ML Sound Lab offers ML Drums Free, a modular drum sampler for all budgets.
As the name suggests, ML Drums Free is a free download, but you have the option to expand the kit with paid add-ons.
The initial download comes with a free eight-piece kit, including:
- Kick T SCWB B91A 22″x16″
- Snare T SCWB Mid 14″x5.5″
- Tom T SCWB 12″x8″
- Floor Tom T SCWB 14″x12″
- Hihat S AX Stage 14″
- Ride S HH Rock 22″
- Crash S AX 18″
- China S HX 20″
ML Sound Lab spent almost two years developing what they hope will be the most straightforward virtual drum sampler for beginners, hobbyists, and professionals.
To achieve this goal, ML Sound Lab had to tackle a few common issues, the first of which being to create a consistently realistic sound.
The ML Drums Engine provides realistic round-robin playback by combining as many velocity layers and samples as required. But, with some virtual drum engines, the realism comes and goes when transitioning from one style/feel to another.
With ML Drums, you can use MIDI velocity to avoid unrealistic volume changes, and samples are placed on a realistic volume curve, taken from real drumming.
ML Drums Free comes with some ready-to-go presets and a mixer for when you need to make your own adjustments. Each mixer channel has a use-case-specific three-band EQ. The mixer also features use-case-specific one knob compressors for the kick, snare, toms, room, and master channels.
Another handy feature is a built-in reverb.
Beyond creating a realistic sound, ML Drums aims to make processes like multi-out routing in your DAW far less tedious, which is a common problem in many drum samplers.
The first kit expansion pack (ML Drums Essentials) will cost €39.99, but right now, you can get it for the introductory price of €29.99.
There’s no real shortage of free drum plugins; we have things like MandaAudio’s MT Power Drumkit 2, the TR-606-based 606 Koncept from Samplesciece, and sequencers like BabyDrummer. Of course, we then have paid products like MODO Drums from IK Multimedia; it will be good to see how ML Drums stacks up against the rest.
ML Drums Free is available for macOS and Windows.
Download: ML Drums Free
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13 Comments
jim
ondoesn’t work on anything below Mac OS 10.15 so dont bother if you have an older imac or macbook. seems like a huge miss from ML considering all of their other software runs on older OS’
K
onJ this you?
idk fams
you are missing out big timZ on new serato update, the 32 chops is just what i was waiting for, i’m so happy i’m on W11 to be able to use it rightawy.
but i gets you, W10/11 vibes are a bit weird, and you are absolutely right about gates, it’s not 1st c*nspiracy coming up about him in recent times, feel me?
the thing is that windows computers are so much more cheaperer then macs, that gates can afford to work with al developers, forcing them to make their software only compatibel with W11, because bill knows people are poor and will not buy macz.
it s*ckz, but that is the world nowadays
a lot of free, **FREE** plugins, that we all cannot use.
the producer community i am in, i constantly hear the same
producers upset, they all see these new updates, new software, GREAT DEALS****, they all want in, want to buy the software, but it’s like they don’t want us to buy them
you know us producers constantly need the latest, highest state of the art music production tools to do our professional job feel me
apple users really do make they up with them, at least there is that for them, but overall it’s still not right
then there is NI, taking advantage of new producers, completely ripping them off, offering less and even more lesser value for even more and more money. producers in my community have mixed feelings about it. they are still loyal to the brand, but they all feel ripped off
such **A** shame feel me
it’s like we cannot buy plugins, because we have to buy them agian, we cannot take advantage of these great freebies being throughn our way feel me and the quality of NI products has been coming down,
producer community is confused
some say they heard good things about M1, but no body wants to UPGRADE
and you know it is only getting worse from here
eventually also splice feel me will buy most other sample developers and companies, create a monopoly and only accept bitcoin as payment. are they really messing with us producers and the community? how they pulling this off, now that serato sample has 32 feel me chops. splice will do it, just like the PB, PA, NI merger, i wonder if this is EVen legal
they not winning tho, producer community strong, at least the one i’m in, they will not continue to pull this off forever
JIM
onyeah man, I mean my Imac is from 2010 running 10.13, never had any issue with it. runs as good as it did when it was brand new and runs every new plugin that comes out except from waves. i’ve heard and seen better drum libraries than this that are 10+ years old, with more functionality, that were built to run on 10 year old hardware
ASJ
onChill out bro
Ferenc Mosolyhozó
onAloha! I think it is my new favorite for those genres. Together with the first expansion I can call it a full kit with enough possibilities. It is accessible enough to use it as a blind. It runs well on my very old Windows 10 PC, doesn’t eat up my poor resources. And the main thing… i like how it works and sounds. I already began using it for me this is not “just one more kit in my collection” kind of thing.
Raven
onGuys… MODO drums isnt that good as you keep refering to it. Rather refer to Steven Slate or AD2…. And MT power kit… not so good for modern sound. But okay for vintage sound.
Drum Gizmo deserves a resurrection.
This kit today looks good!
Thanks for the hard work!!
Bruno de Souza Lino
onMODO Drum works on a similar idea as DrumGizmo does. You have to mix the drums. SSD, AD2 and MT offer you pre-mixed drums. MODO can also be considerably smaller than the competition because the only things which are samples are the cymbals. If it did cymbal emulation as well, you’d have one of the most tweakable drum plugins in the market at the smallest size. MODO Bass is not even 1GB in size.
Vik
onAuburn Sounds is proud to release Lens, a Mixing and Mastering plug-in for its high-end effects product line
Lens Free lacks the Expander section
https://www.auburnsounds.com/products/Lens.html
Tomislav Zlatic
onThank you, Vik. Here’s our post about it: https://bedroomproducersblog.com/2022/09/07/auburn-sounds-lens/
PureFire
onThank you 😉 nice find
PureFire
onThanks James, BPB 🙏
Analog obsession updated Rare SE
Tomislav Zlatic
onThanks PureFire, I’ll check it out!
jason
onhow do i get amped so i can maximize my ml drums…