Ableton’s One-Shot Sampler
Drum Sampler is Ableton’s newest sampler, added to Live in version 12.1. It’s built for one job: playing back single hits, such as kicks, snares, hats and percussion, inside a Drum Rack. The controls are deliberately simple: sample start and length, an attack-hold-decay envelope, and tuning. What makes it special are the nine built-in playback effects. They let you stretch, loop, punch up, crush or layer a sound right where the sample lives, without stacking extra devices on every pad. A sub oscillator can add weight to a thin kick. Noise can add snap to a snare. FM and ring modulation can turn an ordinary hit into something metallic. You can also swap through similar-sounding samples from your library with one click. It’s compact and light on CPU, so it’s ideal for building kits quickly. Drum Sampler is included in all editions of Live 12.
Features
Sample start, length and gain controls with a waveform display
Attack, hold and decay envelope with Trigger and Gate modes
Transpose and detune across four octaves either way
Nine playback effects: Stretch, Loop, Pitch Env, Punch, 8-Bit, FM, Ring Mod, Sub Osc and Noise
X/Y pad for playing with two effect parameters at once
Filter with 12 dB and 24 dB low-pass, 24 dB high-pass and peak modes
Velocity or MPE slide modulation to filter, envelope or effect parameters
Similar sample swapping to cycle through sounds that resemble the loaded one
Can be set as the default pad device in Drum Racks
One-click conversion to Simpler when you need more control
Great for
Building drum kits quickly
Layering sub under kicks
Lo-fi and crushed percussion
Snappy snares and hats
Glitchy one-shots
Related articles
Impulse · Simpler · Sampler · Drum Rack · Drum Buss · Saturator