Drum Breaker is a drum-focused character plugin from The Sample Lab, designed to make drums hit harder, sound dirtier and take on a more vintage, sampled character. Instead of requiring several separate processors, it combines five stages into one interface: Drive, Tape, Boom, Resampler and Compressor.

Five Processing Stages

Drive adds anything from a subtle push to thicker tube-style grit, with modes including Soft, Medium, Hard, Thick Tube, Crunch and Damp.

Tape introduces warmth and analog-style imperfections through saturation, wow, flutter, wear and flux controls.

Boom focuses on adding low-end weight beneath kicks, with controls for frequency, delay and amount.

Resampler reduces the signal to vintage sampler-style resolution, with sample-rate settings from 8 kHz to 44.1 kHz and bit depth from 4 to 16 bits.

Compressor provides drum-oriented glue and punch with controls for amount, transient response, attack and release.

One-Screen Workflow

The entire processing chain is available on one screen, with no tabs or menu diving. A large VU meter, input and output gain, high- and low-cut shelving, and a global Dry/Wet control round out the main interface. The Dry/Wet control also makes parallel processing straightforward.

Although Drum Breaker is primarily designed for drum buses, it can also be used on individual kicks, snares and loops, as well as vocals, synths and other sounds that need additional character.

Presets and Compatibility

Drum Breaker includes 50 factory presets covering drum bus, mix bus and master, lo-fi and vintage, saturation and drive, 808 and bass, keys and synths, guitar and vocals, and creative effects.