Strike Sound has introduced Home Kit, a completely free acoustic drum kit sample collection that is formatted for use in NI Kontakt, Steven Slate Trigger and all WAV/SFZ compatible sampler instruments.
The number of high quality acoustic drum kit sample sets that are available for free download nowadays is becoming ridiculous. Around twelve or so years ago when I was first getting into making music on a computer, it was almost impossible to find a collection of freely downloadable natural sounding drum samples (I used a free SoundFont called NS-drumkit if I remember correctly and it was pretty much the only viable $0 option at that time). Things are a lot different now, as I sometimes actually have a hard time choosing between all of the good free kits I have on the hard drive at the moment (along with the brilliant Drumdrops packs, of course).
See also: Free Acoustic Drum Sample Packs (WAV)
Back to the subject of this article, the Home Kit by Strike Sound is yet another free drum sample pack that is definitely a worthy addition to your sample pool. I’ve tested the NI Kontakt version of the library, although it is also available in SFZ and TCI formats, as well as a simple collection of WAV files. The Kontakt version includes eight NKI patches, one for each microphone position. By loading all of the provided patches in Kontakt and assigning them to the same MIDI channel, you get almost complete control over the drum mix (volume, pan and pitch for each microphone), definitely more than you’d get if all of the sounds were mapped in a single NKI.
The library is based on a multi-sampled acoustic drum kit that is used by Strike Sound in their productions. I am impressed by the quality of the included samples, as well as the versatility of the provided NKI patches. The kit will easily fit most indie, pop and rock mixes, so definitely check it out if you’re producing any of these music styles.
To download the pack, you’ll need to go through a checkout procedure on the Strike Sound website. It’s not complicated at all – simply add the product to you shopping cart and proceed to free checkout, after which you’ll instantly receive the download link in your email inbox.
Video Demo
Check out the Strike Sound Home Kit demo video:
Download
Home Kit is available for free download via Strike Sound (230 MB download size, ZIP archive, contains over 800 samples in WAV format, optional mappings in SFZ, NKI, TCI formats).
