What’s new?

Here are the most important new features at a glance:

• Faster Browsing
• Support For Large Libraries
• Tagging (Manual & Automatic)
• Metadata Panel
• Detachable Panels
• Improved Similarity Search
• Waveform Zooming
• Pitch Control + Lock
• Continuous playback
• Trigger Point (Playback)
• MIDI Triggering (Playback)
• Improved Keyboard & Selection UX
• Bug fixes and stability improvements

Additional Update Information

• Version 1.6.1 - Released Nov 28th 2025

Faster Browsing

Sononym 1.6 is featuring a brand new database engine that benefits from recent technology advancements. Here are some benchmarks:

The benchmarks show our baseline system, a Macbook Pro M2, hosting a medium-large library containing 350.000 files. The library itself is located on an external SSD (sequential read speed: 1050 MB/s), containing a mix of short and long files. No other applications were running while benchmarking, and all tasks were repeated a few times for more realistic results.

The application takes approximately one-fifth of the time to get ready, a regular search is 10x faster, and starting a similarity search is up to 20x faster. And the best part: the more samples you have, the more obvious this will become. Previously, it was the other way around: the performance would degrade until the point where the software would become practically useless.

The performance improvements are accompanied by a few UX improvements. A subtle “shimmering” effect in the results-table will tell you that new results are being prepared. This informs you that (1) new results are being fetched and (2) the results you are currently looking at can be gone at any given moment. Secondly, there used to be a brief, but disconcerting “freeze” as new results arrived (the larger the library, the longer the freeze), which has now been eliminated.

New Engine, New Requirements

The new database is optimized for modern hardware, and has some requirements that the previous one didn’t have. Perhaps most importantly, an exclusive lock is required to modify the database. If your file-system (e.g. a NAS or cloud folder) does not have this ability, the application should inform you that the library was opened in read-only mode.

The read-only mode is, as the name implies, a mode which prevents modifications from being made to library. This is of course not optimal, which is why we also added the ability to host the collected data (the ‘sononym.db’) on your local drive.

When creating a new library in a file-system without file-lock, it’s a similar situation. Here, you might encounter the following dialog:

Simply follow these instructions, and you should be good to go!

Tagging (Manual & Automatic)

Sononym is now able to tag your files automatically, based on the information which is available in the filename/metadata. For example, if you have a file called “shotgun_reloading.wav”, then that file could automatically be associated with tags that are topically related, such as “Gun Handling” and “Shotgun”. And you can also tag files manually, and create your own custom tags as needed.

The tag tree is visible to the left. The tags column is shown in the middle of the search results.

Of course, you could argue that the audio is always telling the “truth” about a sound, so why even bother with tags which are extracted from the filename? Wouldn’t it be better to come up with a system that could recognize the sound of a shotgun being reloaded?
That’s true, of course. But tags can serve multiple purposes, and are exceptionally well suited for transient/organizational tasks.

For example, a tag might be called WIP (Work In Progress) - something that wouldn’t make any sense for an audio-based system. How could we possibly teach a machine what WIP sounds like?
The audio-based categorization, on the other hand, can inspire us with its ability to draw unexpected connections between sounds, through similarity search. For example, the sound of a helicopter engine might lead to a recording of a purring cat.

This is why we believe that tags and categories each serve a slightly different purpose, and complement each other perfectly.

The built-in tags in Sononym are a superset of UCS (Universal Category System), an initiative coming from a group of sound designers who were fed up with existing metadata standards. We will dedicate a blog entry to this topic later.

Metadata Panel

While it’s great to be able to view embedded metadata like Artist and Album in the results, the reality is that far from all sounds contain such info. More often than not, these columns amount to a big empty space, and finding yourself scrolling around this space isn’t really ideal.

This is why we have added a new side-panel for displaying metadata for the selected libraries. It’s compact, yet it contains every single piece of information - every artist name, every year, waiting to be discovered.

