While we offer you free sounds every week via our SampleRadar service, we know that many of you also like to keep your eye on what’s new in the world of commercially produced sample packs.

So, we’ve put together a review round-up of some of the latest collections to come to market, starting with Sample Magic’s Dubstep and Grime.

There are a fair few dubstep packs about at the moment, but this one stands out from the crowd. It’s not just the creative naming (we particularly enjoyed one bass loop entitled ‘Bag of Gits’) but also the toughness of the sound design. Some attempts at this genre can sound weedy and thin, but there are some searing basses and punchy drums here.

The pack is a 1.8GB download (the WAV section adds up to 741MB, with other formats duplicating this content). You get drum, ‘top’ (ie, high-end percussion), vox, bass and synth loops, as well as full mixed “combi loops”, which we’re not so keen on.

The 291 drum and 50 single-shot bass noises hits display plenty of heft, clout and dirt, as do the 50 single-shot bass noises. Filthy FX are also on hand. There are some inconsistencies - not every sound is a winner - and we’d have liked dry versions of some of the delayed/reverbed sounds.

Overall, there’s a slightly flat, dry quality to this pack that it can’t quite shake, but perhaps that’s just what you need to convey the sound of urban decay. In any case, it’s a solid library.

35 Stars

www.samplemagic.com