Drum Depot “Analog 808 – Brutalized” Review

Marco Scherer has released Analog 808 – Brutalized, a collection of Roland TR-808 drum machine samples that were processed to the extreme with outboard analog gear.

Analog 808 – Brutalized (€5.99) contains 256 drum samples in total, organized into 16 drum kits with 16 samples each. The different kits are neatly sorted into folders and categorized with different formats. The pack is compatible with a wide range of popular sampler instruments and digital audio workstations, including the Akai MPC, NI Maschine, NI Battery, Ableton Live, MPC, NI Kontakt, FXpansion Geist, and all SFZ-compatible samplers.

As suggested by the word Brutalized in the product’s title, this sample pack pushes the good old Roland TR-808 to its very limits. Kits like “808 God Mode” and “808 Mayhem” are the dirtiest 808 sounds I’ve heard recently. The distorted kicks, hard-hitting snares, and highly compressed claps might not be the first thing you’d associate with the 808 sound, but it’s quite amazing how musical and inspiring these ones are. You know that a drum kit is good when you load it, play a few hits, and come up with a nice sounding groove in a matter of seconds. There’s plenty of variety between different distorted kits as well, ranging from the slightly saturated and dirty to the super high gain stuff.

On the other end of the spectrum, the library also features a set of clean kits, such as the “808 Default” and “808 Tempting”. These are, of course, useful if you’re looking for the generic 808 sound, but they are also perfect for mixing and matching with some of the distorted kits. Another great example of where the 808 sound can be taken is the “808 S912 Love” kit which adds a bit of the lo-fi sampler vibe with subtle crunch and a layer of noise.

Being that all included samples are also provided as 24-bit WAV files, the users can use them to create their own patches from scratch. I’d love to see a few hybrid patches added to the pack, ones that would mix the distorted kicks and snares with the cleaner hats and cymbals. Another type of patch I’d love to see added would be a pitched bass preset because some of the included kick samples are simply begging for it. But all of this is also quite easy to do manually with the included WAVs.

The Verdict

With a healthy mix of analog distortion and over-the-top compression, Marco Scherer has created one of the loudest and most aggressive 808 sample packs around. What’s even more important, though, is that these highly distorted samples are still very musical. Anyone can pass an analog drum machine through a distortion pedal and call it a day, but these samples are way more than that. Even the most aggressively distorted kit of the sixteen that are included in the pack, a kit suitably labeled “808 God Mode”, can be dropped straight into a project and sound amazing without much additional processing.

The best thing about Analog 808 – Brutalized, apart from its ridiculously low price, is that it provides the full range of modern drum sounds that can be created with the 808. From the 100% clean 808 output to the slightly overdriven and brutally distorted, you’re getting it all in a single pack. So, unless you’re looking for something with a large number if round-robin samples to capture those subtle inconsistencies in the 808’s sound, this amazing 808 kit from Marco Scherer is an absolute must-have. For more samples from the same sound designer, check out the Dangerous Drums kit and the Drum Depot bundle.

More info: Analog 808 – Brutalized (€5.99)