There are lots of different schools of thought on this. I personally don't copy any assets other than audio files to my project folder generally. I like working from one global library of EXS instruments, samples, impulse responses, etc. They are all always mounted and available for any project I want.
If you are customizing a lot of EXS instruments on a per project basis, that might be a reason to save them with the project. Personally, if I do customize any of them, I generally want to then have them available for future projects as well.
If you are using lots of removable media which puts you in a situation of possibly not having all your media available to you (maybe you're working on a laptop and don't always take external drives with you that have sample libraries,etc) that would be another situation where it pays to have consolidated project folders containing everything.
Maybe you are working at other studios with other people who don't have the same libraries. There's another scenario where it would be a benefit.
Maybe you like to archive your projects off line and want to make sure everything is available for easy future recall. There's another scenario where it would be a benefit.
Personally, I am a single user on a tower with four internal drives. So I always have everything right there. And I just save anything I customize to a global location.
I have seen lots of users work in various ways and I would suggest that if you have sloppy work habits, that's another good reason to consolidate everything. I have seen lots of users who have files scattered all over the place and don't know what is where, have tons of duplicates floating around their system, etc. They benefit from consolidating projects, just as a safety precaution!
But if you are in control of your system, have good habits wrt managing your media, know where everything is, work with all your media always available to you, aren't on the road too much, then it's not really a benefit. It just bloats your project folders unneccesarily. IMHO 🙂
(bottom of page)
