech Support as Tech Support was outside of thier remit. COSMOS has never worked and it was a waist of money buying CR8 as Cosmos errors. I had no option but to escalte to a complaint and hold them up to thier legal obligations. Thing in allot of software companies just don’t care about the customers but love to take money from them without really investing too much in the products themselves. Unfortunatly waves falls into this catogory. IF anyone has a simular issue with a sofware company as customer we do have allot more rights than the companys think you do. Email them the issue with this Following as they have to work within UK law as it is sold in the UK. Your details and contact details, explanation of issue followed by
    “Under the Consumer Rights Act 2015, digital content should be of a satisfactory quality, fit for purpose and as described.

    My rights have been breached because the digital content you sold me is faulty. I would like you to fix it within a reasonable time.”

    Can you tell me if your company is a member of a Trade Association ?

    And are you a member of an alternative dispute resolution (ADR) scheme ?

    As escalation can be raised with the Trade associations and ADR scheme that they are supposed to have in place to market to the UK

    Date of experience: 08 September 2022

  24. Mino

     on

    COSMOS is not free anymore. So I do get it that people voted for it, but if it is not free anymore it is kind of strange to have it win a price for best free software.
    Thanks for your good work though.

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