The Battery Drum Sampler by Native Instruments has been a great success with a large following and great acclaim. We have found Battery very useful in our own composing and loop making efforts and love it to death (see our Battery review). Now Battery users are in for a real treat with a couple of new products from Native Instrument's Sound Line. We're going to take a look at Battery Studio Drums, a cd-rom sample library which provides 25 instantly playable Battery Kits.

Although Studio Drums was specifically made for Battery, the 25 kits can also be utilized in Native Instruments all new Kontakt Sampler, plus the over 3,000 24 bit WAV files can be utilized in other samplers and software provided that they support 24 bit files.

As Native Instruments describes it, Battery Studio Drums is a "comprehensive, meticulously recorded collection of over 1.1 GB of acoustic drum samples designed for the Battery Drum Sampler".

We couldn't agree more! Battery Studio Drums is a sparkling collection of ultra realistic high quality drum sounds, mapped to take advantage of Battery's multiple velocity layers. The result is a high level of expressiveness not often found in traditional sample libraries.

The sample library was developed in partnership with Yellow Tools and combines over 3000 edited samples of five studio drum sets in extraordinary 24 bit sound quality. The recorded drum sets include drums from DW™, Pearl™, Sonor™, Tama™, and Yamaha™ with Cymbals from Sabian™, Paiste™, Meinl™ and Zildjan™.

Two BATTERY CD-ROM's contain twelve GM-compatible studio-kits, eleven chromatic snare kits, and three tom kits (from 8 to 16 inch). The sounds cover a wide variety of musical styles like Pop, Rock, Jazz, Soul, Funk, and more. Up to 16 velocity layers per drum (for bass drum, snare and toms) make the STUDIO DRUMS highly playable, expressive, and authentic.

The biggest benefit this collection provides is that the 25 kits that are instantly playable! They're already mapped and optimized for Battery. Load a kit and you are ready to rock! (or hip hop or whatever!)

The kits in Studio Drums are all very useful and easily fit in a variety of genres. This collection emphasizes the realism of drum kits played in a studio environment, and are particularly well suited to Pop, Rock and Jazz, however funk, soul, blues, grunge, hip hop and big beat are also represented by their own kits. Of course the way the drums sound on your projects is a direct result of how you play and mix them. So don't let the talk of realism scare you away from utilizing the kits in electronic music. We did!

The Studio Drums samples were recorded using six bass drums, ten snare drums, seven tom sets, four hi hats and four cymbal sets. In particular I was blown away by the crisp and realistic ride and crash cymbals which beautifully exhibit long smooth decays. Finally the days are gone where ride and crash cymbals would artificially fade too quickly or utilize a phoney sounding loop point to extend the decay. That was always one tell tale sign of a sampled drum kit. Quick fading cymbals. Because in the old days of hardware samplers, RAM was such an important consideration (or lack of RAM) most sampled cymbals in most sample libraries were faded out too abruptly to save on RAM or badly looped. Same with ride cymbals and even toms. The samples in Studio Drums are artifact free and all realistically decay like real instruments do, all in 24 bit precision.

Also, Battery Studio Drums offers an unbelievable variety of one hit snares and well executed snare rolls. The amazing thing you first notice when playing these kits within battery using a velocity sensitive keyboard controller is the incredible variation in sound depending on how hard you strike the keys. Battery is excellent at offering multiple velocity layers and Studio Drums takes advantage of this. The snares will pop and get louder with realistic dynamics not usually found in sample libraries. Sure, you could find some sampled kits elsewhere that had a couple of different velocity layers, but Battery offers 16 of them and Studio Drums takes advantage of this!

For convenient access it is recommended by Native Instruments that the contents of the 2 CD-ROM's be copied to your local hard drive. You can however load them direct from the CD-ROM's. We were at first wary about dropping 1.1 GB of data onto our already stuffed hard drives. It didn't take long and we were convinced that'd be a good idea after reviewing the kits and finding their usefulness. So if you have the space, it's nice to have the kits instantly available on your drive.

Also, many of the kits are very large. 5 of the "large" kits are in the 70 to 90 MB range with 5 of the small kits in the 25 to 31 MB range. There is also a LARGE stereo kit coming in at 195.1 MB and a SMALL stereo kit at 76.8 MB. Also 3 TOM kits ranging from 56 to 193 MB.

Screenshot: Battery Loaded up with the 195.1 MB kit "Stereo Kit Large" (click to make LARGER!)

Our test machine is a Pentium 4 1.7 Ghz with 256 MB RAM running Windows 98 SE. Using Cubase VST 5.1 with BATTERY as a VST Instrument, we had absolutely no trouble with any of the kits with the exception of the STEREO KIT LARGE which is a 195.1 MB monster. It still worked, but we experienced a few crackles and pops here and there and the CPU usage meter jumped up a bit. Exporting the audio file from this monster kit however exhibited no artifacts whatsoever. If you really wanna use this big 195 MB mondo kit, you should probably upgrade to 512 MB RAM (which we plan on doing!) or a workaround is to work out your Battery tracks and export them to audio files (with effects if you want), then disconnect Battery or switch to another smaller kit to fill in holes, add percussion etc. That'll free up the RAM and the audio will play smoothly as you continue to compose in Cubase or whatever program you use.

Battery Studio Drums also contains 11 more kits consisting of "chromatic snares", one of which is STEREO. These snares are gorgeous and sparkling, representing a multitude of playing styles! The quality is obscenely good and the variations and realistically played hits and rolls are awesome! You can also use these to roll your own kits.

You should know going into this that Battery Studio Drums does not include effects or percussion of any kind. But that is not the point of this collection of ultra realistic drum kits. Battery already ships with a ton of kits with great variety and lots of percussion and noises. The Studio Drums kits are all high quality and provide the basic foundation for realistic drum playing within Battery. You can always add that tambourine or claps later with your other kits anyways. Or you can mutilate the Studio Drums with Battery. We were not disappointed at all with the lack of percussion. Maybe the other Native Instruments "Synthetic Drums" cd-rom for Battery would be a good compliment???

You've likely figured out that we really like Studio Drums, but how does it sound? The sound quality on all of the Studio Drums kits across the board is immaculate! 24 bit precision. They sound great! The kits are all presented dry without reverb or effects and sound very natural and realistic. The playing styles cover a lot of ground and the kits should fit well within just about any genre. The responsiveness with a velocity sensitive keyboard controller is magnificent and the subtle variations in hits that you get based on the velocity really adds an extra air of realism to tracks.

Battery Studio Drums is a welcome addition to our arsenal of sounds and will be utilized in many of our upcoming projects. We highly recommend it to anyone looking to add realistic professional sounding drums to their music. Battery Studio Drums gets a 10 out of 10 Beat Mode rating. We just can't figure how they could have made it any better.

How does it really sound? Well listen for yourself!

We've prepared a big batch of mp3 samples of Battery Studio Drums for you to audition, plus we have a finished composition called "Unvoiced" where we used "Studio Kit 02 Large", and I must say it sits very nicely in the mix! Side note about this "Unvoiced" track and the drums in particular is that the only processing on the drums is Waves Trueverb reverb and a little EQ boost on the high end. I intended to go back and isolate the kick drums and add compression overall, but the test mix was so good I decided to just leave it the way it is.

Check out our mp3 song "UNVOICED" to hear how "Studio Kit 02 Large" sits in a mix.

Oh, and by the way, if you like any of the sample mp3 files showcasing Battery Studio Drums, we have them available for you as seamless loops in WAV format in our FREE LOOPS section, so go ahead and snag the ones you like!