Zampler

A free, open-source app to help explore your audio sample library.

Try an online demo

What does it do?

Zampler scans one or more directories for sample files, calculates their IDs and hashes (checksums), then displays them in an easy-to-use UI, including:

• Embedded audio player with autoplay and loop functions
• Search in file/directory names
• Bookmark and filter your favourite samples for easy access
• Recent playback history so you can go back and find the sample before last that sounded better, actually

Who is this for?

It's mainly just for me. I have a ton of audio samples I hoarded from Computer Music magazine cover CDs over the years, and I never really found a good way to catalogue them for the way I use them in live coding.

Usage

Before you can use Zampler, you need to build it first.

Build the frontend

Zampler serves some static assets for its UI, which need to be built before the backend can be run at all (including for development.) This is simple:

cd frontend
npm i
npm run build

This automatically builds into the (git-ignored) directory internal/server/static which the app will then use.

Build the app

This is also simple:

go get
go build -o zampler

Check out go build documentation if you need more controls.

Run Zampler

Now that you have a zampler binary, you can start it by passing it the path(s) you want to scan:

zampler /path/to/audio/files

When Zampler has started, it will tell you what URL to open in your browser to access the UI. This is normally http://localhost:7777 but you can customise this. Run zampler --help for more usage information.

Docker

The Dockerfile provides a basic recipe to build a lightweight Docker container that runs Zampler. This is not the recommended approach for most users, but it's available if Docker makes sense for your needs.

Development

Follow the initial build instructions first, because the Go app still needs static assets in order to run.

Developing the Go app is fairly straightforward. Run go run main.go -l trace to test Zampler with enhanced logging.

Frontend development is mostly done standalone using Vite. Copy config.example.json to config.json in the frontend directory to configure the UI for development. Then, run npm run dev to start Vite.

License

MIT. See LICENSE.txt