Starship Krupa Posted March 12 Share Posted March 12 I feel like a dunderhead, admitting this, but IK Product Manager can be a confusing beast, and yes, it's not 100% clear exactly what content comes with ST4MAX2. Today I was browsing through IK Product Manager and noticed something: Somehow I hadn't installed all of the extra Syntronik 2 instrument libraries and Sample Tank construction kits that the MAX license entitled me to. Somehow I thought it had, both Syntronik 2 and Sample Tank 4 have tons of Syntronik instruments and construction kits, enough so that I didn't even notice that there was about 50G of content left to install. 5 Syntronik instruments, Electric Piano Bass, Clavitube, Bionic Drums and half a dozen of the EDM construction kit add-ons. I discovered this by clicking on the "Sounds" tab and scrolling down. I guess clicking on the button to install Syntronik 2 on the "Software" page omits a lot of the stuff that is available individually as soundware. Makes sense now, but I guess it got past me the first time around. Maybe you're not as clue-challenged as I and you've had all of your Syntronik and Sample Tank libraries installed from day one, but if you're not 100% sure, click on that "Sounds" tab and scroll slowly all the way down and make sure. There's a LOT of scrolling to do to get to the bottom. It's a good thing that IK eliminated the download timeout penalty.... 10 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
audioschmaudio Posted March 12 Share Posted March 12 1 hour ago, Starship Krupa said: I feel like a dunderhead, admitting this, but IK Product Manager can be a confusing beast, and yes, it's not 100% clear exactly what content comes with ST4MAX2. Today I was browsing through IK Product Manager and noticed something: Somehow I hadn't installed all of the extra Syntronik 2 instrument libraries and Sample Tank construction kits that the MAX license entitled me to. Somehow I thought it had, both Syntronik 2 and Sample Tank 4 have tons of Syntronik instruments and construction kits, enough so that I didn't even notice that there was about 50G of content left to install. 5 Syntronik instruments, Electric Piano Bass, Clavitube, Bionic Drums and half a dozen of the EDM construction kit add-ons. I discovered this by clicking on the "Sounds" tab and scrolling down. I guess clicking on the button to install Syntronik 2 on the "Software" page omits a lot of the stuff that is available individually as soundware. Makes sense now, but I guess it got past me the first time around. Maybe you're not as clue-challenged as I and you've had all of your Syntronik and Sample Tank libraries installed from day one, but if you're not 100% sure, click on that "Sounds" tab and scroll slowly all the way down and make sure. There's a LOT of scrolling to do to get to the bottom. It's a good thing that IK eliminated the download timeout penalty.... Even worse, having upgraded from 3.5 MAX to 4 MAX, the product manager tells me that the additional synths are installed when really they only had 2 or 3 presets inside - maybe from some of the expansions. So I looked up which synths are new to 4 MAX and checked which only had very few presets in my installation and clicked "Reinstall" for all those. Not very intuitive and user friendly. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
audioschmaudio Posted March 12 Share Posted March 12 27 minutes ago, audioschmaudio said: It's a good thing that IK eliminated the download timeout penalty.... So true. Removing the 180 day download restriction turned me from a hater to a fan. I can understand why they had it in place though. Allowing people to download hundreds of GB does cost them money too. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JoeGBradford Posted March 12 Share Posted March 12 Good to hear that they have got rid of the 180 day limit! A while back I did plead with them to let me access sounds for free that I had forgotten to download and they did allow me fortunately but it was a bit of a pain! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MusicMan Posted March 12 Share Posted March 12 Removing that limit was the best thing for sales and their brand reputation. Plus, given their installer seems to cause quite a bit of grief, it means customers aren't penalized when they find something missing and it's over 180 days and they realise the installer screwed up, like missing samples, or presets. If they spent the time on the installer and really improved that, I'm sure it would lift their reputation considerably again and as a result, their sales. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kitekrazy1 Posted March 12 Share Posted March 12 57 minutes ago, MusicMan said: Removing that limit was the best thing for sales and their brand reputation. Plus, given their installer seems to cause quite a bit of grief, it means customers aren't penalized when they find something missing and it's over 180 days and they realise the installer screwed up, like missing samples, or presets. If they spent the time on the installer and really improved that, I'm sure it would lift their reputation considerably again and as a result, their sales. I hardly ever had that issue. They give you a choice. Removing user control in installations is getting less. Amazed how many aax get installed on a system. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CSistine Posted March 13 Share Posted March 13 Several of those well-known companies like IK have landed on my blacklist the last year, because of installation and authorization issues! This saves me a lot of many, I have rarely purchased anything this year! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Starship Krupa Posted March 13 Author Share Posted March 13 3 hours ago, kitekrazy1 said: Amazed how many aax get installed on a system. That's because most Pro Tools users, if you gave them the choice of what formats to install would probably be baffled. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
