ModeAudio has introduced Beat, a drum machine sample pack featuring the sounds of the classic TR-505, TR-808 and TR-909 drum machines by Roland, along with a set of sounds from a 12-bit Casio toy keyboard. Read our in-depth review below and download an exclusive set of free sounds from the library, kindly provided by ModeAudio as a gift for BPB readers.

The sample pack features a total of 460 samples in a number of different folders. The “Layered Drums” folder contains four different genre-themed drum sounds featuring house, chillwave, beats and hip hop genres. The “Processed Drums” folder contains samples which have been processed using ModeAudio’s custom effects chain. The “Raw Drums” folder contains the raw, unprocessed drum machine samples.

The pack also contains twelve drum kit sampler patches for the most commonly used digital audio workstations, including Ableton Live, FL Studio, Propellerhead Reason and Apple Logic.

The quality of the included drum samples is superb. ModeAudio have concentrated on four specific drum machines, allowing themselves to really focus on sound quality. The end result is a really well thought-out sample pack containing a great variety of sounds which are versatile and not limited to particular genres.

The raw TR-808 and TR-909 samples do a great job of capturing the original instrument’s character, providing these legendary drum machine one shots in all their analog glory. The samples from the Casio toy keyboard have a more lo-fi feel to them, however I really like the fact that they’re also included in the pack, as they provide a really nice contrast to those classic Roland TR series drum machine sounds.

As opposed to the raw sounds, the processed samples have an added layer of thickness and punch to them, making them stand out in a mix more clearly without having to do a lot of additional processing.

The four genre-themed layered samples have slightly different sonic characteristics. The house and chill samples have a rather full sound, whilst the hip hop and beats samples have a more punchy, compact sound with a subtle hint of distortion. The samples are ready to be used as is, or you can use further processing to tweak them to your liking. For instance, there are many fun things you can do with the Casio keyboard sounds, by manipulating them using distortion, a bitcrusher, or glitchy delay effects.

The sample pack also contains a set of twelve MIDI files, which are a really good addition. These are four-bar patterns which can be used as is, but also form excellent starting points for creating your own variations.

The Verdict

This is an excellent quality sample pack which provides the user with drum machine samples that are full of original character, yet versatile enough for use in a number of different genres. The inclusion of twelve MIDI files is a really nice addition and, of course, an added bonus is the fact that the sample pack is very reasonably priced.

More info: ModeAudio Beat (£15 regular price, 50% off during Black Friday sale)

Free Samples

Download an exclusive set of free sounds from the ModeAudio Beat sample collection, kindly provided by ModeAudio as a gift for all BPB readers. The freebie pack contains a set of 30 drum samples from the full product, available in full quality. Enjoy!

Free download ModeAudio Beat BPB Pack (1.53 MB download size, ZIP archive, contains 30 drum samples in 24-bit WAV format)