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FREE KONTAKT Excellent Quality Acoustic Drum Kit - DS Drum RCS Essentials


PavlovsCat

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I just downloaded, installed and tried out the free version of the DS Drum  RCS Essentials acoustic drum kit (yeah, don't blame me for it's long-winded name that really doesn't communicate anything of value)  from a new developer called Red Pack Drums. It's a KONTAKT library  that, I believe, requires the full version of KONTAKT and this is an excellent quality acoustic drum kit for free. It's a sophisticated, detailed/deep sampled drum kit.  love that you can swap snares and tune the snares in the free version. It features a wide variety of mapping options, including for popular drum plugins like Superior Drums as well as V-Drums and GM. 

They call the free library a DEMO, but it's one full drum kit with two snares, a wood (mahogany) snare and a brass snare. As a former semi-pro drummer, I'm very picky about drum libraries and this is easily one of the best free drum libraries I know of (the competition, off hand, for a very high quality free detailed, multisampled drum kit libraries include Steven Slate Drums and the Sennheiser Kit for KONTAKT -- both are are worth having. I don't love the toms on this kit, but for a freebie, they're still nice. 

While many KONTAKT drum libraries are a disappointment when it comes to the GUI, while this one isn't my version of ideal, it's not bad. Everything you need it there and once you figure everything it out, which doesn't take long, it's easy to understand. It doesn't look like the standard KONTAKT GUI -- and for a drum library, I think this is much better than the standard KONTAKT GUI. You can easily figure out how to do drum mapping, use the mixer, tune the drums, swap out snares and find pre-made MIDI drum grooves. That's superb for a freebie. I highly recommend downloading it. I don't know if I am ready to buy another drum library for its current sale price of €139, but I definitely think this developer has done a very good job. Don't sleep on this freebie.  The ones this good don't always last. 

https://www.redpackdrums.com/product-page/the-official-ds-drum-library

You can find an audio demo of the Mahagony Kit they use for the freebie on this page (and no, they didn't do a great job of putting the site together and organizing the freebie page (there's no audio files on that page), but you can hear it on this page. 
https://www.redpackdrums.com/dsdrum-kontakt

Edited by Peter Woods
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2 minutes ago, simon said:

they claim this works with the free player but I can't see how it does without a serial number ?

 

 

Yeah, you know, I was wondering how it worked without a serial number. But I have the full version of KONTAKT, so you know, I think it actually is NOT a KONTAKT Player library, only the full version is. I'll revise my original post accordingly. Sorry for anyone who doesn't have the full version of KONTAKT and saw my post prior to revision. 

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Yet another reason to break the bank and buy a license for the full version of Kontakt. I got a license for v5 when I purchased Komplete 9 Ultimate years ago. I've never had a reason to buy the Komplete upgrades, but I bought a Kontakt v6 upgrade and will do the same when v7 is released next month. I have SampleTank, but hate the UI. Never use it.

FWIW, I will never go near Slate. He's one arrogant mother, and his refusal to permit machine authorizations with iLok (dongle only and now Cloud, too) is a deal-breaker for me. I never got the dongle to worked reliably on any desktop or laptop that I owned and had to give up on all of the Slate plugins I'd purchased. I don't care how good his products are, I'm finished with him.

I have been very happy with Superior Drummer, first v2 and now v3. Great libraries!

Edited by John Maar
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7 hours ago, John Maar said:

FWIW, I will never go near Slate. He's one arrogant mother, and his refusal to permit machine authorizations with iLok (dongle only and now Cloud, too) is a deal-breaker for me. I never got the dongle to worked reliably on any desktop or laptop that I owned and had to give up on all of the Slate plugins I'd purchased. I don't care how good his products are, I'm finished with him.

Are you talking about Steven Slate Drums? Maybe I am not understanding you, but my copy of SSD5.5 is machine authorized, not Cloud, and I have no dongle. It has been that way since I purchased it two years ago.

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the web site is a bit rough, but despite the claim of "Programmed for Native Instruments  FREE  Kontakt 6 Player" the FAQs are a bit clearer.

"Do I have to buy Kontakt 6 player?

Yes, you need a Kontakt license to use it properly.

If you don't own a Kontakt license the free DS Drum demo will lock up after 15 minutes of use.

You can download the FREE Kontakt player here:

https://www.native-instruments.com/en/products/komplete/samplers/kontakt-6-player/free-download/

The Full version of the DS Drum library will come with a Kontakt license"

...

noting the bog oak snare, a rather unique dw offering, always wanted to hear that on it's own

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17 hours ago, Doug Rintoul said:

Are you talking about Steven Slate Drums? Maybe I am not understanding you, but my copy of SSD5.5 is machine authorized, not Cloud, and I have no dongle. It has been that way since I purchased it two years ago.

Maybe they finally changed. I have licenses for some of their (Slate Digital, from the same Steven Slate) Virtual Mix Rack plugins that I bought 5 years ago. I just checked their website and found this statement:

The All Access Pass can be used with iLok Cloud and does not require an iLok USB dongle. You will just need an active internet connection to use iLok Cloud.

Perpetual "Buy Now" individual plugin licenses require an iLok 2 or iLok 3 USB dongle.

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6 hours ago, John Maar said:

Maybe they finally changed. I have licenses for some of their (Slate Digital, from the same Steven Slate) Virtual Mix Rack plugins that I bought 5 years ago. I just checked their website and found this statement:

The All Access Pass can be used with iLok Cloud and does not require an iLok USB dongle. You will just need an active internet connection to use iLok Cloud.