treesha Posted March 13 Share Posted March 13 On 3/12/2025 at 4:16 AM, Starship Krupa said: I feel like a dunderhead, admitting this, but IK Product Manager can be a confusing beast, and yes, it's not 100% clear exactly what content comes with ST4MAX2. Today I was browsing through IK Product Manager and noticed something: Somehow I hadn't installed all of the extra Syntronik 2 instrument libraries and Sample Tank construction kits that the MAX license entitled me to. Somehow I thought it had, both Syntronik 2 and Sample Tank 4 have tons of Syntronik instruments and construction kits, enough so that I didn't even notice that there was about 50G of content left to install. 5 Syntronik instruments, Electric Piano Bass, Clavitube, Bionic Drums and half a dozen of the EDM construction kit add-ons. I discovered this by clicking on the "Sounds" tab and scrolling down. I guess clicking on the button to install Syntronik 2 on the "Software" page omits a lot of the stuff that is available individually as soundware. Makes sense now, but I guess it got past me the first time around. Maybe you're not as clue-challenged as I and you've had all of your Syntronik and Sample Tank libraries installed from day one, but if you're not 100% sure, click on that "Sounds" tab and scroll slowly all the way down and make sure. There's a LOT of scrolling to do to get to the bottom. It's a good thing that IK eliminated the download timeout penalty.... You’re not the only dunderhead, I got it in the humble bundle and it is confusing to know what is complete or what has uninstalled stuff in the sounds area. Takes some detective work to know. And some stuff shows installed or not installed differently between the my products list on the website and my ik product mgr. Also I have bad internet. Stopped exploring for now. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
audioschmaudio Posted March 13 Share Posted March 13 Also easy to miss: In the software list, some have a "Presets" or "Extras" tab which contain additional downloads. 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Starship Krupa Posted March 13 Author Share Posted March 13 1 hour ago, kitekrazy1 said: They give you a choice. What choice would that be? Looking at IK Product Manager, I have fewer choices than most installers of this type. I get to select what I wish to install and where I want them to store the installation files, and whether I wish to authorize the software after installation. I guess that last option is for when you want to install hundreds of gigabytes of samples and patches on your computer but not actually use them for anything. This is not something I believe I'd ever do, but I guess it's nice to know it's there in case I change my mind. There's a checkbox for "allow selection of custom path for sounds installations (sic)," which allows me to choose an installation directory, and that's nice. If, I ever wish to move them, however, the only option IK PM offers is a reinstall. Since I've no wish to go through that process with so many large libraries when I want to move something, I've had to get good at the process of figuring out where the sounds were installed, which files need to be moved, then telling Sample Tank, Syntronik, SampleTron, and Miroslav Philharmonik where I moved them. For existing installed products, it allows me to de-authorize or reinstall. No uninstall. I guess they believe that it happens more often that people break their installations than it does that they try out a particular bit of soundware and decide they would rather have the disk space than the sounds. What's missing is the option to select which parts of Sample Tank 4's vast collection of soundware to install or omit. By this I don't mean the add-ons, but rather which of the categories of sounds from the core program I'd like to omit. For instance, let's say that I've got my acoustic piano sounds covered by another product (in my case, Meldway Grand). It would be great to be able to leave that category of sounds out of my Sample Tank 4 installation. It would save a LOT of disk space and unnecessary browsing with their notoriously obtuse patch browser. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kitekrazy1 Posted March 14 Share Posted March 14 Sampletank does have a messy file structure. Kontakt rules in this. I can move their libraries anywhere. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Starship Krupa Posted March 14 Author Share Posted March 14 One thing about the Sample Tank installation process that has always been iffy is whether the downloaded install packages (in .zip format) are going to install okay. They seem to have gone through the library and cleaned up many of the corrupted archives, but I just finally got Miroslav Philharmonik 2 installed via a combination of letting Product Mangler do its thing and then downloading some of them manually from the My Products page on their site. As I said before earlier, due to confusion on my part, in the year I've been using this product, I had only installed the Miroslav Philharmonik CE version that they started giving away a while back. There's just so much content that comes in this package, including plenty of