Forums › DEALS › DAWs, Virtual Instruments, VSTs, Effects Plugins & Sample Libraries › Major Update for LinkedMusicians “Best Free Kontakt Instruments” List
I’m posting this here because I can see that old habits die hard! Most of the group doesn’t venture beyond this forum. Once we open to the public, I’ll do my best to work on encouraging us to post things in the appropriate forums, like software updates and presets. But for now, I’ll keep it where you’re paying attention!
I just added a bunch of free Kontakt sample libraries to my giant list of free Kontakt instruments. You can find it on the navigation bar or use the link below. In the near future I’ll add the ability for everyone to receive updates to the list via email. My objective is to maintain the most thorough lists of only high quality sample libraries for Kontakt and free players. Since I started this Native Instruments has made the second most extensive list, but it seems clear to me that they didn’t spend time with and scrutinize the included libraries like I did, either that or they just have a lower bar. My criteria is that these are all the best free sample libraries of their type that I have found. Some of them are as good or better than similar paid libraries of the same category of instrument. I find that some of the free piano and prepared piano libraries are as good as some paid libraries. Some of the libraries on the Kontakt instrument list were once paid libraries (i.e., some of the 8Dio libraries).
I was motivated to create the lists — originally posted at Cakewalk Forum (I removed both lists from their forum before my departure) — in order to help musicians who were financially strapped. But I realize that it has value for everyone. Some of the included libraries are very worthwhile even if you have a Bapu level spending budget. And there’s not a single bad library on either list. Every library included is a recommendation.
Your friend who keeps the beat. I suppose I'm also the chef at this place.
I just added around 20 more Kontakt instruments in addition to the ones I added yesterday. I invite others to make their own suggestions in a thread I’ll create later today and link here. My hope is to make this list provide something new and really special for even long time Kontakt users like myself. There’s a lot of great free Kontakt libraries out there, but you need to go through a lot more mediocre and poor libraries to get to the really good ones. That is what I’ve done and I hope that we can pool our collective knowledge to expand on my list. In fact, if you have your own recommendations, please share them in this thread. I can easily move it to the forum with free sample libraries.
I want to create the most useful list of the best free Kontakt instruments that you can find. This month I’ll be improving the page and embedding audio files so that you can listen to a sample library before you decide to download it or not. Please check it out and let me know what you think.
Your friend who keeps the beat. I suppose I'm also the chef at this place.
Thank you as always, Peter!
Unfortunately, There are some things I have to say about the great list.
Please be careful that I haven’t checked all instruments.
First of all, “Isolation Piano Tubes & Tape” is no longer available.
I don’t know alternative download link.
Next, “Samplephonics Leeds Towhall Organ” is introduced twice.
Then, all Embertone’s links changed.
https://embertone.com/instruments/intimate-strings-lite/
https://embertone.com/instruments/arcane/
Also Red Sounds closed, so I recommend merger into ISW’s Audio Palette Primary Colors link.
Jonathan’s Glockenspiel link from VSTBuzz is expired.
I found the same name Kontakt instrument.
Rosenspiel (Maybe “Rosinspiel” is correct) is also expired.
And I couldn’t find available download.
The link of “Jade Ethnic Orchestra Xiao Freebie” seems to be wrong.
Here is available link.
https://www.strezov-sampling.com/products/view/jade-freebie.html
Diato : a diatonic accordion is now located in the sound design section.
I can’t judge whether it is properly or not.
Finally, actually, I have a problem to download Death Piano LE.
Is there someone who knows how to get for free?
The link of Carpenter Trombone is another expired instrument from VSTBuzz.
We can download from the official, but forced via torrent to get for free.
https://ivyaudio.com/Carpenter-Trombone
(Other VSTBuzz downloads are still alive, included Claire Solo and Piano in 162 from Ivy Audio, which made Carpenter Trombone. Weird.)
Wow. @galacov, thanks for all of that information. The reality is, I don’t have the time to go through the list regularly and ensure everything is still as it was when I originally added an instrument (I started the list in 2022), so if a linked site makes a change, I’m likely only going to learn about it if I happen to notice when revisiting that site or, if someone like you gives me a heads up.
