The Complete List of Free Sample Libraries
Freebies, Freebies Everywhere
Freebies, freebies, freebies. Before you start buying the most expensive sample libraries check out my list of free sample libraries first. I hope you find the instrument you need here.
I subdivided the list into categories of instruments: Guitar, bass, orchestral instruments, keys and piano, drum and percussion, synths, other instruments (think of world instruments, tiny instruments, weird instruments and everything else), sample player and instrument collections (on some websites there are just too many sample instruments to categorize them).
Also consider:
- “®” stands for registration required
- “@” stands for email address required
- “κ” stands for instrument compatible with Kontakt
Feel free to add missing instruments or report broken links in the comment section below!!
Before you start, join my email list and get a free Kontakt Kalimba Instrument that I sampled when I was in Africa a couple of years back:
Free Guitar Samples
Name | Info | Description |
---|---|---|
Pettinhouse Guitars | κ | Pettinhouse, the place to find your guitar samples: Acoustic guitar, warm jazz guitar, classical guitar … |
Power Guitar | κ | Wavesfactory’s Power Guitar |
Trash Guitar | Power chords, palm muted power chords, single strings palm muted … | |
Flamestudios | Great collection of guitars and bass guitars: FS Fender Telecaster, FS Seagull Steelstring, Gibson Les Paul (SFZ) | |
Old 32-String Kanteles | κ | A very very old form of a guitar |
indiginus | κ | 3 free guitar libraries, you need them! |
Audiowiesel | κ | Free e-ukulele |
Free Bass Guitar Samples
Name | Info | Description |
---|---|---|
Pettinhouse Bass | κ | And more of Pettinhouse: Direct Bass |
Flamestudios | Great collection of guitars and bass guitars: FS Washburn Acoustic Bass Guitar and FS Ibanez Electric Bass Guitar (SFZ) |
Free Orchestral Samples
Name | Info | Description |
---|---|---|
Tuba | κ | Pretty awesome sounding tuba samples. A present from the Philharmonia Orchestra. |
Philharmonia Orchestra Sample Library | The Philharmonia Orchestra offers a wide ranged sample library for free! Almost an entire orchestra!!! Only restriction: They give them away as loose samples. You have to create the instrument for Kontakt or other samplers yourself. | |
Sonita Symphony | Complete SoundFont orchestra 440MB of size | |
Linux Sampler Project | piano, violin, cello and at the very end the open orchestra | |
BedroomProducer | κ | Collection of free Kontakt instruments: Cinema Strings, Warm Pentode Brass and other non orchestral instruments |
Intimate Strings Lite | ®κ | Nice sounding string instrument with several expressions |
ikmultimedia | ®κ | Piano, drums, vocals, brass, organ … |
Karoryfer | κ | A cello. |
Free Keys and Piano Samples
Name | Info | Description |
---|---|---|
Ivy Audio | κ | I have to write in bold because this piano is sooo awesome and free!! Thx Simon Dalzell |
Soni Musicae | κ | Soni Musicae specialized on harpsichords, organ and piano samples. Check out their freebies. |
Armore Grand Piano | κ | Great sounding piano for ballads and more |
Wavesfactory | Free pipe organ sample library | |
Rock-Si-Chord | κ | From Soniccouture |
Magnus Chord Organ | κ | A 1970’s reed organ |
Tape Loop Organ | κ | Sounds interesting. Check out the description for more information |
KVR Audio | Piano One – the VST piano | |
Retrosampling | κ | Some electric pianos and other piano instruments free to download on retrosampling.se |
Supertone Babypiano | VST for Windows with samples of a baby piano (toy piano) | |
UVI | Analogic Piano 09 (electric piano) | |
Hugo Kant | κ | Another Toy Piano |
Mkhitaryanpr | κ | Poorly produced demo songs but yet some nice instruments like the soft and grand piano |
Free Drum and Percussion Samples
https://cinesamples.com/product/triangles
Name | Info | Description |
---|---|---|
Free Drum Kits | Absolutely awesome site!!!!! | |
LoopsDelaCreme Claps & Stomps | κ® | If you fill in a survey you can get this awesome clap and stomp Kontakt instrument for free! |
Waves Alchemy Drum Tools Teaser | ® | Drum sample packs for electronic productions |
Free Sidsonic Libraries | κ | X-mas special. 1 GB full of surprises. |
Pettinhouse Drums | κ | And even more from Pettinhouse: Several Vynil Electronic Drumkits |
Atom Hub | κ | Wow, you have to check this one out! Very creative rhythm samplepacks like Mr Pot and Bus Stop Booth!! |
VST Buzz | κ | Free Egyptian Darabuka Library |
Wavealchemy | ®κ | Wavealchemy gives away several different sample banks like: Club Kicks, FX’s, 606 Drums, 808 Tape, Wired Electronics |
Tongue Drum | κ | Asian idiophone that sounds like TH’s Whale Drum. |
Mkhitaryanpr | Poorly produced demo songs but yet some nice instruments like the ballad drums, shakers, … | |
Acoustic Drumkit | κ | NSA Custom Series Drumkit by Dean aka “Nekro” |
