Review: Wave Alchemy Drum Machines 02

2010/07/20 in Reviews, Sound & Samples

Quite some time ago the brand Wave Alchemy was successfully established on the sample market – for a good reason. Their products are known to be top-notch and highly professional, therefore we proudly present a fresh review of the latest release, Drum Machines 02. It’s a bundle consisting of 3 independent Micro Series sample libraries, with a focus on sounds only famous (vintage?) drum machines can offer.

What you get…

Samples are delivered in state-of-the-art 24bit/44.1kHz format plus professionally dithered 16bit format, something hardware sampler users might highly appreciate.

Part 1 of this sample pack is “808 Drums”, as you might guess: a sample collection built with the infamous Roland TR-808. Sounds are devided into subfolders.

Hats & Cymbals (53 samples)
Kick Drums (259 samples)
Percussion (48 samples)
Snare Drums (91 samples)
Toms & Congas (57 samples)

Part 2 is named “909 Drums”, as you might again guess: a sample collection built with Roland’s TR-909.

Cymbals (59 samples)
Kick Drums (128 samples)
Percussion (44 samples)
Snare Drums (117 samples)
Toms & Congas (87 samples)

Part 3 is named “DrumFire” and offers samples from the rare DrumFire DF-2000 alongside the well-known MFB Schlagzwerg.

Hats & Cymbals (15/74 DrumFire samples)
Kick Drums (89 DrumFire samples)
RingMod (11 DrumFire samples)
Snare Drums (40 DrumFire samples)
Toms & Various (14 DrumFire samples)

Hats & Cymbals (74 Schlagzwerg samples)
Kick Drums (149 Schlagzwerg samples)
Snare Drums (68 Schlagzwerg samples)
Toms & Various (58 Schlagzwerg samples)

It’s all about the details…

…and there’s plenty of them in here. We like a lot the fact that main samples like kick drums or snares are available to everybody’s taste: clean, drive, fatso, sp1200, warm – this definitely facilitates hunting for the right sound and adding facettes to your track. To our knowledge, it’s the first time ever a sample pack tells the root keys of the toms – awesome!

Okay, what about the sound?

Again, you might have guessed it: we simply love it. The variety of samples is outstanding, the creators applied smooth compression (which is really an art), everything sounds clear, dynamic, pounding. Just as it has to be for drums. Wave Alchemy carefully used a whole bunch of reknowned equipment for sound editing and shaping, once more emphasizing the professional work put into this project:

Thermionic Culture Vulture Mastering Version
Empirical Labs Fatso
Empirical Labs Distressor
Cranesong Hedd
Moog Filters & Envelopes
Korg MS20
Sherman Filterbank 2
SSL E Series EQ
SSL E Series Compressor
SPL Transient Designer
API 512c Preamp
SPL Gainstation Preamp

To furthermore guarantee authentic vintage sampler sound, EMU SP-12 and SP-1200 were applied.

Summary

Drum Machines 02 convinced us. Why? ‘Cause it does what it’s supposed to do: deliver versatile, high quality drum sounds, created by legendary equipment. Besides pretty attractive pricing, this pack is ready to support and enrich manifold styles like minimal, house, hihop or ambient. Would have been nice though to have sampler patches attached for easy use within plugins (EXS, Battery, Kontakt…).

Apart from that, you might also like Drum Machines 01, containing drums made with Jomox and Vermona. Or maybe you just want to test a freebie for registered users, samples from Roland’s TR-606?

wavealchemy.co.uk
Drum Machines 02 – 24.99 ₤
808 Drums – 9.99 ₤
909 Drums – 9.99 ₤
DrumFire – 9.99 ₤

Tags: drum samples, drumfire, schlagzwerg, tr-808, tr-909, wave alchemy