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FREE Sample Libraries Worth Recommending


PavlovsCat

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16 hours ago, PavlovsCat said:

There's a reason I love this forum and spend the majority of my time on forums here, the people. This has always been the friendliest, most helpful DAW/music making forum I know of.

Absolutely, 100% agree.  I've been on this, and the original CW forum, for about 15 years.  I pop in every day.   Great, great supportive good folks here.

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Some of these have been mentioned but here goes!

Spitfire LABS series
Project Sam Free Orchestra - awesome when layered up
Sampletank 4 CS - once you get past the installation & authorisation!
Syntronik 2 CS - ditto!
Orchestral Tools Sine Free Instruments - ever expanding. Quirky front end but very nice sounds
Soundpaint Angels - just got this one - some interesting sounds - not sure how useable yet!
Evolution Series Clara Duduk  - a cross between a clarinet and my favourite instrument the duduk (Kontakt Player)
Keepforest Ferrum Trailer Percussion Free Edition (Kontakt Player)
Evolution Devastator Warzone (Kontakt Player)

 

Edited by JoeGBradford
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15 minutes ago, JoeGBradford said:

Some of these have been mentioned but here goes!

Spitfire LABS series
Project Sam Free Orchestra - awesome when layered up
Sampletank 4 CS - once you get past the installation & authorisation!
Syntronik 2 CS - ditto!
Orchestral Tools Sine Free Instruments - ever expanding. Quirky front end but very nice sounds
Soundpaint Angels - just got this one - some interesting sounds - not sure how useable yet!
Evolution Series Clara Duduk  - a cross between a clarinet and my favourite instrument the duduk (Kontakt Player)
Keepforest Ferrum Trailer Percussion Free Edition (Kontakt Player)
Evolution Devastator Warzone (Kontakt Player)

 

Fixed! ?

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16 hours ago, Carl Ewing said:

Ronroco is great - instrument (5 mic positions with mixer, and 4000 samples with round robin) and loops, and although a bit old (2014), it's usually on lists of best free Kontakt libraries. Was originally through Samplephonics, but now on the Noiiz site as free download:

https://www.noiiz.com/sounds/free_packs/703

What is sounds like: 

 

It's a cool library, but listen carefully to the samples -- hold a note for a little while, turn up the volume and you'll notice that they're extremely noisy. I downloaded this years ago and redownloaded it again because I forgot why I ended up deleting the library. Now I remember, the noise level. This is one of the downsides of some of the really nice Pianobook sample libraries too, a lot of times you'll get a piano or another instrument that has a great vibe to it, but the noise levels are ridiculously high.

I've only recently been using Izotope's RX8 (I have yet to upgrade to RX9) and think with a tool like that, these samples could have been cleaned up nicely and enormously improved the quality of the library. I am surprised that a pro sample developer would release a library in that state -- even for free, the reality is, if a sample developer lets a library like that go out the door with their name on it, many users (including me) are not going to be confident that their paid libraries are going to NOT have the same problem. Again, hold a single note for a few seconds, then play a triad, then try a 7th then a 9th chord and it's unbelievably bad. That's why I deleted the library. But I suppose they're living up to the name Noiz. They certainly deliver on that. 

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16 minutes ago, Starship Krupa said:

 

Since this thread leans toward the orchestral, my favorite free orchestral instruments are the Orchestools ROMplers, which they also offer in SampleTank 4 format.

I have been wondering whether to try those. Assumed that they may not offer much different / better than what I have with Miroslav & Garritan PO. Like BBCSO Discover though they would seem to be a no brainer for anyone without a paid for library.

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4 hours ago, jude77 said:

Absolutely, 100% agree.  I've been on this, and the original CW forum, for about 15 years.  I pop in every day.   Great, great supportive good folks here.

The forum goes deep and has been around for a long time. Several of the old timers have likely moved on to populate cemeteries here and there. I am now an old timer who was once a youngin' . I would say this is a community and not a forum in the sterile sense. No other DAW has this tight of a clan on a forum period. Trust me I've checked em all out.

We lost several when Cakewalk was in trouble but some of those guys still come back here on occasion. Now I see new faces. Well ok. Not faces but you know what I mean. I hope it keeps the vibe.

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1 minute ago, Tim Smith said:

The forum goes deep and has been around for a long time. Several of the old timers have likely moved on to populate cemeteries here and there. I am now an old timer who was once a youngin' . I would say this is a community and not a forum in the sterile sense. No other DAW has this tight of a clan on a forum period. Trust me I've checked em all out.

We lost several when Cakewalk was in trouble but some of those guys still come back here on occasion. Now I see new faces. Well ok. Not faces but you know what I mean. I hope it keeps the vibe.

Yeah, I've actually been coming here since the early days and owned one of the earliest versions of Cakewalk. I just changed my username from eDrummist to PavlovsCat because I like PavlovsCat better. Although this forum app is no fan of privacy, every so often it shares our real names (assuming we've registered with Bandlab with our real names). I wish the Bandlab folks would fix that, it doesn't reflect a company that cares about privacy to wake up one day and see your real full name used when you didn't want that. 

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@PavlovsCat this is a great idea.

I don't have much to contribute that hasn't been mentioned. Spitfire felt piano is great for low key music. I second BBCSO Discover. I eventually upgraded still have discover.

Ample Guitar lite is a very believable acoustic guitar that's free. Anyone who has watched Creative Sauce will find freebs in some of his videos.

 

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I can't believe I (or anyone else) haven't listed this one yet! For anyone just getting started with sample libraries and plugins or anyone who is short of cash but has a decent enough computer running Windows or macOS, KOMPLETE START is an absolute must have. I am a huge fan of Native Instruments plugins and libraries. When they were struggling recently, prior to being sold, I was pretty concerned. KOMPLETE START has a lot of gems in it and it's amazing that it's free. Anyhow who doesn't have anything from NI, stop everything and download this gem. I use KONTAKT and libraries and plugins from KOMPLETE in nearly every musical project I do these days. 

https://www.native-instruments.com/en/products/komplete/bundles/komplete-start/

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3 hours ago, Brian Lawler said:

 

DAW - https://www.tracktion.com/products/waveform-free   Cakewalk is better, but choice is good :)

Synth - https://vital.audio/  Mind-blowing freebie.

Sample based - https://www.indiginus.com/freebees   Not really competitive with paid recent libs, but fun to be had.

I haven't mentioned any soft synths, but for free soft synths, Vital is at the top of my list. I own a bunch of paid soft synths and I find Vital to be better than a lot of those and some of the free presets users share every month on there forum are really good. Put me down as a Vital fan. 

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