Gospel Producers released Loop Track, a free drum VST for Windows and macOS.
While free drum samplers are a bit more uncommon than you’d think, most DAWs come with perfectly serviceable samplers of their own. I’ve grown quite accustomed to setting up racks of ReaSamplomatic to handle drum machines and loops.
However, Gospel Producers decided to shake things up a bit with their release of Loop Track, a sample-based drum instrument.
Now, at first blush, Loop Track calls to mind the era of hardware samplers circa the 1980s and 1990s. You’ve got 12 pads, each with a pre-defined set of drum sounds you can load in via presets. There are some additional controls, mostly for effects work.
At the top portion of the interface, you’ve got access to a low and high-pass filter, which is great for the likes of handling some errant frequencies. You’ve also got access to a pitch control, which works as you’d expect.
The effects on offer are a reverb, bit crusher, limiter, and saturation. The bit crusher, or degrader, is a wonderful addition and certainly helps with adding some needed grit and intrigue to the sounds.
Loop Track’s sound selection comes with over 400 samples, which is certainly generous given the cost of entry. These are 24-bit 48kHz sounds, so they should be good to go regardless of your sample rate of choice.
Gospel Producers has also included a set of MIDI files, which serve as a great way to get things rolling when inspiration hasn’t yet. These span some fairly typical genres, with hip-hop and R&B well represented.
So, is Loop Track worth a download?
That really depends on what you expect out of a drum rompler. If you’re looking for a jack of all trades with deep kit customization, then you might be sorely disappointed.
However, if you’re fine with working with the included samples, there is plenty of great material to use.
I’m not the biggest fan of the built-in reverb, but at this point, that is more a matter of having too many of my own third-party solutions rather than any fault of a developer.
If you’d like to download Loop Track, you’ll need a Windows or Apple computer. Supported plugin formats are VST and AU. It is Apple Silicon native, so everyone can join in the fun.
Some other fun virtual drums you can try are listed in our drum plugins article. And don’t forget the recently released Drumplayer by 99Sounds.
Download: Loop Track (FREE)
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Last Updated on October 13, 2023 by Tomislav Zlatic.
