Confused about samples

Hello :)

I'm trying to build myself an up-to-date MAME arcade collection with clrmamepro, using archive.org, websites, and decade-old older versions of MAME I had lying around to feed it files.

So far, I seem to have all ROMs, except that a whole bunch of them show up as missing because of missing samples in clrmamepro.

Searching around here, on progetto, twisty, etc., I'm kinda getting the notion that,

1. There are no checksums provided by the mame.exe xml dump for sample files
2. There's a bunch of samples that are "officially" missing, in the sense that they've never been dumped or captured and digitized
3. There are "rogue" samples out there that were just created to make clrmamepro say "100% completed, yay"
4. There are "fan" samples out there made by users like us to improve games with missing "official" samples

Am I correct in this understanding? If so, I have a few questions, first of course the obvious:

1. What do you guys do wrt samples?
2. How do you know (in clrmamepro) when you're satisfied and "up to date"?
3. How do you KEEP up to date? As far as I can see, samples are routinely omitted from torrents and other "package deals" (update or full)?
4. I'm confused about how clrmamepro even handles samples, seeing as how the rebuilder only takes one specific target folder when rebuilding, and if I understand correctly, sample zips are named after the set they provide samples for? That would mean they'd overwrite the set zip or vice-versa?

An unrelated question: I'm on macOS, so I'm using WINE to run clrmamepro. Is there a way to perform the drag-n-drop rebuild action without dragging and dropping? I can't drop from macOS into a WINE application.

Thank you :)

Quick answers to your questions: - (I apoligize ahead of time if any info I am dispensing here is incorrect and I'm sure someone in the know with better knowledge than I will let me know it!)

1 - Correct

2 - Correct - Most of these are just place holders for analog circuitry soundfx. Some have been though and those are the ones you'll actually find in the sample files and some have actually had the samples replaced with actual emulation of the circuits(Votrax is 1 of the major accomplishments of this ie Wizard of Wor). The skill set required to transition from schematic(if available), wiring diagrams & photos(& such) to correctly emulated & sounding code is not one that even many MAMEdevs possess so you can understand the lack of an overabundance of netlist code. Not to mention the rarity of the machines to obtain recordings for new samples.

3 - Yes, they are just empty files to say there's something there for the obsessive-compulsive we all have in us.

4 - Yes, some of the "official" samples started out that way. If they are of high enough quality they can be used. But as far as I know, MAMEDevs hated using samples and if you'll notice, most of the samples are for the older games that used actual analog circuits for video & sound. Eventually the games got to point where they had dedicated sound processing chips and samples were no longer as necessary as they had been. 

Next:

1 - Samples go into their own "Samples" folder in the directory where you have the MAME.EXE

2 - For samples you just need to get the official ones, if you want, or none at all. It's up to you. Everything will run fine without any samples at all.You just won't have those certain soundfx while you're playing.

3 - Just keep checking the same places you have been. It's very very rare that any new samples appear anymore. If Progetto doesn't have it, it prolly don't exist... 

4 - As I said above, they go in their own "Samples" folder and would probably have to be done seperately from the roms. I'm not sure on that myself.Head over to the author's home and check it out. https://mamedev.emulab.it/clrmamepro  Roman is great with answering questions if you can't find an answer in the forums or a FAQ.

He's also working on a new scanner & rebuilder that is still in beta but is A LOT easier to use, smaller footprint, and WAY faster! If you can run CMP then you should be able to run this too...

I'm not familiar with WINE on MAC so I can't really help you out on the drag 'n drop question...

Hope this cleared up some of your issues.

       GL & Enjoy!