In another selfless act designed to help bored stuck-at-home producers, Sharooz Raoofi of Sample Magic, has made this 1GB sample pack available for free.
These are the result of sampling over 100 analogue synths and drums located in the LA based principle pleasure studio.
How can you use them?
Simply import them to your favourite DAW, assign them to your favourite MIDI, etc.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Looking for a summarised list of best rent-to-own VST plugins? Check the table below, with our selection of the four best rent-to-own services. Also please note that this list is constantly updated so bookmark it for later reference.
If you are on a mobile device, please scroll left and right in the table to see all the entries, and up and down in the cells to see all the content.
Name
Plugins Included
Cost per month
Our Rating
Editor’s Value Choice
49 plugins on offer. Including: Serum, Ozone 9, Arturia, Studio 1 Professional.
Starts at 4.99$ per plugin. Option for a free 3 day trial.
First month FREE! Weekly sound packs 70+ instruments and effects
19.99$
4.6/5
Over 200 waves plugins. to choose from. You will NOT OWN them at the end, you have to keep paying to access them.
6.99$ for 16 plugins. 9.99$ for 42 plugins. 19.99$ for 60 plugins.
4.9/5
It’s really fascinating when you think how easy it is today to make your own home studio and be able to make solid music with it. What’s more, you can even set up a mobile studio with your laptop and an audio interface and take it anywhere with you to either record or just make your music. It’s something that opens up new possibilities and was unimaginable back in the old days.
What’s also great is that you can even rent different plugins by using some handy services today.
In this brief guide, we will be taking a closer look and explaining how so-called “rent-to-own” plugin services work, as well as some great products that you can get on them.
Rent-to-own VST plugin system
The whole idea is to have a service and a system that will allow you to rent plugins for a certain monthly price. But, as the name of this concept would suggest, if you rent these plugins long enough to pay for their full price, the product (or, in some cases, a bundle of multiple products) is yours.
It’s the same principle we see on the housing market when you rent a home for a while, see if it fits your needs, and decide if you want to keep paying for it until you pay off the full price. You can just cancel any time you want.
What’s really useful here is that you no longer need to deal with demos and all the annoying features that come with such them.
And you don’t have to buy a full version after 30 days only to realize that you don’t really like this product 3 months after paying the full license price. Is there a plugin you think will help you in your creative endeavors? Try and rent it for a few months and see what the full product with all of its features is like.
If you think you’ll need the plugin in the longterm, you can keep renting it until you pay off the full price. If you need it for some smaller tweaks and adjustments in a few of your songs, then rent it for a month or two.
It really is that simple.
NOTE: Waves had a rent to own service but it has been discontinued. Instead, they made it cheaper but removed the “own” part, so that you perpetually pay for the subscription.
There are usually no extra charges and you pay around the same price in the end as you would for the plugin on the creator’s website. The plugins you can purchase via these services can be effects, synths, or any other different products, sometimes even entire Digital Audio Workstations.
It’s especially useful if there’s a pricy plugin that you set your eyes on but can’t afford to pay the full price upfront. All of the best vst plugins, the ones used by the pros, are now available for anyone with a few extra dollars per month.
With all this in mind, we’ll now go into some of the rent-to-own plugin services that you can find online.
VST plugins
Splice is one of the most famous services of this kind. On there, you can also buy royalty-free samples, get your hands on some of the plugins in the rent-to-own section, or even buy DAWs. Splice can either be used in the browser or via their specialized desktop app.
This app allows you to open project files of a few different DAWs: Logic Pro, Ableton Live, GarageBand, or FL Studio.
It also comes as an extremely useful service for collaborative projects, serving as sort of a GitHub for musicians. The rented plugins can be used in individual DAWs or within the app.
Whether it’s plugins or any other services that they offer, you can purchase them with Splice credits. There are four pricing models for buying these credits, going from $7.99 per month up to $139.99 per year.
At the moment, there are 49 plugins and DAWs to choose from. The list includes Ozone 9 Advanced compressor and EQ, Serum synth, Punchbox distortion and synth, and others. Some of these made our best vst synth list.
