Hello fellow beat miners! 
I wanted to start a thread to share links to various resources for professionally sampled sounds. Most of you will be familiar with the 500 lb gorillas: NI/Ableton, and their affiliated partners, Spitfire Audio, etc. What about smaller, more independent operations? The ā50 lb guerillas,ā if you will. Where do you find staple drum sounds, breaks, melodic/harmonic phrases etc.? (Apart from your personal collections, Discogs, and the You(biquitous) Tube(s), naturally. 
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Of course the heart and soul of Hip Hop is the urban archeology of digging records and hearing sample material in your own unique way, and surely that will be the focus for many S2400 users. However, perhaps as a community we can curate an excellent vein of over-looked, affordable, and (crucially, in the age of copywrite-troll litigation and IP idolatry) royalty-free samples to be mined.
Just to clarify, this thread is intended for pre-recorded, free/commercially available sources. A separate thread would be appropriate for discussion of sampling the wide wide world of the (ācapital Sā) Soundscape.
Here are two of my picks, to get the drum rolling. 
(for those interested in more detail, click the drop-down summary arrow)
Vintage Hardware Samples:
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Samples From Mars
Check out the FREE SP From Mars and MPC60 From Mars along with other offerings under:
Collections>Free Samples
What I like
One-stop shopping for classic drum machine and synth sounds. I love this collection for the meticulous sampling and audio processing: clean, colored, bona-fide tape saturation, and samplers (down)sampling samplers. (Linndrum through an MPC60! DMX via Akai 612!) The packs are available in a variety of formats tailored to Ableton, Battery, Kontakt, Logic, Maschine, Reason, and various MPCs. All neatly and logically organized into folders.
Sample packs are frequently offered at steep discounts and as a repeat customer, I have taken advantage of some āloyalty pricingā. Thereās an annual sale on All The Samples collection, a massive 50 GB library (un-zipped!) that is very, very usable if youāre into this kind of stuff.
They have also offered ā20XX From Marsā bundles for the last two years to catch up on their latest samples, and other separate bundles focused on just drums, synths, tape processing, and more. The Essential WAV From Mars is a great starter pack, although you may want to consider waiting for All The Samples to go on sale, which includes the Essentials as an easily digestible entry point into the library.
This site may be a great resource for anyone interested in the house/techno/dance music lineage of the SP1200 in particular. If youāre fortunate to own a spiff console with premium channel strips, Studer A800, and a collection of vintage hardware, youāll likely want to roll your own. But even the most hardcore collector might find one or two elusive bits of gear that are nigh impossible to run down. For the rest of us mortals, this is a great, affordable way to get our hands on classic, production-ready sounds with some ace processing that sets them apart from the common libraries bundled with everyoneās favorite software.
Acoustic Drum Sample Kits, Loops, Stems, and Multi-tracks:
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Drum Drops
Pick up the FREE Modern Funk Kit and 60s Precision Bass.
My thoughts and a breakdown of the various packs
Long ago I received a collection of files marked āBronx Dropsā from a friend, who procured it from his friend, a successful Australian producer, who in turn reportedly received it from the original engineer. It would appear that Drops In The Bronx Vol. 1 is the same collection I received, although either my files are incomplete, or some of them didnāt make it into the finished article (or both). For reasons unkown, it is only available elsewhere, while Drops in The Bronx Vol. 2 can be found with the rest of Drumdrops. Hereās a review of that collection from Tape Op.)
This year the site was relocated and re-designed. Pricing has been reduced and restructured, with packs separated into tiers focused on different uses. Be careful to read the +Product Description and In Depth sections of each sample pack, as the samples may be offered in 16 and/or 24 bit WAV files (generally 44.1 kHz, I believe) and subsequently may or may not be suitable to plug and play with older hardware. Like so many of these libraries, if you sign up for an account you can opt in for notifications on occasional sales or coupon codes.
Each pack of Drum Loops & Tracks are usually divided into 3 tiers:
- Multi-track Sessions for mixing on your own (including individual, full length drum tracks, overheads, reverbs, and song construction loops)
- Stems and Mixed Files for grouped drums and some individual kick/snare tracks (also with pre-mixed song construction loops)
- Loops for (chopping) grooves and fills
I appreciate these tracks for the world class studio drummers laying down their beats, captured on professional equipment by seasoned engineers in some top studios. They offer a wide selection of styles: From go-to standards like Funk, Soul, and Old Skool Hip Hop to more niche genres like New Wave, Krautrock, Folk Rock, 80s Pop, Neo Soul, 70s AOR, Disco, etc. Truly a Beat Junkieās delight. 
Iām a huge fan of Roots Dub. So getting my hands on the riddims and Nyabinghi grooves of my favorite Scientist albums ā as performed on Drumdrops In Dub Vol. 1 by the original drummer; the late, great Style Scott of Roots Radics fame ā is like supping on mana from heaven. Afrobeat lovers, donāt sleep on Tony Allenās Afro Drops and Afrobeat Kit, sampled from his personal 'trap set! Jazz heads and acolytes of Yesterdayās New Quintet alike will appreciate the spang-a-lang of a number of standards on Itās A Jazz Thing.
If you want to try your hand at mixing professionally recorded drums, the raw, multi-track drum sessions are the most comprehensive and flexible, but also the most expensive and intimidating. They come with tempo-locked construction loops, allowing you to re-arrange patterns. Conveniently the multi-tracks come with tempo-maps, OMF files, and patches for use in a variety of common DAWs. Hits can be taken from the broken-out drum tracks if interested in creating your own one shots, just be prepared to roll up your sleeves and deal with some mic-bleed before you dig in. If you prefer your loops pre-mixed, or just want one-shot kits (see below), those are much more accessible options.
Drum Samples (kits) may be divided into any of the following tiers, depending of the product:
- Multi-velocity / Multi-Sample (16-24 velocities per articulation, some with round robin)
- Single Hits (fewer velocities per articulation)
- One-Shot (single velocity for sampler/drum machine users)
- Drum Replacement (with patches for drum replacement software)
- All Samples include a collection of all the above samples for a given pack. If you buy one of the cheaper packs to test out the sounds, evidently they will offer a discount for the bigger packs should you decide to upgrade.
The drum kits are generally organized by manufacturer (Ludwig, Slingerland, Rogers, and more) with a few kits being made of hand-picked components and focused on genre/vintage (60s Motown, Northern Soul, Vintage Funk, etc).
Kontakt packs are also available, however be aware that these were built for Kontakt 5 and may not function with other versions. (I donāt own Kontakt, so I canāt verify whether or not they work.)
No, I do not work for either of these companies nor am I associated in any way with anyone who does. Yes, I have drunk the Kool-Aid 
(obviously). Iām not really trying to shill for these guys, only recommending this stuff based on genuine affinity, personal experience, and a sense that I have enjoyed the sound of my music more since I started using these libraries.
Anyone replying to this thread who is affiliated with the sources to which you may wish to link, please give us your full transparency.
Thatās all, hope this will be useful to some of you out there!
% in favor of swapping our homespun synth sample packs.
