Electronic musicians, producers, and engineers looking for drum sounds from the '90s will be impressed with the Chocolate Audio Modern Retro Drums, a comprehensive drum library for Native Instruments Kontakt 5 or later. Modern Retro Drums was recorded in an historical studio room in Italy and captures the naturally warm ambience and direct mic signals with remarkable isolation.
The library features four full drum kits sampled from a 1997 Sonar Designer kit and a Tama Starclassics kit. The kits come with six snares from Ludwig, Sonor, and Tama, presented in 13 different versions. The kits also include four sets of cymbals, sampled from Zildjian, Sabian, and Ufip, as well as a Turkish set. The library is 15GB and includes 67,599 samples, all expertly programmed for fast and efficient results.
Note:
This Instrument requires the full retail version of Kontakt 5.5.2 or later. The free Kontakt Player will run this Instrument in demo mode only for a few minutes.
Drum Kits
Modern Retro Drums features 4 full drum kits sampled from:
- A 1997 Sonor Designer kit played with sticks and hotrods
- A Tama Starclassics kit played with stick and brushes
- The kits come with 4 sets of cymbals sampled from a Zildjian set (sticks and hotrods) and a Turkish set (sticks and brushes) and additional cymbals (Sabian and Ufip)
- 6 snares from Ludwig, Sonor, and Tama, presented in 13 different versions
- These kits have been largely used since the '90s to craft some of the best-selling music ever recorded
Benefits
- 15 GB compressed sample content size
- 67,499 samples
- 4 full drum kits (2 sticks + 1 brushes + 1 hotrods)
- 72 drum pieces
- Sampled in full detail: up to 300 samples per articulation and up to 11 round-robin (Kontakt)
- Integrated, advanced MIDI player with 19 Styles, made up of 1119 patterns recorded by a top session drummer
- Recorded in an historic Italian studio with choice mics
- Up to 4 close mics
- 4 room channels: Overhead stereo, Overhead mono, Room U87, and Room PZM
- Warm and deep sound, recorded through an analog tape machine
- Advanced mixing and management (Kontakt) thanks to our custom advanced scripting
- Recorded at 24 bit / 96 kHz, released at 24 bit / 44.1 kHz
Kontakt Features
- Feature up to 11 round-robins—hitting a drum consecutive times will never trigger the same sample twice in a row
- Give you the chance to easily build, mix and match the kit in both the 3D (drum kit) and mixer pages
- Manage RAM very efficiently with purge—no need to load separate .nki, just load just another kit
- Feature a full-fledged mixer with mute, solo, 4 insert effects: EQ, comp, transient, and tape
- Insert a built-in global and channel-specific preset management (25 global factory presets)
- MIDI-mapping agnostic—built in support for a large number of articulations
- Color-coding for easy recognition of drums on Kontakt keyboard
- Features up to 4 close and 4 room mics
- Give you up to 4 mixable close mics on kicks and snare, 2 for hi-hats, rides and toms
- Grant drum-specific control on tuning, velocity curve and attack, hold and release times, instant damping, gating, and creative effects
- Feature an exclusive ADH envelope on room channels for creative effects
- Intelligently switch pan and width controls in case of mono or stereo channels (and stereo rooms get both width and pan for maximum flexibility)
- Insert channel-specific controls in the settings page like hi-hat control, snare bleed, or cymbals/percussion management
- Large number of velocity splits (always > 16)
- 36 custom IR reverbs
- Tuning, velocity curve, and envelope controls on each drum
- Advanced engine, shared with all future drum libraries
The Room
After a thorough analysis of the best-selling singles from the '90s Chocolate Audio realized, contrary to their belief, that drums featured a rather large real room sound, even if sometimes very low in the mix. Chocolate Audio opted for a historical room in Italy that is not operating anymore as a recording studio.
The Drums
- Another recognizable sign in music of the '90s is the importance in the mix given to the kick: if the '80s saw loud snares, the '90s where all about kick sounds, mixed rather up front and with a lot of work on both the click (top) and the thump (bottom) of the kick sound. For this reason, Chocolate Audio opted for an extensive use of microphones on the kicks and they prepared the two kicks we had at disposal in no less than 13 different ways.
- The 6 snares offer a range that goes from piccolo snare to lowly detuned and muted either using a cloth or various damping materials, resulting in 13 very usable sounds.
- Even if slightly different in regard to recording technique, the single drums from each kit can be easily mixed since they share the same room, mics and positioning in the room.