Detachable Panels

With all these new panels, space was starting to get cramped. It is now possible to “dock” panels in a secondary side-bar (on the right-hand side), as well as more flexible grouping on the left side. All in all, this allows better use of the horizontal space.

Improved Similarity Search

Apart from the fact that a similarity search starts much faster, there are a number of additional enhancements that are worth mentioning:

All columns are sortable: While running a similarity search, you have always been able to sort results by their total similarity as well as the individual aspects (Pitch, Timbre, and so on). But if you tried to search by any of the other regular columns, this hasn’t been possible until now.

Edit items without restarting search: In previous releases, the similarity search would restart if you changed an item while the search was running. This would complicate perfectly reasonable actions like favoriting a file while stepping through results.

Waveform Zooming

At long last, you can zoom into the zoom into a waveform using the mousewheel or touchpad.

Pitch Control + Lock

A simple pitch control has been added in the transport bar, allowing four octaves transpose.

• Click-and-drag to change the pitch
• Double-click to edit transpose.
• Use Mouse Wheel to change value in semitone increments

Pitch Lock: When a sample is selected, the pitch control contains an option to “lock” the pitch. This will attempt to maintain the pitch of the file you have selected, as you step through/select other files. How well this works, depends on how accurately the application could detect the pitch in your sounds.

Continuous Playback

Playback will continue to the next file once the current one has stopped playing. Perfect for listening through a bunch of field recordings, or using Sononym as a music player.

Note that the continuous playback will apply to the “main” playback shortcut (Space), but not the “alternative” playback shortcut (Return), and be restricted to your selected files when you have selected more than one.

Next/Previous: This will take you to the next or previous file in the results, and be restricted to your selected files when you have selected more than one.

Trigger Point (Playback)

When you click inside a waveform, the most recently clicked point in a waveform acts as a “trigger point”. Once defined (visible as a dotted line), the trigger-point can be retriggered using the alternative playback shortcut (Return).

MIDI Triggering

A MIDI device can now be used for triggering the selected sound.
Configure your device in the preferences, and use it to control the sample playback (pitch)

Improved Keyboard Support & Selection UX

Detached Selection: applies to all places where you use the keyboard to navigate lists and tree structures. The selection is “detached” in the sense that you can now step through e.g. the folder tree using the keyboard without being forced to change the folder for each step (note: if you want to change the folder, this is done by pressing Return). The feature also applies to the right-click/context menu, which will allow you to select an item and invoke actions on it without having to select it first.

Tab/Keyboard Navigation: Panels are now much more accessible when using Tab to navigate. For example, the “Create Folder” button can now be reached using the keyboard. Also, the sidepanel now has multiple parts (Folders/Tags/Metadata) which can be controlled from the keyboard as well, using the arrow keys.

Waveform Doesn’t Steal Focus The waveform display can now be clicked without capturing the focus. In practice, this means that you can step through search results using arrow keys, while simultaneously triggering different parts of the waveform using your mouse. This allows for a quite efficient auditioning workflow.

If you do want to focus the waveform, this is possible too: either hold the Alt modifier while clicking, or choose [Set Keyboard Focus Here] from the context menu.

Other small tweaks, enhancements

• Each folder now lists how many files it contains
• Some filters (class, category, tags) can now be accessed from the search results simply by clicking them
• The number of libraries that can merged on-the-fly is now virtually unlimited
• Increased contrast for light theme
• Refreshed icon design on macOS

Version 1.6.1

• Fixed: Unable to rebuild legacy libraries
• Fixed: Failure to upgrade some libraries (unexpected content)
• Fixed: Failure to mount files on a path which contain single quotes
• Fixed: Lingering file lock affecting mount/rebuild (Windows)
• Fixed: Cover art extracted during indexing (taking up disk space)
• Fixed: Compression artifacts in macOS icon

Enjoy the release!

The Sononym Crew

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