Perpetual "Buy Now" individual plugin licenses require an iLok 2 or iLok 3 USB dongle.

Maybe that is true for the Slate Digital plugins. The Windows Requirements on the StevenSLateDrums website state the Licensing requirements as Machine ID or iLok Dongle. I think I read someplace that Slate Digital and Steven Slate Drums were separate entities even though run by the same person.

Edited by Doug Rintoul
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8 hours ago, John Maar said:

Maybe they finally changed. I have licenses for some of their (Slate Digital, from the same Steven Slate) Virtual Mix Rack plugins that I bought 5 years ago. I just checked their website and found this statement:

The All Access Pass can be used with iLok Cloud and does not require an iLok USB dongle. You will just need an active internet connection to use iLok Cloud.

Perpetual "Buy Now" individual plugin licenses require an iLok 2 or iLok 3 USB dongle.

 

2 hours ago, Doug Rintoul said:

Maybe that is true for the Slate Digital plugins. The Windows Requirements on the StevenSLateDrums website state the Licensing requirements as Machine ID or iLok Dongle. I think I read someplace that Slate Digital and Steven Slate Drums were separate entities even though run by the same person.

If it's not confusing enough, Slate Digital (VMR), Steven Slate Drums (SSD, Trigger), and Steven Slate Audio (VSX) are separate entities with different product lines.

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9 hours ago, John Maar said:

Maybe they finally changed. I have licenses for some of their (Slate Digital, from the same Steven Slate) Virtual Mix Rack plugins that I bought 5 years ago. I just checked their website and found this statement:

The All Access Pass can be used with iLok Cloud and does not require an iLok USB dongle. You will just need an active internet connection to use iLok Cloud.

Perpetual "Buy Now" individual plugin licenses require an iLok 2 or iLok 3 USB dongle.

Key words here:  "All Access Pass can be used with iLok Cloud and does not require an iLok USB dongle"
So all else requires iLok dongle.

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Every thread in this forum so easily goes astray! And, hey, I'm not taking shots at anyone else, because that would be total hypocrisy. Just kind of having a laugh at how far we go off topic.

With regard to Johnny calling Steven Slate "an arrogant mother," I've  only had a couple of conversations with Steven Slate and I quite like him. Yes, he's from Boston and definitely moves at a high rate of speed (I'm a Midwesterner, am a total people pleaser and have often been told that I'm "overly polite"; so yes, even while I'm not as aggressive as some folks, I still can appreciate them),  but I think he's actually a pretty nice guy. A LOT of the well known sample and plugin developers have pretty large egos, some of them don't have great ethics either (I'm putting that mildly), and I don't know Steven that well, but in my conversations he was always a straight up guy and very respectful to me. He also has a good sense of humor and we share a great love of The Beatles (he even named one of his businesses Yellow Matter Entertainment -- of course, in tribute to The Beatles, a reference to their song "I Am The Walrus")   Our first conversation he asked, "Did you catch the Beatles' reference in my company name?"  And being a huge Beatles fan, of course I couldn't miss that.  Anyhow, Steven has always been a really nice person in my experience and a lot of fun to talk to and I'm not saying that because I have a business relationship with him, I don't.  I just sincerely like him. 

Edited by Peter Woods
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Dead serious,  I'm contemplating shooting Steven an email that reads:

"Hey Steven. I just wanted to let you know that your name came up in a forum when someone referred to you as 'an arrogant mother.'  In your defense  I basically responded,  'Nah, he's just from Boston.' "

Hahaha.  

Before I get flack for that, know that I get grief for having a loud voice.  A lot of people attribute it to my being Italian-American or a former rock musician. Spoiler,  I'm hard of hearing and was born that way. But deep down, I realize it might also be the Italian  thing too. ;)

Edited by Peter Woods
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On 9/25/2022 at 7:50 AM, John Maar said:

Yet another reason to break the bank and buy a license for the full version of Kontakt. I got a license for v5 when I purchased Komplete 9 Ultimate years ago. I've never had a reason to buy the Komplete upgrades, but I bought a Kontakt v6 upgrade and will do the same when v7 is released next month. I have SampleTank, but hate the UI. Never use it.

FWIW, I will never go near Slate. He's one arrogant mother, and his refusal to permit machine authorizations with iLok (dongle only and now Cloud, too) is a deal-breaker for me. I never got the dongle to worked reliably on any desktop or laptop that I owned and had to give up on all of the Slate plugins I'd purchased. I don't care how good his products are, I'm finished with him.

I have been very happy with Superior Drummer, first v2 and now v3. Great libraries!

I bought Kontakt 6 two years ago after avoiding it for years. I have yet to find any use for it.

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34 minutes ago, jesse g said:

DS Drum - RCS Essentials DEMO "Mahogany"

From the link that was provided, it says DEMO

Duly noted,  see my original post, as I mentioned that the library is referred to as a demo but doesn't appear to be time limited. 

The term demo, of course,  short for demonstration,  seems to be used by the developer to denote a limited free version. Again, I installed this and there's no indication that it is time limited, if that is your point (which isn't clear beyond pointing out the word DEMO twice; so I'm just guessing that's the point you intended to make). I suspect the developer and whoever wrote the web copy are not native English speakers and used some terms like demo that often have connotations other than what they were trying to communicate.  

Edited by Peter Woods
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