Here are some of the plugins on offer at :
Plugin Name
Plugin Maker
1. Serum
Xfer Records
2. Ozone 9 Advanced
iZotope
3. VocalSynth
2
iZotope
4. Nectar 3
iZotope
5. Neutron 3 Advanced
iZotope
6. V Collection
7
Arturia
7. Studio One
Professional
PreSonus
8. Ozone 9 + Neutron
3 Advanced
iZotope
9. Decimort 2
D16 Group
10. MOVEMENT
Output
11. Pigments
Arturia
12. RX 7 Standard
iZotope
13. Punchbox
D16 Group
14. Neutron 3
Standard
iZotope
15. Toraverb 2
D16 Group
16. Devastor 2
D16 Group
17. Ozone 9 Standard
iZotope
18. Ozone 9 +
Neutron 3 Standard
iZotope
19. Circle²
FutureAudioWorkshop
20. Zone
Audiaire
21. Regroover
Pro
Accusonus
22. Parallels
Softube
23. Beatformer
Accusonus
24. D16 FX Bundle
D16 Group
25. Nuxx
Audiaire
26. Tekturon
D16 Group
27. Antresol
D16 Group
Biggest Upcoming Competitor: Plugin Alliance by Native Instruments
It definitely doesn’t have the wide range that Splice does, but did you know our friends at Plugin Alliance now offer three rent-to-own plugins, including an EQ, mastering software, and more?
Why are we excited about this?
For starters, these are great high quality plugins and it’s fantastic that PA is making them more accessible In addition, they are included as part of PA’s bundles, so there are multiple ways of paying for them if you decide the ren-to-own model isn’t ultimately for you. However, PA has a staggering variety of plugins and what we’re excited about is if this means they are going to start offering MORE OPTIONS on the rent-to-own model. Truly, this could be the start of something new, so BOOKMARK THIS PAGE to stay updated as we are keeping an eye out for any of their other plugins that they may add to their rent-to-own scheme.
With Landr, you can try out plugins and other products for 3 days completely free of charge. But the platform is also very well-known for its different trap beats and samples and also allows collaborative projects, kind of similar to the Splice model.
Their main plugin offer is a synth called Lethal. This is a very versatile synthesizer plugin with around 50 GB of different sounds (with all expansions included), presets, and samples.
The monthly rent-to-own price is $9.99 and you can stop it or cancel it at any time. Although it’s aimed for trap sounds, it comes really in handy for other genres as well. With Lethal, you can get any of the 24 different expansions, each specified for a certain style of music. These expansions, however, are charged separately.
We’re very pleased to shout out about the APOGEE NATIVE range of rent-to-own plugins.
We’re listing this next to LANDR because if you like the look of Landr’s versatility and expansion pack variety, you’ll love APOGEE NATIVE.
What does it involve?
The biggest plus of the APOGEE NATIVE range is that it includes versatile, one-of-a-kind plugins that you don’t really get elsewhere. If you want something a bit outside the mainstream, this is the option for you.
The rent-to-own scheme applies to its vintage/modern FX bundle as well as Clearmountain Phase (flanger/phaser) PULTEC Equaliser, Opto3A vintage compressor/limiter, and many more unique sounding FX at accessible prices!
This one is new and interesting for most old-school producers like myself. Oh, Reason! We loved you, but now we don’t because we all love Ableton now. Reason was the… reason we started. It had all the flexible routing that we need, and the workflow that suited us best until something better appeared.
We know Reason is back, and with a vengeance. If you already own Reason software, you will get 50% off the first year, which is great. For 19.99 per month you get not only plugins, but also the Reason stand-alone DAW and Reason Rack. Reason Rack is a plugin host (VST/AU/AAX) that you can insert into your own DAW of choice to access the main contents of this pack, which are 70+ plugins plus a lot of sound packs. These sound pack are always new and interesting and are updated weekly.
The 70+ plugins contain all the stuff that Reason has ever made! Also, you will get access to everything that Reason will make in the future. The Reason+ companion app will automatically give you the recent updates, for both devices and sample libraries. And if you are not sure, you get the first month free of charge!
Waves.com is a service that sells an abundance of different plugins. There are over 200 plugins for any kind of studio work that you need: effects, synths, distortions, even specialized professional-level guitar plugins. Waves VST plugins are top class, trusted and recommended by almost everyone in the industry.
Even if the service does not end with a full ownership of plugins, it is still worth noting on the list.
