Customer
Black Octopus Sound is a sample pack and sound design company.
The problem
Preparing a single sample pack for release meant moving between multiple apps, DAWs, and utilities: renaming thousands of files by hand, checking every sample by ear for clicks, peaks, and inconsistent levels, then converting sample rates and bit depths one at a time.
The process was slow, repetitive, and pulled skilled audio engineers away from sound design work.
The approach
dabl.dev, led by dabl.dev founder Dylan Holshausen, built Black Octopus Sound a complete tool from the ground up: the kind of tool they had wished existed for years.
It handles bulk file renaming with AI-generated unique names, custom renaming presets, click detection and automatic repair, sample rate and bit depth conversion, duplicate detection by audio content and filename, grid detection with BPM lock fixes, bulk normalisation across thousands of files in a single pass, seamless loop preview, and automatic detection of artwork, demo, and licence files within a pack.
Everything runs locally, so there is no security exposure from sending audio files to a third party. Built over two years, it is currently an internal tool, with plans to bring it to other sample pack companies and producers over time.
The outcome
Tasks that used to take three to four hours per sample pack now take around thirty seconds, even when processing thousands of sounds in a single pass.
In the two years since it went into use, Black Octopus Sound has processed:
- 48,000 files renamed
- 29,000 AI-generated file names
- 52,000 files normalised
- 4,700 bit depth conversions
- 13,000 clicks automatically removed
These figures are from Black Octopus Sound releases alone.
“Our staff members are 10000% happier since rolling out this software. Repetitive, mind numbing tasks can now be done in minutes rather than hours; which means less labor dollar spend as well. Wish I had this tool 10 years ago!”
— Steve Roland, CBO
The broader lesson
When domain experts and product-minded engineers build the tool that does not exist yet, the result can outgrow its original purpose.
What started as an internal fix for Black Octopus Sound’s own workflow is now shaping up to become a product of its own.