Zvon has announced that the Quad Zamp drum sample player virtual instrument in 32-bit VSTi plugin format for Windows based digital audio workstations is now available as a completely free download from his website.
I have to admit that I wasn’t expecting much from this plugin in the first place, but it turned out to be one of my favorite freebies of 2015 so far. Quad Zamp is one of the coolest free drum samplers around and it would probably be one of the overall top VST freebies this year if it wasn’t limited to 32-bit Windows. Wouldn’t it be amazing if all SynthEdit plugins went 64-bit at some point in the future?
OK, but what’s so great about this particular plugin? Well, if you’re looking for a freeware drum sampler which supports multiple outputs and offers all of the basic (and some additional not-so-basic) tools for tweaking and mangling the loaded samples, you’re looking at the perfect candidate. Don’t get me wrong, there are more than a few freeware samplers which are way more powerful and versatile than this little freebie from Psychic Modulation, however this little gem is optimized for a fast beat making workflow and it also offers some neat randomization features which are always useful when programming drums. If you’re looking for something more powerful at Quad Zamp, feel free to take a look at our list of the best free sampler instruments.
Quad Zamp can load up to twelve samples in WAV format and route them to four different audio outputs if you want to use third party effects to process your samples. In addition to that, each of the loaded samples can be processed with a set of built-in tool such as the dedicated amplitude envelope, a simple AD pitch envelope and a multi-mode resonant filter. You can also randomize the pitch and start point of each loaded sample, as well modulate the panning and amplitude using the handy XY controllers.
The download pack also includes two free sample libraries by Zvon, which are a nice little bonus. It’s interesting to know that Quad Zampler was featured as the download of the month by Electronic Musician magazine way back in December 2005. Ever since then, the plugin was offered as a free bonus download to all Zvon customers. And now we can all download it from Zvon’s website absolutely free of charge.
Video Demo
Check out the Quad Zamp demo video:
Download
Quad Zamp is available for free download via Zvon (2.5 MB download size, RAR archive, 32-bit VSTi plugin format for Windows, made with SynthEdit).
4 Comments
Khori W.
onLooks great in the Demo but I can get it to run in FL Studios 10. I’m not getting any sound out of the VST and what looks like the tempo lights in the demo video aren’t firing, Those orange light above each wavplayer.
Bedroom Producers Blog
onHi Khori, the instrument should be triggered via MIDI notes. You can select the trigger note for each of the twelve pads. Also, make sure to load the samples (the initial patch doesn’t contain any sounds as far as I know). Let me know if you need more help with this!
By “supports multiple outputs”, do you mean that each sample in a kit can be sent to its own mixer channel? I need a drum machine that can do this.
Bedroom Producers Blog
onYep, it has four individual outputs for that purpose. Since the plugin can load up to twelve samples, you’d have to route several samples to one output. But yeah, it’s still way better than having everything on a single output. By the way, the best (cheap) drum sampler in my opinion is Poise by One Small Cue, which has sixteen outputs in total!