These plugins and different software can be bought in bundles. There are three basic subscription models for bundles. Depending on the number of plugins that you want, they offer a Silver, Gold and Platinum package.
If you feel that first you want to try music production with free products and then move to rent professional VST plugins, we have an extensive list here.
Of course, you can just cancel any time before the subscription period ends and you’ll be charged for the last payment at the end of the billing cycle. What’s really great is that there are literally hundreds of plugins to choose from.
You can also buy different product bundles straight away if you don’t feel like taking the subscription.
Aside from these, Waves offer different educational courses, digital mixers, racks, and even some specialized hardware products.
Final Thoughts
How do they all compare?
With the 2023/24 updates, we would say Splice, Plugin Alliance, Reason, and APOGEE NATIVE are the best options on this list for scope and versatility.
Ultimately rent to own is about the freedom to not have to make too much of an investment; ultimately, or top picks are the ones that balance ariety and range with affordability and accessibility.
To sum up:
So why consider rent to own if you haven’t already?
Investing in a good set of plugins for your music production setup can really have an impact on your sound. It used to be the case that the premium VSTs such as the ones sold by waves were only available for the professional studios, but fortunately along with technical innovation, plugin companies have been investing in business model innovation.
The results are great for the bedroom producer. You can now go pro for only a few bucks a month. We hope this article has helped you choose a rent-to-own service. If you have any other suggestions, please leave them in the comment box below.
Investing in an online music production “masterclass” course is one of the best decisions you will make this year.
This might seem like a pretty bold statement, specially for those of you who have previously tried free courses or dabble around some youtube videos on production, but it’s the truth: Knowledge is more important than any piece of gear in your studio. Furthermore, enrolling in one of the below courses is nothing like doing a free course or watching youtube videos.
These online music production masterclass courses allow you to follow a tried and tested structure devised by top producers and engineers, plus incentivises you to follow through, as you have money invested.
– Electronic Music Production, – Vocal Recording, – Ableton Live.
9.3/10
What’s so good about Groove3 and why is it our editor’s choice? For starters, it’s simply a great all-rounder beginner course and, as evidenced by the course reviews, has helped many musicians cut their teeth in production.
The curriculum is varied, the pricing is low, and it focuses on pro-quality video lessons in comparison to many lower-quality user-made courses on sites such as Udemy and Skillshare.
The best part is that it lets you learn at your own pace and in your own style due to the variety and flexibility of it’s content. This is not simply a walk-through, step-by-step course. One small downside is it is not as ‘official’ as some others – there is no qualification at the end, for example. However, it is a fantastic course overall, so read on for a breakdown.
Music style: All
Financial Investment: Low
Duration: Over 20 000 hours of video + over 20 books. 1 077 Courses 17 979 Individual Tutorials.
Main DAW used: All DAWs available.
Our Rating: 9.5/10
Skill Level: Beginner / Intermediate / Advanced
Certificate upon completion: No
PROS:
High quality of content
Content available on all formats and platforms: Video, books, Desktop, iOS, Android, Apple TV, Roku.
Very affordable on a month-to-month basis
High quality instructors
Most comprehensive library of learning resources
CONS:
Lack of focus
Can be overwhelming
We’ll start with our favorite online music production course: . What an absolute gold mine of music production knowledge.
If you watched all of groove3’s videos back-to-back you’d take over 2 years to finish, probably much more, given that they update the content regularly.
There are tutorials on all topics you can imagine, including all DAWs, Plugins, and musical styles. If you search the forums, it’s often mentioned as a student favorite, along with some of the masterclass courses we’ll review below.
When it comes to price, an all-access pass costs only 89$, with . This represents without a doubt the best value of all courses.
We’ve found this to be a great way to stay focused for idle studio time. Simply browse around their website, find an interesting video, watch it, then apply it to your current project.
Do you want to learn from the pros? If you’ve heard of electronic music, you’ve heard of Deadmau5. That’s right, Deadmau5’s Masterclass Course was actually the first course we’ve had a chance to review.
Electronic mixing is an art not a science. On the website MasterClass, designed to let you learn from professionals in their field, Deadmau5 goes deeper than just production and shows you how getting to the beating heart of EDM lets you emulate his distinctive, crisp sound.
