Top 5 Friday | Best Drum Machines

Top 5 Friday | Drum Machines (VST / AU)

5. Plugin Boutique BigKick

Yes, we’re naturally a bit biased towards this one, but BigKick is a drum machine plugin par excellence. It may only do one type of drum, but that drum is the one that’s in every electronic music track ever, and this vertical monster does it to death!

Choose two samples and operate their decay time, and then dial in dynamics controls with Attach, Hold and Decay, set the pitch mod depth and curve type, as well as the time it takes to get there, and set that master level.

BigKick comes with loads of presets, helping you audition the perfect kick, and you can boost it using expansions to increase the number of kicks you get to play with. Expansions are available from a range of artists, and you also get one free when you first purchase BigKick, so you’re guaranteed a comprehensive set of hits.

4. XILS-lab StiX

With StiX, you get a whole host of sounds, sequencing capabilities to play them, and loads of great features to tie it all together.

Whether you’re looking for classic drums, or futuristic digital ones, synthesis controls in StiX revolve around a three-oscillator drum synth engine. There’s plenty of FM and other types of modulation to get the grittiest drum sounds here.

The sequencer in StiX lets you save different patterns and blocks of patterns, and with the presets system in the plugin taking control over both sequences, synth parts and entire kits, it’s easy to chop and change different parts of your rhythm or sound while keeping the rest of the setup the same.

3. Softube Heartbeat

With this drum synth from the kings of analogue modelling, you know we’re in smooth, classic drum machine territory. Heartbeat lets you choose from single or dual oscillator operation, with frequency modulation and noise on tap as well.

Heartbeat’s effects section is no slouch either, boasting the best of Softube’s effects-modelling history. Here you’ll find versions of their Valley People Dyna-mite dynamics processor and TSAR reverb plugin.

Heartbeat’s Auto Layer Machine loads up multiple sounds that you can layer and offset in time to make the perfect combination of hits and layers.

2. FXpansion Geist 2

It’s massive, it’s classic, and it’s full of drumming fun. Geist 2 as an entire workstation for making beats, doing its thing using sampling, sequencing and a channel mixer with effects. As you’d imagine, there’s basic sampling features for each drumm with tuning, filtering and so on. 

With the full-on sequencer, Geist lets you sequence not just the pads that are playing, but the changes between different parameters as well, and you can set some randomness by programming the probability that a certain step will play. You get FXpansion’s TransMod system to take control of modulating parameters, and very competent sampling and slicing capabilities as well.

1. AIR Music Tech Drum Synth 500

This appropriately named drum machine was only announced recently, but already we’re giving it the podium treatment. Drum Synth 500 is so called because of its 500 included drum sound presets, 500 samples, 500 MIDI grooves, and 50 entire kit setups. Get it now? There’s a lot of stuff in this one!

Different types of drum sound get different types of synthesis, with analogue synthesis doing kicks and snares, noise synthesis creating hats and claps, and toms and perc being conjured up using FM synthesis. Far from having to learn multiple types of synthesis, Drum Synth 500 makes every sonic choice clear. Oh, and there are also two slots for sample-based drum elements, where you can import your own samples too.