orchestral sounds that come with Sample Tank itself independent of Miroslav Philharmonik, that it was easy to miss the fact that the full package was missing. It pays to double check all of this. If you really want to make sure that you're able to use all of the vast sea of content that you paid for, open the ST 4 UI and IK Product Manager side by side. Click on the Sounds page to show what all packages you are licensed for. Some of them install when you run the full ST 4 MAX installer, some don't. For instance, the ST4 MAX install includes the Billy Cobham and Terry Bozzio Drums packages, but not the Neal Peart and Hugh Padgham ones. Who knows why. Fun, though, to finally get it all installed. I hadn't even worked my way through auditioning the content that I had installed, and now I feel like I've doubled it. The Mojo Synthesis series is particularly interesting. I do know that some work with a duplicate file finder is going to be worthwhile. Most of Sample Tank 4 MAX' own orchestral sounds (and there are plenty) are lifted directly from the Miroslav package, so there ends up being a certain amount of overlap, if disk space is a concern. There are also some packages that I didn't want to install, but the MAX installer did it anyway, like the various grand pianos that take up a bunch of space on the drive. I already have a superb sounding sampled grand. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Starship Krupa Posted March 14 Author Share Posted March 14 1 hour ago, kitekrazy1 said: Sampletank does have a messy file structure. Kontakt rules in this. I can move their libraries anywhere. Agreed, although hit your Kontakt libraries folder with a duplicate file finder and you might, um, free up some disk space. Sample Tank/IK Multimedia libraries can be moved around, but pretty much only for individual instruments. You can move your Syntronik 2 library, your SampleTron library, your Miroslav Philharmonik and your Sample Tank library fairly easily. During installation go into Product Manager's settings page and check the box that tells it to allow installation to different folders. That makes it so that whenever you install something, it will ask you what folder you wish to install it to. If you set it up during installation, it makes it easier later. Each of the sections you see on your Sounds page launches an installer for that package. Some of the sections will also install content that's in other sections. You only get to select an installation folder for the section, so choose wisely, because if the product you're installing also includes products in other sections, they'll all wind up under the same folder structure as the main package. This goes for everything, including Sample Tank 4 MAX. When you launch it and it asks you where to install it, create a folder with the name of the product you're installing and then choose that folder. If you do this, you'll be able to drag and drop individual components later. But with the ST 4 MAX sounds installation, the bulk of it's going to install under one folder. That's because Sample Tank 4 MAX and most of its extra content (but not all, as I learned) is considered a single instrument, along with Syntronik, SampleTron, and Miroslav. You can install the leftover add-ons that don't install with the ST 4 MAX installer to their own folders as well if you want to manage their locations. Where it becomes more difficult is when you've used the MAX installer option, complete with the multiple celebrity pianos and drum kits, and decide that you don't want to clutter your system with certain individual add-on packages. The MAX installer puts them in the Sample Tank 4 folder structure. This means that there are folders for each one in the Instruments, Library Info, Library Resources, and Samples folders. This is true for all packages. Some of them also put stuff in Multis, Patterns, and/or Sets. Removing or moving a component requires opening those folders and then either deleting or moving the components to a similar folder structure elsewhere. It's not impossible, but it is a chore. So if you're auditioning something and not sure you will keep it, it's best to install it to its own subfolder rather than just the top level IK Multimedia folder. Then of course you'll want to go into Sample Tank's settings and tell it where the content is. It might sound scary, but it does work. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Starship Krupa Posted March 15 Author Share Posted March 15 I found a 723 page PDF listing all of the content that comes with ST4 MAX v2. 1 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
User 905133 Posted March 15 Share Posted March 15 On 3/12/2025 at 7:16 AM, Starship Krupa said: I feel like a dunderhead, admitting this, but IK Product Manager can be a confusing beast, and yes, it's not 100% clear exactly what content comes with ST4MAX2. 13 hours ago, Starship Krupa said: I found a 723 page PDF listing all of the content that comes with ST4 MAX v2. I am not laughing at you with the ha-ha emoji; laughing at myself. I feel like a "dunderhead" (whatever that is) for not digging this out for you. I have maintained a personal *.ods file [spreadsheet] for a number of years to track which IK products I had (not presets, though) and which ones were included in their bundle variants. In fact, I consulted the spreadsheet when there was the Humble Bundle deal a few months ago. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