Over six hours of tracks cover melody, composition, and the creative process plus how these areas intersect with production. This learn-from-home course is designed to inspire and delight both fans and those who want to break into EDM, and truly doesn’t disappoint.
Music style: EDM / Electronic
Financial Investment: Low / Moderate
Duration: 6 hours of video + assignments
Main DAW used: Ableton, though teachings can be applied to any DAW.
Our Rating: 9.3/10
Skill Level: Beginner
Certificate upon completion: No
Pros:
Very entertaining, huge production value. Very easy to follow through with the teachings.
Very well-rounded. All major topics are discussed (mastering, mixing, synths, drums, music business, live performance, and more).
Composed of videos, assignments, and discussions.
Great community if you’re willing to engage.
Cons:
This 6 hour course will set you back 90$. It’s not a cheap course by any means, but we found the cost/quality relation to be quite good.
It’s a short course. It could benefit from going more in-depth into certain topics.
Course Structure
The course has 23 lessons, all delivered through video classes. It also has assignments and discussions.
The classes touch upon the following topics:
The Deadmau5 Production Process
Building Your Home Studio
Melodic Structures
Arrangements
Synthesized Sounds
Modular Synths
Digital Vs. Analog Synths
Sound Design with Effects And Processing
Drums / Beats
Song Structure
Remixed
Mixing
Mastering (includes case study)
Starting a Career
Music Business
On Stage Performance
Our Thoughts
Overall, this is a solid and very well rounded online music production masterclass course. It won’t hold your hand and automatically offer you a career in audio engineering or music production, but if you follow through with all the tips shared, your chances of making it will increase exponentially.
Furthermore, if you take your time to network and reach out to the community, you’ll likely make some useful connections out of this online music production masterclass course.
This is a great course for anyone looking for a well-balanced course on electronic / pop / hip-hop / digital music production, with no specific focus on any are of the music production process, but rather a wholistic approach. It gives you a framework, the one used by deadmau5, to produce a song. It is not a case study, i.e- it won’t show you how deadmau5 produces a song from scratch, but it will show you every single step of the process. We recommend to people that are starting out and want something a bit lighter (shorter) and more fun.
Up next is Hans Zimmer’s online music production masterclass course.This is more niche than some of the courses on this list; it’s specifically for audio professionals – or beginners – interested in the creative production process behind film scoring. This is another option from the great distance-learning site Masterclass, and works as an excellent resource for insight into how to produce film scores.
There is one downside which we go into more detail later – there is not that much cohesive focus on a step-by-step set of skills. Instead, it is broken up with highlights of Zimmer’s work as a composer. However, it is still a very good course for producers of any skill level.
Music style: Film Scoring / Soundtrack / Sound Design
Financial Investment: Low / Moderate
Duration: 4.5 hours of video + assignments
Main DAW used: N/A.
Our Rating: 8.5/10
Skill Level: Intermediate
Course Structure
Themes
Story
Directors
Sound Palettes
Creating with Synths
Scoring to Picture
Scoring Under Dialogue
Tempo
Music Diary
Character
Case Study: Frost/Nixon
Working With Musicians
Feedback & Revisions
Audience Feedback
Writing Tips
Hans’ Journey
Learning by Listening
Life of a Composer
Closing
Our Thoughts
This is a very interesting course. The simple fact that you get to hear Hans Zimmer talk in first person about stuff that he has never revealed on interviews is worth the cost of the program.
However, we found the structure a bit random.
As we mention above, the structure isn’t for everyone. Unlike deadmau5’s course, this program kind of jumped around topics, with one class being solely about Hans’ career and progression in the industry. To be honest, if we wanted to learn about that, we could just check one of the hundreds of interviews that he’s given.
Having said that, there are loads of golden nuggets there about his process, inspiration, and process. It is packed with loads of synthesiser tips as well as general aesthetic in sound design.
To finish off our selection of Masterclass courses, we’ll have a look at Timbaland’s online music production course. Hip-hop can be a challenging genre to produce because of the amount of skill invovled across diferent areas, from melody, unbderstanding of software, and subtler technique. A proper round-up of the best online hip hop production courses could be an article of it’s own.
Hip-hop history is also more technologically innovative than many genres, from killer sampling that has gone down in legend to the invention of the DJ scratch. However, despite this legacy, it doesn’t take a lot to get started and this course shows you how to investigate the more pop-oriented end of hip-hop.
