- Since it's so difficult to make money from record sales these days, it's no wonder there are more and more artist-based sample packs around. This is good news for us as it makes it easier to choose one we're comfortable with. Fans of Radio Slave should have no problem figuring out what's on the plate in this collection for Sample Magic. There are plenty of clean, round electronic sounds with an upfront character.
The library consists of all the usual suspects, nothing more: some 200 drum hits, 40 FX sounds and about 300 loops of various kinds. The WAVs are in 44.1 kHz, 24-bit format, and there are also Apple Loops (aiffs), Rex files, Stylus RMX Rex files and sampler patches of the FX and drum hits for EXS24, HALion, Kontakt and NN-XT. It's about 500 MB in total, and they're all of excellent quality.
The drum hits are tidy and have plenty of weight and substance, with a well-judged frequency balance that varies from sample to sample. The kicks have a lot of guts, the snares have a lot of character, the hats are tight and white noise-y and the crashes all sound really spacious. They all sound synthetic—you won't find any acoustic samples in this pack. They're varied, in particular the percussion, with lots of creative sounds such as rattles and paper scrunches. The FX are generally atonal, and would be surreal if they didn't have just a touch of the comical in them. They aren't drowned in effects either, leaving that to you if you so desire.
The loops, on the other hand, sound ready to use, with professional balance, powerful dynamics and a tidy soundstage. There's lots of warehouse-ready tech house and techno material, as you'd expect. The synth and bass loops are clear, with electro character but in a polished rather than sawtooth way. The melodic tones are agreeable, with some wackier squelching and degraded, clicky subbass loops thrown in as well. But it's the perc loops, again, which are a particular highlight, with some world music tones and other indefinable collisions of influences. The drum and tops loops are often too straightforward, but otherwise the pack is ace. I'll be using it as my go-to for heavy electronic sounds for a long time to come.