Joonas Ylänne has released Buttons from Hell, a free experimental instrument for the Decent Sampler platform.
Buttons from Hell may sound like the title of a B-movie flick, but it’s not. This is a collection of mechanical button sounds, captured from various everyday devices, carefully edited, and packed into a small but surprisingly versatile Decent Sampler library.
It’s one of those quirky instruments that you might not think you need, until you start layering clicks and thuds into your percussion loops and wonder how you ever worked without it.
The instrument features samples from a range of objects like cassette recorders, guitar pedals, light switches, computer keyboards, and more.
According to the developer, the inspiration came from a simple cassette recorder, where the sound of the buttons turned out to be more interesting than the recordings themselves. That spark led to an obsessive hunt for more button sounds.
And I have to say, it’s a brilliant sound design resource. I’m always trying to keep my collection of source sounds fresh, and this one’s an excellent fit for percussive layering, rhythmic accents, or even industrial textures.
The Decent Sampler interface lets you tweak filters, reverb, saturation, and the decay time, which is especially useful. You can shorten the samples to get snappy clicks or stretch them out to get mechanical tones with a bit of reverb on top.
It’s only a 12 MB download, so there’s really no excuse not to try it if you’re into organic sounds.
The pack is offered on a pay-what-you-want basis via Gumroad, with $0 as the minimum price. This means you can grab it for free or donate if you’d like.
And if you’re not into using Decent Sampler, Ylänne also provides the raw WAV files (just use a free utility like 7-Zip to extract the WAV files from the library file).
The visuals are worth mentioning, too. Rather than using a stock image or a basic UI, Ylänne created a custom interface using vector graphics and photos of real-world materials. It complements the gritty, tactile nature of the sounds perfectly.
You’ll need the free Decent Sampler plugin to use the instrument, which runs on macOS, Windows, and Linux in VST, VST3, AU, and AAX formats. It’s also available as an AUv3 app for iOS.
Decent Sampler is one of my favorite platforms for free sound libraries, so if you’re not already using it, now’s a good time to jump in.
Download: Buttons from Hell
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Last Updated on August 28, 2025 by Tomislav Zlatic.