Music style: Hip-Hop / Pop
Financial Investment: Low / Moderate
Duration: 3.5 hours of video + assignments
Main DAW used: Ableton
Our Rating: 8.5/10
Skill Level: Beginner / Intermediate
Course Structure:
Studio Session: Making a Beatbox Beat
Building Beats: Tim’s Process
Making a Beat: Getting Warmed Up
Song Origins: “Dirt Off Your Shoulder”
Making a Beat: Starting With a Chord Progression
Making a Beat: Tweaking and Layering Drums
Song Origins: “Pony”
Making a Beat: Manipulating Vocal Samples
Making a Beat: Creating a Breakdown
Song Origins: “Gossip Folks”
Making a Beat: Adding a Topline
Song Origins: “Are You That Somebody?”
Tim’s Influences
How to Persevere
Our Thoughts
Despite how important technical skills can be in hip-hop production, we found this masterclass to be the least technical of all online music production masterclass courses reviewed. Perhaps on purpose, as Timbaland’s production process seems to be based a lot around feeling, leaning on his team to fill in the more technical gaps. However, this does mean it’s a very accessible and simple course for beginners that gives you the confidence to begin producing from your bedroom. Plus, the way it takes you from making beats to creating a whole song makes it a great breakdown on the process.
We still found it very useful and inspiring, with some pretty straight forward but useful tips such as thinking about drums through beatbox.
His team of “co-producers” also share some gems on drums layering, chord progression, beatmaking, and more.
If you’re a hip hop head, you’ll love this course. You’ll learn about how Timba produced hits for Missy Elliot, Jay-Z, and others, as well as some inspiring tips on how to succeed in the industry and production studio. If you’re not a hip hop nerd, then you might find it not that inspiring. Though we still recommend purchasing it as part of the masterclass bundle of classes.
If you want a qualification with your course, then this is the one for you. Point Blank is an award-winning, well established English music school, which has opened its expertise to the online sector. If you want a serious, life-changing course for a music career in production or sound engineering, you can’t beat it. The sheer diversity of courses that they offer, including Music Business courses, is practically unmatched. This Online Music Production Masterclass Course set is both formal and fun due to its interactive elements.
Music style: None in Specific
Financial Investment: Medium-high
Duration: Depends on the subject of choice.
Main DAW used: Ableton
Our Rating: 9.5/10.
Skill Level: Intermediate-High
The “Online” courses of Point Blank Music School are actual real-time/live lecture by teachers, customised to you as a student. You get to ask questions and interact with your teacher via webcam. Each course thus has it’s own structure.
Our thoughts:
So, this is clearly something different. There are no pre-recorded sessions, like the others, which also explains the high price point in comparison. Essentially, this is an online degree at a virtal university and courses do, in fact, go up to bachelor degree level. As a drawback, this means you have to enroll like you would to a school. The only difference is that that the school location is your home, if you cannot access the offline schools Point Blank Music School has running in London, L.A., Mumbai, Ibiza and China.
We feel like this product is for the more advanced music production, since asking questions is key here.
If you feel like you have run out of material to study on your own and feel like it’s time to get 1:1 with a teacher who can guide you further then look no further and click the button below to access the Point Blank Music School website.
Producertech is a well established music course provider,founded in 2009 by Rob Jones. All their content is high-quality and on demand with clear care and effort put into it. However, f all their online music production courses, EQ fundamentals is one of our favourites. Although DAW knowledge is often transferrable depending on your skill level, what makes this course stand out is it is actually one of the best online music production courses for Ableton specifically.
Here’s why:
Music style: None in Specific
Financial Investment: Low
Duration: 2.5 hours of video + assignments +
Main DAW used: Ableton
Our Rating: 9/10.
Skill Level: Intermediate
Course Structure:
Introduction to Frequencies
EQ Controls
EQ in Isolation
Frequency Demo #3 – Combining the Piano and Sine Wave
The Frequency Spectrum Explained
EQ with respect to other parts
EQ’ing Drums
Common EQ Practices
EQ’ing Kick and Bass
EQ on the Master Channel
EQ In The Mix
Our thoughts:
This course is, in our opinion, a must-do for all aspiring producers. Having a solid grasp of EQ can be the difference between an amateur-sounding song and a commercial-grade end product.
