The ALM Busy Circuits Squid Salmple is an 8-channel Eurorack sampler built around percussion work. Each of its eight channels holds one sample, triggered and manipulated independently via CV and gate inputs. Delays, granular processing, and live looping extend it well past plain drum triggering. But before any of that is useful, you need to get samples on it correctly.
The Squid Salmple is particular about file format, folder layout on the USB drive, and USB drive formatting. All three are non-negotiable. Get one wrong and samples either won’t load or will be truncated or silently converted in ways you didn’t plan for.
The short version
The Squid Salmple reads 16-bit, 44.1 kHz, mono WAV files from a FAT32-formatted USB drive. Files must live inside a strict folder structure: /alm022/Bank N/1/ through /alm022/Bank N/8/, with one WAV file per numbered subfolder. Banks are numbered 1 through 99. Each channel holds a maximum of about 11 seconds of audio.
Three things to keep in mind:
- 16-bit, 44.1 kHz, mono WAV. The module accepts 24-bit and stereo files, but converts them on load: 24-bit gets truncated to 16, stereo gets summed to mono. It’s cleaner to do that conversion yourself so you control the result.
- The folder structure is strict.
/alm022/Bank N/1/through/alm022/Bank N/8/. One WAV file per numbered subfolder. Anything outside that layout won’t load as a bank. - USB drive must be FAT32. Not exFAT, not NTFS. Most drives over 32 GB ship formatted as exFAT, which the module won’t read.
How banks and channels work
The Squid Salmple organizes samples into banks of eight. Each bank maps directly to the module’s eight channels: channel 1 gets the sample in folder 1/, channel 2 gets the sample in 2/, and so on up to 8/. Switching banks swaps all eight channels at once.
Banks live under the /alm022/ directory at the root of the USB drive, named Bank 1 through Bank 99. Each bank folder contains eight numbered subfolders. Each numbered subfolder holds one WAV file. The WAV file can have any name you like.
The full path for channel 3 of Bank 5 looks like this:
/alm022/Bank 5/3/hh-open.wavThere’s also a Pool/ directory at /alm022/Pool/ for samples you haven’t organized into banks yet. The Pool holds up to 256 files and is accessible from the module’s file browser, but it doesn’t load as a bank.
One important limit: each numbered subfolder holds exactly one WAV file. If you put two files in the same channel folder, the module loads whichever it encounters first alphabetically. No error, just unpredictable behavior.
Format requirements
Sample rate: 44.1 kHz. The Squid Salmple runs at 44.1 kHz internally. Files at other rates play back at the wrong speed. A 48 kHz file plays slower and flatter than you recorded it. Always check your files are 44.1 kHz before copying to the drive.
Bit depth: 16-bit preferred. The module accepts 24-bit WAV and converts it to 16-bit on load. The conversion works, but doing it yourself beforehand gives you control over dithering and lets you verify the output before it hits the module.
Channels: mono. The Squid Salmple has mono output per channel. Stereo files get summed to mono on load. If your percussion samples have stereo width that matters, collapse them to mono yourself in a DAW first. Summing without checking for phase cancellation can hollow out a sound noticeably.
Length: 11 seconds per channel. Each channel holds approximately 11 seconds of audio in its low-latency RAM buffer. Files longer than 11 seconds are truncated on load without warning. If a sample is cutting off and you can’t figure out why, check its length.
Formatting the USB drive
The Squid Salmple reads FAT32. Most USB drives sold today ship with exFAT, especially anything over 32 GB. You’ll need to reformat before first use.
On macOS, open Disk Utility, select the drive, choose Erase, and set the format to MS-DOS (FAT). That’s FAT32. The erase is fast on an empty drive, under a minute for most sizes.
Drive capacity isn’t a practical limit for audio at 44.1 kHz, 16-bit mono. An hour of audio at that quality is around 300 MB. A 16 GB drive holds far more banks than most setups will use.
The WAV vs AIFF vs FLAC guide covers file system compatibility across different samplers if you want more background on FAT32 versus exFAT and why different hardware lands on different choices.
The manual workflow
Building a bank by hand:
- Convert your source files to 16-bit, 44.1 kHz, mono WAV in your DAW or a batch audio converter.
- Format the USB drive as FAT32 if you haven’t already.
- Create the
/alm022/folder at the root of the drive. - Create a bank folder inside
/alm022/. Name itBank 1(or whichever number you’re filling). - Create eight numbered subfolders inside the bank folder:
1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8. - Copy one WAV file into each numbered subfolder. The filename can be anything:
kick.wav,snare.wav,hh-open.wav. - Eject the drive safely, plug it into the Squid Salmple, and load the bank from the module.
For additional banks, repeat from step 4. Banks are independent so Bank 1 and Bank 2 can be completely different kits.
This works fine for a handful of banks. Once you’re managing 10 or 20, folder creation and file juggling gets tedious quickly.
SquidManager and squidbanks.com
ALM supports a free third-party tool called SquidManager that provides a graphical interface for building and editing Squid Salmple banks on a computer. It handles the folder structure automatically and lets you drag samples onto channel slots without touching the file system directly.
squidbanks.com hosts a community library of free, pre-built Squid Salmple banks. Banks there are already correctly formatted, so you download, copy to your USB drive, and they load immediately. Useful for getting a working percussion setup fast, or for seeing what a correctly structured bank looks like before building your own.
The SampleStack workflow
If you’re pulling from a larger sample library where files arrive at different rates, bit depths, and formats, SampleStack reads WAV, AIFF, and FLAC, converts everything to 16-bit 44.1 kHz mono, and writes the /alm022/Bank N/1..8/ folder structure to your USB drive in one pass. You assign samples to channel slots, set the bank number, and export.
That’s most useful when you’re building several banks at once or working with source material that needs conversion before it’ll behave correctly on the module.
Common pitfalls
Samples not loading at all. Start with the USB drive formatting. If the drive is exFAT, the module won’t read it. Reformat as FAT32 and copy the files again.
Samples cut off mid-playback. The 11-second limit. Check the file duration. If it’s over 11 seconds, the module truncated it at load time. Trim the file to under 11 seconds and copy again.
Wrong pitch or speed. Almost always a sample rate mismatch. The file is probably 48 kHz rather than 44.1 kHz. Convert it.
A channel is silent. Either the numbered subfolder is empty, contains no WAV file, or contains more than one WAV file and the first alphabetically isn’t what you expected. Check the folder contents directly.
Stereo source sounds thin or hollow. When the module summed stereo to mono, phase cancellation reduced the signal. Convert stereo to mono yourself in a DAW, check for phase issues before summing, then copy the result.
Pool files don’t show up as a bank. That’s expected behavior. The Pool directory is for loose files and doesn’t load as a bank. Move files into a /Bank N/1..8/ structure to use them in a performance context.
Going further
Once you have a solid bank workflow, a few things worth exploring on the module:
The Squid Salmple has a recording input and writes recordings back to the USB drive, landing in the Pool by default. If you record a sample live on the module and want it in a future bank, move it into a numbered subfolder on a computer before your next session.
Shorter samples often work better than longer ones given the 11-second limit. A single sine tone, a short noise burst, or a two-second field recording fragment becomes surprisingly varied once the module’s per-channel granular and delay parameters are in play. Trying to fit long phrases into 11 seconds is usually the wrong frame.
The Squarp Rample covers similar Eurorack drum sampler territory if you need velocity layers or round-robin alternation across multiple sample layers per channel. It uses a different folder structure but the same basic principle of organizing samples into kits of voices.