Perculiar Percussion | Wooden Door, Wooden Railing, Metal Lid, Trowel … like their samples like their name: Sample Oddity | |
MASSIVE Drumcomputer Library | 282 Drum Sets / 24.331 WAV Samples / 2.87 GB | |
Worlds Percussion | ® | Check out this site! Plenty of free stuff (not only drums) |
Jackie FX Bank | 81 free fx sounds | |
Big Mono | κ | Free acoustic drumkit |
Bits and Beats | ® | Kero’s Bits and Beats |
Jackie FX Bank | 81 free fx sounds | |
Big Mono | κ | Free acoustic drumkit |
Xtan Audio | African Slit Drum: A high quality African slit drum for Kontakt. | |
XLN Audio | ® | Addictive Drums demo version |
Twisted Tools | 10 Drumkits | |
Precisionsound Bells | Tibetan Meditation Bells | |
Alanvista | κ | Hand Crash |
Volkoaudio | κ® | A darbuka-nut with very neat sounding loops |
Cinesamples | κ@ | Triangle! |
Samplekatra | κ@ | Handclaps what else |
Free Synths and FX Samples
Name | Info | Description |
---|---|---|
Hollow Sun Kontakt Samples | κ | Check out those free sample libraries. Hollow Sun is giving away 11 different treasures from PolyMoog Strings to the Novachord |
Electronic Loops/Samples/FX’s | ® | Hip-hop, Dubstep, RnB; Soundsondemand.com |
Modularsamples | κ | Pretty interesting page with allot of free stuff |
Protone Elements | κ | Dirty 808, Analog LoFi Bass, Virus Hypersaw, Synthetic Guitars, … |
Nord Modular Samples | ®κ | Free Nord Sounds; A collection of great Clavia Nord Modular G2 multisamples from Wavescape Studio |
Free Arp Odyssey For Kontakt | κ | Vintage analog synthesizer from 1972 |
Retrosampling | κ | Oscillator pak – sampler synth elements v1.0 (VST instrument that uses waveforms for experimental synth sounds) |
BedroomProducer | κ | Vintage synthesizer and samplers |
Fairlight CMI IIx | κ | Fairlight CMI IIx for Kontakt. Fairlight is the mother of all samplers |
Noizefield | κ | GameBoy and Nintendo samples |
Durk Kooistra | Extreme Bass FX Samples | |
Genobass | Genobazz 2 is a free monophonic bass synthesizer plug-in | |
Genobass R | Genobazz R is a free monophonic bass synthesizer plug-in | |
VST Buzz | κ@ | Granulate & Shortnoise more than 6 gb of synth sounds and a granulator how awesome? |
99Sounds | κ | Modern bass sounds for all edm lovers |
Hollowsun | κ® | Synths, Vox, Moog Strings, Aeropad, |
Other Instruments
Name | Info | Description |
---|---|---|
Ivy Audio | κ | Beautiful experimental vocal samples |
Wavesfactory | A big black clock | |
Bolder Sounds | ®κ | Unbelievable! They give away 23 Instruments for free: Bavarian Zither, Buffalo Accordion, Electric Sitar, Harmonica, Mini Sax, Thumb Piano and many others. Check it out! |
Sonivox | κ | Free soundfont samples from flutes to synths a colorful collection |
RECsopran | Free recorder sample library (I know you love those) | |
Wavesfactory | Music box sample library, sleep now! | |
Wavesfactory | Freelodica (melodica, duh) | |
Kong Audio | Get the china feel! | |
Cinematica | κ | Check out these massive sample library containing several instruments like Xylophone, Metallophone, Electric Guitar, Piano, Organ, Bass, Steel Drum |
Digitalsoundfactory | ®κ | Don’t know exactly what you can get here but it sounds promising |
Tekit-Audio | κ | Soprano recorder! Everyone needs a recorder in his instrument library! |
Solo Guitaret | κ | Nine Volt Audios Guitaret. Strange instrument but pretty interesting as well |
Embertone | ®κ | Four free instruments: Atmoraffe, Kitchen Sounds, Jug Drum, Intimate Strings |
Brendanjhogan | κ | Some Kontakt instruments with strange names: FlyinaBottle, CardboardTube, WarpedKalimba |
Rekkerd | κ | 9 World Instruments for Kontakt |
Precisionsound Toy Instrument | A collection of toy instruments | |
Precisionsound Music Box | Free music box sample library | |
Precisionsound Ocarina | Free peruvian ocarina sample library | |
Atom Hub | κ | Wow, you have to check this one out!!! Very creative high quality tonal Kontakt libraries |
Several free Kontakt instruments like a huge organ | ||
Stylusbeats | κ | Kontakt library of a Stylophone, whatever that is |
Free Sample Player and Instrument Collections
Name | Info | Description |
---|---|---|
Kontakt 5 Player + 50 Instruments | @κ | Native Instruments gives away the Kontakt 5 Player for free + 50 of their instruments |
Cakewalk SFZ Player | Simple and free high quality sfz player with additional effects (Windows) | |
SampleTank | ® | Virtual instrument and sound workstation with several sample libraries |
Alchemy Player + Instruments | 1GB sample library with 200 sounds | |
Beat Zampler | Sfz Sample Player | |
Free Sound Samples | Huuuuge sample library! 8 GB and over 8000 samples of all kind! | |
SFZero | Simple Soundfont Player for mac |
I hope you could find something valuable on this list. If there are any broken links or you free sample libraries that are not listed please let me know in the comments below!