Producertech’s EQ Fundamentals online music production masterclass course will give you the foundation you need to make clean sounding mixed, at a very accessible cost (25$).
It doesn’t have a rock star teacher or cover 10 different topics, but that is, in our opinion, a strength. There is no magic pill that will make you a successful musician. Instead, the path to success is continued investment in small courses on different topics. Simply put, this is the best specialist course to learn how to EQ online. This laser focused course will give you a very complete foundation on one of the most important skills in the game: EQing.
It also comes with the EXPOSE software, which allows you to “test” your final mix for any potential issues. We were positively surprised by the production quality of the course. Here’s a sample video from the course:
In addition it’s one of the best places to learn to use Ableton if you’re not familiar with the popular alternative DAW. There is a special focus on bass and kick mixing, thus making it slightly more relevant to electronic, hip-hop, and pop producers, though it really suits any kind of music style.
Berklee’s website claims you can learn in your own time and create your degree online, meaning even though it is one of the most famous music schools in the world, you don’t have to follow strict rules. This institution is a , having started in 2002! They still are an industry leader and offer the most formal, academic type of education you’ll find in this list. Yes, you can teach yourself music production online. However, if you want a really good academic course that gives you a degree, this can’t be beaten.
Music style: Electronic
Financial Investment: Moderate
Duration: Around 6 months (4 hours / week recommended)
Main DAW used: Ableton, though teachings can be applied to any DAW.
Our Rating: 9.5/10.
Skill Level: Beginner / Intermediate
Certificate upon completion: Yes
Course Structure:
The Technology of Music Production
Introduction to Ableton Live
Creating Sounds for Electronic Music
The Art of Vocal Production
Our Thoughts:
This is a solid course for students looking for a serious commitment and some degree of credibility. It teaches all the theoretic background + gives you a solid foundation in ableton production and recording / mastering vocals.
If you’re looking for some credibility in the industry, the Beerklee is something to stick in your CV that can also teach you some good theory.
However, there are more advanced and complete courses in this list in terms of knowledge.
Finally, one of the main advantages is that coursera offers financial aid to certain students.
All in all, it is pretty inexpensive, at 39$/month, and if you’re feeling motivated, you can knock it off in a couple of months, getting a “mini” degree for a very affordable price.
Next up, we have a couple of Udemy courses. Udemy allows users to upload their own courses to teach the world their skills. The website has a mixed bag, so we’ve included several. We can’t fully say what is or isn’t the best Udemy music production course – but this is a good breakdown. We’ll start with probably the most popular music course in the platform, “Music Production in Logic Pro X”.
Udemy has a lot of online music production course programs on it’s website, they mostly have a similar structure to the Logic X one which is our reference.
This course was developed by Digital Music Masters, a well-established music school.
Music style: None in Specific
Financial Investment: Low
Duration: 38 hours of video + articles and resources
Main DAW used: Logic Pro X
Our Rating: 9/10.
Skill Level: Beginner / Intermediate
Our Thoughts
This is mostly for those more advanced. What we like is that you can just pay for one “topic” and not buy the whole online music production masterclass course package like with the others. Thus, it’s more of a specialized music production course, in the same way that ones aimed at skills like EQ or reverb are. You just get to Udemy, shop for what you want to know and that’s it.
These courses are mostly focused on DAW workflows, with some specific items covering hardware gear like the Maschine and others focusing on specific sub-genres like music for games. All in all, we think it is good product if you just want to fill some specific empty spaces in your skill arsenal.
Final Thoughts
We hope that the above suggestions help you kickstart your music production career/hobby. It may seem daunting to teach yourself music production online and that’s why we recommend courses to make things easier and give a more comprehensive view of what a killer mixing and mastering process looks like. Honestly, all of these have made the list because they are worth your investment in both time and money.
This article is in constant update as we try new courses, so if you have any recommendations, please post them below in the comments section!
Loopcloud Drum is a new free plugin that features 16 pads for drum/samples, built in sequencer and effects.
We have written about loopcloud before- It’s a great piece of software to store all your samples and organize your library and production workflow in the cloud.
It comes with ready to use kits from some very popular producers including Audiojack, Evil Needle, Maribou State, Justice, Timo Maas, Phaeleh, and many more.
