Like social networking profiles, samples and software instruments can be cumbersome to manage; the more you have, the harder they are to handle. That's what Chicken Systems Instrument Manager (Mac / Win; $79.95) is for. This advanced sampler-instrument management program supports all instrument file formats and works with any software or hardware sampler.

The company didn't chicken out at all on support. Instrument Manager works with Kontakt, Structure, EXS24, Reason NNXT, HALion, MachFive, Independence, GigaStudio, SFZ/Dimension; workstations such as Motif, Fusion, and Fantom; and old samplers such as Akai, Roland, Emu, Ensoniq, Kurzweil, and many more.

To use Instrument Manager as a Browser, simply type a search query in the iTunes-like interface and your results will show up, ready to be dragged and dropped onto any software sampler that supports drag and drop. What's more, the program can re-link samples when the links are broken, as well as re-direct links to new samples and change link or sample names using standard Find / Replace techniques. To make things easier to find, you can assign metadata tags to any instrument and perform searches based on those tags -- very useful for distinguishing between multiple samples called "Alien 1" or "Bells."

Within Instrument Manager you can also make your own custom banks, merge Instruments, rename instruments, audition sounds, and more. For a free, limited demo version, visit the Chicken Systems Web site.