De Facto Vintage Drum Machine Samples???

[chrisakaneelix]

What do you guys consider to be the "best of the best" for sample libraries of the older classic drum machines???
I just did a bunch of samples from my original Linn, but would love to get some "real" libraries of quality captures, plus other machines. As for formats, I have both software and hardware, so good to go on just about any format... (That's what Chicken Systems is for!)

Linn stuff (LM-1, LinnDrum, 9000)
Emu SP-12/1200
Sequential Circuits
Oberheim
Simmons
All the other cool machines from that era....

[gmeredith]

Capturing your own samples into a modern computer sound card is not going to be any worse than "real" libraries you speak of - they just did exactly what you did. These old machines are 8-bit/less than 44k quality; you're not going to make them sound any better than that without fudging the samples and processing them (eq, compression,enhancer), which makes them no longer a true exact recording of the output of the machine.

What people think of when they imagine a Linn LM1 or a Fairlight CMI is what they've heard on albums by famous bands - which have been eq'd and processed, reverbed within an inch of their lives for the album. That's not the natural sound of the instrument itself. I know - I've done it myself. So these libraries actually are representing a sound that only exists on a multitrack recorder or mastered recording, not in the actual machine itself. Listen to the youtube video of a guy who bought the Pet Shop Boys Fairlight. It still had some of their sequenced tracks on it. He played them on the video coming straight out of the computer into an amplifier. They sounded dull and boring and dry. This is normal.

Is the studio trickery samples what you actually are wanting?

If you want clean, unedited real samples, here are a stack of free classic drum machine samples - I have them, and they're no worse than anything I've got or heard. These are just sampled outputs of the machines, just like you did yourself:

http://machines.hyperreal.org/samples.html

[gcoudert]

I second gmeredith's reply. I also downloaded a lot of my drum samples from the above website. You may lose (or miss out on) some of the little idiosyncrasies of the actual machines by using samples but recording the different drum sounds to different tracks and processing them individually will definitely put your drums in the right ball park without resorting to unduly expensive libraries.

[chrisakaneelix]

Thanks for the reply guys. The issue is, it's impossible to procure ALL of these great machines, even just temporarily to sample. I was very lucky to briefly have the Linn.
That also being said, there are people out there that are MUCH better at editing samples for real-world use than most people. Just capturing the sound is the easy part. Consistently getting individual sounds ready for production use is quite another thing. I have massive amounts of sample libraries for both hardware and software, and they're certainly not all equal on that front...

[gmeredith]

But what makes them not equal?? Does one sound have reverb on it and another is just dry?? Or one sample brighter and punchier than another? A digital recording is a digital recording - so long as it was done at 16bit 44k and not clipped you're not going to get any loss from the original raw machine output. It's what was done to the sample AFTER it was recorded that is the variation in these different library samples. You can do that yourself to your liking or need. You could sample different velocities (if that was a capability of the original machine) if there was multisamples used for different velocities or a velocity filter, but they would be the only exceptions. Or use these raw samples from the site I linked you and process them yourself to make them what you want them to be.

[chrisakaneelix]

All the editing/truncating, plus mapping, and yes, velocity where applicable. If there are really go-to libraries, it would be great to get those specifically. Not to say it can't be done with some time yourself, but there are guys out there that really specialize in that sort of thing. It's not just a matter of taking a capture and dragging it to a pad. Better grade converters play in, again the editing/truncating, mapping, etc.
I've done a lot of that myself over the years. My question is just what are some favorite libraries that people can recommend. Nothing wrong with doing it yourself, but nothing wrong with getting it done by a pro, either...

[gmeredith]

Cool, I see where you're at now. Cheers

[madtheory]

The Linn and OB sounds that come with NI Battery are very good, they've sampled them at different pitches so you get the artefacts of the original machines, and there are some with processing on them as well. Their 808 and 909 samples are similarly flexible and great. They didn't do the Boss DR-110 so I found a third party.

But if you're looking for a one stop, all inclusive classic drum machine library, NI Battery is it IMO.

Someone needs to do the Alesis SR-16 and DM-4 and DM-5

[Fatbenelton]

I love Battery too and still have Battery 3 working fine.

I wish it had a sequencer so I've tried Spark and Revolution but Battery still sounds superior.

[Rasputin]

Not a sample pack, but could easily turn into a custom one with anything you want: Aly James - V-PROM

That will cover the Linn / Oberheim / Drumulator thing, at least. It should free you from relying on a sample pack for that class of machine ever again.

As for analog stuff (808), Goldbaby isn't a bad choice.

[madtheory]

I think Battery is better than the Goldbaby stuff. But the Aly James V-PROM is very cool! Somehow forgot about it If you can find the EPROM images to load in the other drum machines. He's using Plogue chipcrusher inside to get the sound.