The coolest feature of a new plugin is of course integration with Loopmasters sample libraries/Loopcloud.
Here’s a quick look at what the interface and main features look like:
It also comes with loads of preset patterns, making it possible to get some very high quality drums with just a few clicks. If you’re looking for a simple solution to adding high quality drums to your instrumentals, look no further.
There is a focus on electronic / EDM beats, but you can really find most styles present in their sound bank.
Surely everyone that uses Native Instruments’ industry standard Kontakt sampler has at least 1 favorite free library or instrument.
What I’ve compiled here is a list of my personal favorites. These are among what I find to be some of the most usable high quality libraries available.
This is not a complete list of free kontakt libraries or kontakt instruments, its simply a curated list of my favourites. There are hundreds and hundreds of free kontakt libraries, but to be honest, a lot of them simply aren’t that good.
They get plenty of burn in my production projects at least, some may even be slept on. So here they are, in table form for your viewing pleasure:
This excellent free Kontakt library is definitely the one I use the most.
Although it is a limited version of their fantastic AURORA library in terms of NKI presets, it still delivers on usability and sound quality.
AURORROR is advertised as a “horror cinematic and hybrid library” on Fluffy Audio’s website, but it’s a surprisingly versatile and flexible synth.
With more than 25 unique sound sources, 13 different modulators, an arpeggiator and polystep modes, there’s a lot to work with.
The idea is to layer up to 3 sounds and adjust the plethora of parameters to create your own sound. Your new custom preset can then be saved. Check out this review by Saint Joe of Sounds And Gear.
This developer has been around for quite some time and continues to offer a generous amount of extraordinary free and premium kontakt libraries.
Recently they stepped their game up even further by designing their own Kontakt instrument, 16PAD. Here’s a word about it courtesy of the included pdf manual:
To put it simply, it’s a 16 Pad instrument, each Pad has Volume, Panorama, Tune, ADSR, Filter + LFO, Distortion (Lo-Fi, Distortion, Skreamer, Tube) and Modulation (Chorus & Flanger) controls, plus 4
Send controls for 2 global Delay, Reverb and a Convolution Reverb (IR) effects.
There is also a simple on board step sequencer with controls for Volume, Tune and an Assignable Parameter per pad.
The pads can be selected via MIDI and can be colorized individually. The 16-channel mixer can be viewed by clicking the MIXER button to the bottom left of the step sequencer.
I would have liked to have had the ability to load my own samples and have darker more pronounced colors on the pads, but this is a very nice instrument nonetheless. Big up to HS!
Both of these Kontakt instruments have an awesome sound and are dead easy to control.
There is only 1 knob on each interface, low velocity triggers major chords, and high velocity triggers minor chords. On Sustained String Chords, you can control the dynamics with the mod wheel and mix sustain and tremolo chords.
On both libraries, you can play low, mid, and high strings separately or play huge chords altogether. The interface is simple and the design straight forward.
It’s a great library for generating or enhancing your compositions.
Free Fall is another library that has been out for a while, but I think it’s one of the most underrated free Kontakt libraries.
It’s dedicated to ambient textures and evolving type sounds which are useful in many musical genres.
It comes with 18 otherwordly patches and you are free to create and save your own custom patches.
This library just begs to be experimented with and you will have 4 pages of parameters to play with: Main Engine, Effects Engine, Rhythm Engine and Output Engine.
There’s really a lot to go through with this library, once you download it, no doubt you’ll feel the same.
Just released a few days ago, NS Drum kicks (pun intended) in with a well-crafted and high quality sounding acoustic kit.
Not only does the library sound great, but it offers the ability to really customize your drum sound with a nice set of sensible parameters: Pan, Tune, Room (mic), Attack, Hold and Decay.
There are a good number of presets for each of the 6 drum sounds represented in the intuitive interface: Kick, Snare, Hi-Hat, Tom, Ride and Crash.
NS Drums J-311 also boasts I very high level of detail as there are no less than 27 layers per instrument, so you will be able to dial in just about any acoustic kit sound you like.
In addition, the FX page provides an EQ and Compressor for each instrument, while the MASTER page has an EQ and Compressor for the entire kit as well as a number of presets to choose from. Can’t wait to play around with this one.
It’s a great drum machine, and, you guessed it, it’s absolutely free.