You are invited ...
... on a slow journey through the EarMonk universe
Wow. Great selection of freebies. There’s also a nice free soundfont player called Sforzando by Plogue.
Hey Steve! THX for the hint. Greetings, Dario
[…] I celebrated successes like the two articles, 210 awesome open guitar chords and the complete free sample library list that went viral and attracted more than 230k visitors. It took me more than a week to collect all […]
You have forgot the great Hephaestus Sounds, with wonderful freebies like Steinway Grand 3, Clean Guitar, Oboe…
But it’s a great list!
Ron
Thanks for sharing Ron!
It’s not Sonita Symphony, it’s Sonatina Symphonic Orchestral. Thanks for your great jobing!
thanks///
There’s a nice VI called “DrumMic’A”. The website is in German (nothing google can’t fix) but the instrument has an English version
Thank you!
Nonono, Thank YOU!
You saved my work man !!! 🙂
Thanks folks, great stuff!!
This very well might be the best post I have ever seen in my entire life. Thank you very, very much.
After so many free acoustic piano sample packs available for free, the list of free epiano samples appears to be much smaller. Perhaps there are a few more dozens of crappy soundfonts available, but following the
I love this list, and I hope it gets updated. Just sharing, I recently found nice free orchestral strings here:
http://sig-ex.com/2016/02/01/sustain-strings-sfz/
🙂
Another one… http://soundethers.wix.com/soundethers#!freebie-free-fall/uyi14
thanks bro
wow thanks bro
this is so cool….dis is so dope… thumbs up
holy f..k! this is a huge amount of samples! thank you bro for what you do
” “κ” stands for instrument compatible with Kontakt player ”
Most of the instruments with “k” are compatible with kontakt FULL, not PLAYERS.
Can you fix it, please?
🙁
sure thanks for the hint
Also, you can add Sennheiser’s DrumMic’A (http://de-de.sennheiser.com/drummica) to the list, it’s Free and works 100% with Kontakt Players 🙂
Dario, do you know, what you are? A genius!!! Thank you sooo much you can’t imagine how! You saved houndreds of my dollars literally.
It was more a crapload of work rather than the work of a genius but thank you anyway 🙂
THNX a Lot !!!
Don’t forget our “The Hipster’s Bongos” free instrument! Find it at: http://www.rattlyandraw.com
Hello Dario,
Thanks for this nice gigantic collection. I’ve already found some really interesting synth libraries I’ve not been aware of.
We’ve just released Gombulator, a free Kontakt Instrument that is based on a rare portable Yamaha synth from the 80s, the Yamaha psr15. It is really really simple but beautiful. Has one knob, that is the moon on the right side and you can dial in all 6 preset sounds of the Yamaha synth, plus the drums also.
Its’ free and requires Kontakt 5.6.1 Full version. Would nicely fit into the ‘Free Keys’ section.
Here’s the download link: http://finecutbodies.com/?p=sound_gombulator
Good luck with the blog!
Hey Dario,
Great site here. Please take a look at http://www.flintpope.com or free library content for Ableton and Native Instruments.
All my own work.
best,
Nick Dwyer aka flintpope
Hey Nick,
Thanks for the input!
Aweeeeeesome
THANK YOU SO MUCH 🙂
Link for Alchemy broken. Apple doesn’t have it.
Check out this free sub bass patch!!
https://irmgaudio.com/collections/all
Thanks for this