I’m not kidding, but if you’re open to being the editor of the list, and regularly checking to see if all of the linked resources are still working the same, I’d welcome it and give you credit on the page. Your above post, while I realize it wasn’t fun for you, is very helpful to me and will be very helpful to others. I will go over all of the info you provided and I’m very grateful. Again, I apologize for the hassle. The links I should have realized would be changed are VST Buzz — I’m kicking myself on that one. In any event, I’ll work on making the changes as soon as I can and will update this thread when I’ve made them. Thanks again for writing those posts, they’re incredibly helpful for me and a service to others who use that list (it’s one of the most visited pages on this site and regularly gets far more visitors than we have registered in our community).
Your friend who keeps the beat. I suppose I'm also the chef at this place.
I just spent half an hour attempting to see if James Kedward’s Isolation Piano is available anywhere else. Unfortunately, it’s not. I’ll remove it from my list and will spend time following up on the other libraries that @galacov identified.
EDIT: I just completed making the updates that galacov recommended. I again want to thank galacov for making this resource more useful to the community. I realize it isn’t fun finding broken links and that some folks have removed libraries, but your sharing that info helped make the list better for everyone and I greatly appreciate that.
EDIT 2: i just added links to audio files for each piano, with a couple of exceptions where none were available. Although there’s an issue with embedding the audio into the page that I’m looking into, so temporarily, the links will take you to their respective pages until I get everything embedded. Rest assured, what we’ll eventually have is embedded audio demos for most of the sample libraries so that you can quickly hear what the libraries sound like to help you decide if you want to download the libraries or not.
Your friend who keeps the beat. I suppose I'm also the chef at this place.
Thanks for keeping up this valuable resource. I feel like there are years worth of instruments there.
I’m very happy if people use it and it brings them joy. It’s great to find an inspiring library that doesn’t cost anything, and I want to include as many of those as I can.
The ones that really deserve all of our thanks are the generous people who labored over making libraries that weren’t doing it as a promotional tool, but just out of love — like a bunch of the folks at Pianobook who aren’t using free libraries to promote paid ones. I’ve always tired to persuade sample developers that there’s a huge benefit to releasing high quality FREE libraries, as it keeps their name in the public (awareness of their brand) and gives sample users a taste of what they do at no risk. It also helps greatly from an SEO standpoint to have a bunch of sites linking to their sites (it boosts their rank with Google and other search engines, and these days, AI).
I will often seek out great freebies when I have the urge to buy another sample library AKA GAS. A lot of what I did in the most recent update was to go through my hard drives to find my favorite free libraries that I’ve never gotten around to adding to the list. I knew there were a bunch and there’s still more. It’s really just a matter of spending the time to open up and play a library on one of my drives, and then if I think it’s worthy of being on the list, track down if it’s still available or not (I did have to exclude some that are no longer available). My next plans for the list is to have audio links for each library — where possible — and then link to each category to allow people to preview a library instead of having to click on every link to do that. Of course, that will save users a lot of time.
Your friend who keeps the beat. I suppose I'm also the chef at this place.
@peter Thank you for update so quickly!
I don’t want the credit here. But I try to check every couple of months.
My paranoid personality that regards sustainability to get plugins as importance is suitable for this task. XD
@peter Thank you for update so quickly!
I don’t want the credit here. But I try to check every couple of months.
My paranoid personality that regards sustainability to get plugins as importance is suitable for this task. XD
Thanks! This is a good example of how a community can work together to make a site better, as you just did in this thread.
The problem with any of these kinds of lists is that people create them and the linked libraries get pulled or change location and there’s no easy, proactive way for the list creator to be aware of that outside of clicking on everything on regular basis. I started the list in 2022, and the entries you identified were older ones, so it’s not a surprise that some went away or moved. I will develop a process for reviewing my two main lists. Maybe quarterly?
I imagine we’re not far off from AI being able to handle this chore, but I don’t have a subscription to the one service I know of that could probably do it. If anyone has an idea in that regard, please share it. My desire here is to have a great, up to date resource, where people can find really high quality free libraries and not have a list with a bunch of broken links (if you go through the first few pages of Google results for “free kontakt libraries” you’ll find a bunch of pages with broken links to libraries that were made a decade or more ago that are certainly not in the same league as the best available libraries. I don’t want to create a page with the same problem. I realize that if even 1% of the linked libraries disappear (on a list of nearly 200 libraries) it’s annoying to users, and I want people to have a very positive experience, so I welcome anyone who identifies broken links or has suggestions to automate this chore using AI.
Your friend who keeps the beat. I suppose I'm also the chef at this place.