Omnisphere and Serum: these two giants of the software synth world. We’ve all wondered how they compare to each other, and today, after thorough analysis of both, we will come up with a winner.
It is, however, important to note that this article isn’t an attempt to determine which one of these beastly VSTs is ‘the OVERALL BEST’. This a far too subjective decision for one humble reviewer to ascertain, so please note that this is based on our personal experience and preferences.
What you are about to read is merely a comparison of two industry leading virtual instruments in order to help you understand the differences and similarities between them. If you’re on the fence about purchasing either one, or if you own both and struggle with which one to use for a particular task, you will benefit from the information in this article.
If you’re not familiar with either of these, we strongly recommend checking them out. We’ll start with the most obvious differences, then we will break things down into various sections:
You should also check out and other plugins for free for 3 days then rent to own them.
Omnisphere 2 is an 8-part multitimbral VSTi, meaning you can play up to 8 different sounds at once with one instantiation. Serum can only play one sound at a time, so if you want to play more than that, you’ll have to have to use a different instantiation for each different sound you use from it. Spectrasonics hasn’t provided a demo of Omnisphere 2 yet, so there is no way to test it out unless you buy it. A demo version of Serum is available with .
To get more acquainted with each synth, please check out the links below:
Omnisphere 2 comes with over 400 new waveforms each of which is a morphing wavetable. Ethnic instruments and unusual sound sources like a burning piano are also included and can be used as oscillators. Additionally, you can add your own sounds and use those as oscillators or mangle them in the granular synthesis section.
However,when compared to other dedicated granular synths like Mangle or PadShop, Omnisphere 2 falls a bit short in terms of editing features.
Serum on the other hand, comes with 144 wavetables and also gives you the ability to draw waveforms or load your own sounds and use them as oscillators.
Aside from being an “advanced wavetable synth”, Serum is also capable of performing additive and VA synthesis with classic waveforms (saw, square etc.) + a sub oscillator + noise oscillator.
Because of the array of waveforms and synthesis techniques that can be applied in both synths, they both could very well be referred to as modern hybrid synthesisers.
Serum has a variety of filter types. All the filters from Xfer’s LFOTool are included in addition to some new ones like Flangers, Phasers and the dirty sounding French LPF. There are also Dual Filter types allowing you to morph between filter types.
Omnisphere 2 boasts a more flexible filter engine and 8 new filters giving you the ability to create your own filter sound with stereo control, drive and a host of other parameters to further customize your filters. Also, it now includes all of the filters from GForce Software’s virtual synth, “impOSCar”.
Personally, my favorite thing about Serum’s modulators is how easy it is to drag and drop a modulation source to a destination.
This makes for a much faster workflow when creating or editing complex a patch. Then there are the drawable LFOs, Envelopes and Macros which, depending on your preference, are more fun to play with than mousing around with percentages or virtual knobs.
Omnisphere’s Modulation Matrix is unbelievably massive and flexible!
Almost every parameter can be modulated and there are a plethora of modulation sources and targets.
All 4 Effect Racks’ parameters, all the granular parameters, all the FM parameters, numerous parameters in the arpeggiator and envelopes can all be modulated by a multitude of sources.
But with all this modulation power, there is no drag and drop ability in Omnisphere 2
In addition to Serum’s classic synth effects and advanced effects such as a multiband compressor, Serum can be used as a dedicated FX processor as well. Off the top of my head, the only other synths I can think of that have this feature are Native Instruments Absynth 5, FM8 and Reaktor 6.
The results of running an audio source through an effect with synthesizer parameters can be extremely inspiring and a lot of fun!
Omnisphere 2 has a wider variety of effects. Vintage effects like echoes, choruses and compressors as well as various reverb types are included.
And remember, all of the parameters in each effect can be modulated. This does come at the cost of higher CPU usage, however. I’d be curious to see what kinds of sounds could be generated if Omnisphere 2 was able to be used as a dedicated FX processor, but that feature isn’t available.
Overall Winner
I think Omnisphere 2 has a better sound library and is well-rounded as far as sound selection thanks to some of the best sound designers of our time, Eric Persing and Diego Stocco. Therefore, it takes the prize.
Serum may have a more flexible wavetable engine and deeper sound design capabilities with the wavetable editor, formulas and additive engine.