treesha Posted March 16 Share Posted March 16 I have no idea what a dunderhead is either but I went with it cause this had me dundered. Thanks for the infos, should be fun... or at least informative. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Starship Krupa Posted March 16 Author Share Posted March 16 Dunderhead=dimwit, blockhead. Although I'm capable of digging deeply into some things, sometimes I miss things that are right in front of me. Here's a little treat for SampleTron 2 fans, hidden in plain sight in IK Product Manager, but not on the Sounds page, no no no, it's on the Software page. One of my problems with Product Manager is that I keep expecting it to make sense, but it often doesn't, sometimes it doesn't tell the truth about what's installed and what's not and sometimes things aren't arranged in a clear way. So more spelunking is required to make sure that you're not either missing something (which would be a shame, because the newer add-on packages have some of the best sounds in them) or you're possibly installing an add-on package that was already installed by the main ST 4 MAX installer, and which will eat up 30GB more disk space for redundant libraries: Download the .ZIP or DMG files, extract the contents, which will be an executable and a resource folder. Run the executable and install the presets to wherever you installed SampleTron 2. Next time you open SampleTron 2, you'll have 60 more patches to play with. As if there weren't already enough content to keep you busy.... I do have to give IK Multimedia this, Product Manager is now beginning to live up to its promise, and I hope they keep improving it. Maybe someday it will allow the user to uninstall individual components. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Starship Krupa Posted March 16 Author Share Posted March 16 Here's my Guide to Installing SampleTank 4 MAX v2, based on my recent experiences. First, SampleTank 4 MAX isn't just SampleTank 4 with a bunch of SampleTank 4 add-on packages, it's SampleTank 4 and SampleTron 2, Miroslav Philharmonik 2, and Syntronik 2 and quite a few add-on packages for Syntronik 2 in addition to the ones for SampleTank 4. If you have previously installed less comprehensive (free or CS or SE) or earlier versions of SampleTank, SampleTron, Philharmonik or Syntronik, you would do well to just delete their soundware content before installing SampleTank 4 MAX. IK Product Manager makes no effort to avoid duplication, and you will likely wind up as I did, with multiple versions installed, taking up unnecessary drive space and making the SampleTank 4 browser even more difficult to navigate. Also, I noticed that the sample files for individual instruments of the same name in the CS and SE versions were smaller in many cases, which suggests to me that the audio quality was improved along the way. There's no downside to nuking the old installation, the newest installers have everything the lesser and earlier versions have and you can take the opportunity to organize things and make the installation almost as flexible as Kontakt's. I fiddled around with my original installation trying to sort things with a file duplicate finder and finally just burned it down and started fresh. The process went smoothly after that. I also recommend uninstalling any previous versions of the programs/plug-ins. They're just clutter at this point. The exception is if you've created your own presets, you'll want to find a way to back them up and you're probably savvy enough to have figured all of this out for yourself anyway. Before you start, you'll need 2 drives, each with 550GB free or one with more than 1.1TB free. One drive will hold your downloaded archive files and the other will hold the samples you're going to install. The download drive can be any old spinner or even external drive, but since the installation process involves unpacking the archives and copying the files to your sample drive, the speed of the process is affected by the speed of your download drive. I used extra space I had on a SATA SSD, then moved the downloaded files to an external backup drive after the installation was finished. If you keep the downloaded files around, you won't have to go through downloading 500+ GB of files the next time you want to install the package. After you've installed IK Product Manager and logged in with it, the next thing to do is go into its settings and set the Downloads folder to something easily accessed on your download drive, preferably an "IK Multimedia" folder either at the root level or in your Downloads folder (if there's enough room on that drive for the content). If you are doing this on a laptop with a single 1TB drive, you'll need an external drive. If you're doing it on a desktop, the fastest SSD you can use is always the best for samples. All of my fiddling around and realizing I hadn't installed all of the content came about because I wanted to move all of my sample content (Kontakt, Soundpaint, MeldaProduction and IK Multimedia) to a new, faster NVMe drive. For about $65 at Amazon I got a PCIe NVMe adapter and a 1TB 5,000MB/s (yeah right🙄) NVMe drive for $60. The speed increase of sample loading in all these instruments is worth it. Then check Allow selection of custom path for sounds installations under Sounds install settings (it's the only setting). That will let you specify which drive and folder to install each item of soundware. This is important for organization. Next, from the Software page in Product Manager install SampleTank 4 Max v2, Syntronik 2, SampleTron 2 and Miroslav Philharmonik 2. We'll install the soundware later. Once they're installed, and you've figured out where you want to install the samples, create an