Drum8 from Audiolatry and Cool WAV is a free, sample-based, virtual instrument plugin with 320 drum sounds in total.

Drum8 is a collaboration between Audiolatry (software development) and Cool WAV (sound design). The ROMpler drum machine is full of kicks, snares, claps, toms, hi-hats (closed and open), percussion, cymbals, FX and more. Audiolatry says most of the samples were made with two hardware analog drum machines, through Radial JDI direct box, Warm Audio ToneBeast Black and Antelope Audio Discrete 4 Synergy Code audio interface. The acoustic drum kits used drum modeling software and a mass amount of effect plugins.

The plugin has a compact, easy-to-use interface, with samples mapped from C1 to G1 on a virtual 8-pad configuration. You’ll find global controls that adjust gain, lowpass filter and room reverb. There’s also individual controls per sample that affect gain, attack, pan and stereo channel output.

  • 291 MB extracted size / 211 MB download size
  • 40 drum kits with 8 pads (samples per kit)
  • 320 samples in total
  • Gain, attack & pan controls for each pad
  • Each pad has choke function to prevent bleeding
  • Global lowpass filter cutoff
  • Room reverb
  • 100% original & royalty-free samples

Drum8 is available on Windows 8.1 to Windows 11 as a VST/VST3 plugin, or macOS El Capitan to Mojave (not compatible with Catalina and up) as a VST/VST3/AU plugin. You’ll need at least 2GB of RAM and 291MB of free space. Head here, click FREE DOWNLOAD, then enter any amount in the donation box (including zero), click I want this!, and enter your email address to access the download. On the site, you’ll also find installation instructions for your system. This isn’t the first time we’ve featured a plugin from Audiolatry. Find the Upright Piano and Electric Piano, both perfect for lo-fi hip-hop, as well as FunkBass featured just last month.