IK Multimedia’s Beat Machines is a smorgasbord of vintage analogue drum sounds

IK Multimedia’s new Beat Machines is a nostalgic tour through analogue drum machine history, giving you the sounds of 100 classic boxes and more than 300 MIDI patterns to trigger them. It runs in both SampleTank 4 and the free-to-download SampleTank CS.

Beat Machines takes in everything from early Ace Tone devices to the obligatory TR-808 and 909 kits, while also encompassing more esoteric and lesser-known models and even a few modern offerings.

You get more than 200 kit presets to play with, all configured according to the General MIDI drum mapping standard, which should make it easy to mix and match kit components or to layer entire kits.

In fact, there are also loads of ‘single element’ presets, so you can easily use SampleTank 4’s Multi Mode to combine sounds. This mode also gives you access to five effect slots for each of the kit elements, and you can add a further five effects on the master bus. 

All 100 drum machines are powered by round robin samples to aid authenticity, with SampleTank’s DRIFT algorithm adding even more analogue-style variation and vibe.

Beat Machines is available now via the IK Multimedia website. It costs $80/€80.