IK Multimedia folder there. I go to the trouble of creating a Users\Public\Public Documents folder, but you can put it at root level or wherever, so long as it's on a drive that has at least 550GB free. The eventual install size for me was 534GB, with Syntronik 2 taking up 217GB, Miroslav Philharmonik 2 taking up 56GB, and SampleTron 2 taking up 8GB, with the rest taken up by SampleTank 4 and its add-ons. Not quite the "800GB" claimed in the specs. There were some add-ons that I declined to install and some that were installed automatically that I carefully removed, but I don't see where the 800GB figure comes from. If you added up the content included with SampleTank SE, SampleTank 4, and SampleTank 4 MAX if they were all installed separately, you'd hit that number, but the content of SampleTank 4 SE and SampleTank 4 is also present in SampleTank 4 MAX. Anyway the next step is to go to the Sounds page of Product Manager and install the sounds for SampleTank 4 MAX v2. Despite the fact that they are probably listed on that page, do NOT install the soundware for any other versions of SampleTank. It's all in MAX. Installing the stuff from the others will take up more drive space and give you duplicates in the ST4 browser. Make a subfolder in your target IK Multimedia samples folder named SampleTank 4 MAX. When Product Manager asks you to specify where you want the sounds installed, that's the folder you give it. Don't worry about any other add-ons at this point, just install the stuff that downloads from the SampleTank 4 MAX v2 section. When that's done, do the same for Syntronik 2, SampleTron 2, and Miroslav Philharmonik 2. That is, create folders in the IK Multimedia folder with those names and when Product Manager asks, install their respective soundware to those folders. This step is what will give you more flexibility later when you wish to move your samples around. You will eventually outgrow your samples drive, get a bigger, faster one, etc. and this way you can just drag and drop the whole caboodle (or individual sub-caboodles) to the new location. No fuss. Again, don't install the Syntronik add-ons yet. When this is done, hit the refresh button in the upper right of the Product Manager UI. It should show that the soundware for those products is installed. Then open each of the 4 products' standalone versions, go to their Settings/Sound Content option and enter the locations where you put their sounds. In the case of SampleTank 4, you'll put all 4 of the locations in there. You can't just give it the IK Multimedia folder 'cause it doesn't search subfolders. Next, run SampleTank 4 and compare what it says is already installed with the ST4 MAX add-ons that Product Managersays are yet to be installed (be sure to "refresh" again). SampleTank is the one to believe, so only install the ST4 MAX add-ons that ST4 doesn't show as being installed. You want to avoid duplicates again. Install them to the SampleTank 4 MAX folder on your samples drive. There are many add-ons, and you'll have to specify the same install location each time for each one. This gets a bit tedious, but fortunately Product Manager is well-designed in this regard and asks you to specify it before it queues the download. So you can queue up a dozen installs, all with the install locations specified, and you can walk away and let Product Manager do its thing unattended. Repeat this for Syntronik 2., except that as long as you've refreshed Product Manager, you should be able to trust it to know what's been installed in Syntronik. Again, install the Syntronik add-ons to the Syntronik 2 folder on your samples drive. And that's it. You should end up with everything you want installed, and the fewest possible duplicates. Store the downloaded archive files if you have room for them, so you don't have to download them again in case of reinstall or installation on another system. I keep mine on a cheap external drive. If you need to move the libraries, you have them in separate subfolders, so you can do so without being concerned that you're messing things up. Further tips: SampleTank 4 still has a bug that manifests as a program or plug-in crash after you've loaded and unloaded 20-30 samples. It's been there for a long time and IK either can't or won't fix it. I don't know if it happens for everyone or if it only happens to preset-crazy people like me, but it's for real in my case and for others I've read about. So if you're working on a project and decide to embark on a journey of discovery to find the perfect sound for your song, be sure you're current with your saves. Alternately, if you're like me and use the Syntronik, Philharmonik, and SampleTron content more than the SampleTank 4 content, you can use those products' own plug-ins, which don't exhibit the bug. If, like me, you are bothered by the willy-nilly order that add-ons appear in the library browser along the left side of the SampleTank UI, it's possible to put them in any order you want. If you hover your cursor just to the left of the library's icon, you'll see up and down arrows appear. That's a click-and-drag handle, and you can drag them into whatever order you wish. The task gets even easier if you go to the top of the column and switch the library display to text rather than icons. 1 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
treesha Posted March 16 Share Posted March 16 Thank you very much for sharing your experience and guidance! It’s the most helpful and useful thing I’ve seen 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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