I’ve been spending time working on providing embedded audio for the sample libraries on the list wherever possible, so that you can easily listen to a demo of a library before deciding whether or not you want to download it. Personally, I find the convenience of lists with that ability saves me a lot of time, so I it’s really important to me that the lists include that. I should have this completed by the end of this week. Then I’ll work on trying to better organize the list.
I invite everyone to provide their thoughts and suggestions on how we can make the list more useful for them and welcome any suggestions for libraries that you find worthy of inclusion. There are many libraries where I was iffy if I should include them or not, and when I felt that way, I simply didn’t include them. Any library that made the list is a library I think is well worth using. Of course, I’m rating this relative to other free libraries. not paid libraries. In many cases the free libraries on the list sound as good as paid libraries but lack the detail and sophisticated of a paid library, especially when it comes to libraries where there is complex scripting like guitar and orchestral libraries. The piano library category is a category where there are several libraries that are very comparable and even superior to some commercial offerings. Specifically, the piano libraries from 8Dio, SonicCouture, and “The Experience” series by Dore Mark are very high quality, detailed sample libraries on par with many piano libraries. I also find that Fractured Sounds Electric Keys is at a level where it easily compares to some of the paid commercial electric piano libraries on the market. No, it’s not as detailed as “The Famous E” and doesn’t have a fraction of the presets, but I prefer Electric Keys to a number of Rhodes libraries for Kontakt I’ve paid for (mostly libraries that cost under $50 US) and I find the tone of the Fracture Sounds library is superior to most of those libraries.
I’m going to create a thread sometime this week — possibly even today — that corresponds to the list so that we can discuss it, people can share their own lists and suggestions for what they think should be included, libraries they think shouldn’t be on the list, how they’ve used the included libraries, etc.
Your friend who keeps the beat. I suppose I'm also the chef at this place.
I’ve just added a bunch of additional libraries in the past couple days and added a lot more sample library demos. After I’m done refining the free sample libraries for Kontakt page, I’ll go to the other list of freebies for other sample players. My goal is to have the best resource on the web for finding the best free sample libraries. I also want it to be super convenient for people to find exactly what they want. I haven’t found any site doing a great job at all of that.
A lot of lists, including NI’s lists, are all over the board quality-wise. They have some excellent freebies on the list and then they have some very questionable libraries. Other lists you find in Google are even worse with really low-end sample libraries created a decade ago that don’t hold up well today. I’ve found that there’s enough high quality freebies out there that there’s no need to put up the not-so-good ones. The list now has high-quality sample libraries for a wide range of interests. It took a lot of time to find and try everything out — and 90+% of what I’ve found wouldn’t make the lists I’ve created, but the fact is, there are some excellent free libraries out there, they’re just in a ton of different places, so finding them, trying them out, and putting together one resource that brings them all together is the benefit to the community here. I found that the NI subreddit folks are big fans of the list.
Your friend who keeps the beat. I suppose I'm also the chef at this place.
Thank you for update with a great deal of your effort!
I checked like last time. I hope it helps you!
1. “ETI-Roads” site is now transfered.
https://etiroads.wordpress.com/home_en/
2. (optional) The individual link of “Mute” is here.
https://www.audioollie.com/sample-libraries/p/mute-1
3. (very trifling)The link of “Strummed Mountain Dulcimer” seems to repeat.
4. I don’t know why, “PRISM Drums Lite Edition” is now only samples, not including Kontakt files. (I confirmed by download.)
5. It surprised me, “Jon Meyer Soft Drums” is gone. It became Somerville Sounds plugin. Not available as a Kontakt instrument.
https://somervillesounds.com/softdrumslite/
5. Red Room Audio is now a part of ISW, so the “Snaps, Claps, Stomps and Shouts” link changed.
https://impactsoundworks.com/product/snaps-claps-slaps-stomps-shouts
6. “Woven Strings” is also an expired Jon Meyer’s great work. Unfortunately, there is no substitute even as a plugin.
7. “Shulmerich Handbells” is duplicated. (It is Jon Meyer’s product, but still alive.)
8. “Peter Flint: Dictaphone Loop Synth” is no longer available. I can’t find an alternative link.
9. “Klang: Neon Buzz is now for $5. Not freebie now.
Thanks for those edits, @galacov. I really appreciate your taking the time.
It might take me a few days to make the changes, but I’ll definitely get to by early next week. With your help this won’t be another list with a ton of bad links and libraries that are no longer available.
Your friend who keeps the beat. I suppose I'm also the chef at this place.