The story goes that there’s a man who owns over 180 drum machines, lovingly collected and curated over a span of 30 years. From must-have classics to under-appreciated rarities, this mystery man’s collection of hardware is one of the most envied in the music world. After a chance meeting in San Francisco, we pitched him the idea of dusting off his equipment to create this product and showcase these amazing machines to the world. We were honoured when he agreed to work with us on this ambitious project, meticulously recording each sound in his LA studio.

After 6 months and a love affair with all manner of cables, grooveboxes and many things analogue, the first volume is finally ready. From the thousands of resultant audio files, we compiled the best 500 sounds from more than 20 iconic drum machines, which are listed below, and then further processed them for different sonic flavours.

Drum Machine List:

• Ace Tone Rhythm Ace
• Ace Tone Rhythm Master
• Akai XR-10
• Alesis DM5
• BME Rattlesnake
• Boss DR-70 
• Boss DR-550
• Cheetah MD-16
• E-Mu Procussion
• E-Mu Drumulator
• E-Mu SP-12
• Ensoniq ASR-X
• Fairlight Iix CMI
• Jomox Mbase-01
• Jomox Xbase-09
• Kawai R-50E
• Korg DRM-1
• Korg M1
• LinnDrum
• Roland TR-505
• Roland TR-808
• Roland TR-909

What’s Inside?

Drum Hits > 500 total drum hits sourced from analogue and digital drum machines. 100 kicks, 104 claps & snares, 107 hi-hats, 154 percussion, 24 crashes and 11 FX. Each hit was then processed using Tape, MPC and Lo-Fi methods to cover all manner of production needs. Each folder is divided into further sub-folders for kick, snare, hats and percussion and then clearly labelled (ride, shaker, tom) for easy browsing.

Bonus Loops > As an addition we’ve included 66 drum loops with stripped versions and variants. These loops were made using only the drum hits in this product. Presented in both WAV and Apple Loops format.

Drum Hits > As a starting point providing instant playability, we’ve custom curated 10 drum kits covering house, hip hop, future beats and garage. Each kit comes with ready-to-play sampler formats for Maschine 2, Battery 3+, Kontakt, EXS24 and Reason’s NN-XT.

Processing Flavours:

Tape > We tracked each of the 500 drum hits to a Studer A807 on 1/4” tape for that authentic reel-to-reel feel. The hits in this folder are warm and rounded with smoothed transients which ensures they’ll fit effortlessly into your mixes.

MPC > Used by many of the world’s most legendary producers, this iconic model needs no introduction and has long been in the top tier of classics. We painstakingly sampled each of the 500 hits into the MPC60 and back out again, resulting in that unmistakable MPC 12-bit, 40khz sample rate ‘crunch’.

Desk > The original and cleanest possible version of the samples, the hits in this folder have been passed from the original source though an SSL Matrix 2 desk and Avalon preamps to faithfully capture their sound.

Lo-Fi > Processed through a mixture of 8bit modules, tape saturation plugins, hardware bit-crushers and even a Boss BR900 digital recorder, we’ve maxed the output for a distinctive, decimated flavour. Useful for producers working in darker or more experimental genres.

Please Note: This is a drum hits pack and contains only drum hits, bonus drum loops and the relevant sampler and kit patches. All other music, vocals and instrumentation you hear is for demonstration purposes only and is intended to showcase what is achievable with this product. Most of the additional sounds are taken from other CONNECTD Audio sample libraries.