Are there any good snare design plugins similar to Kick 2 and Big Kick? I have hundreds of snare samples, but was wondering if anyone knows of any really good snare specific plugins that are actually good.

 

Do you not like using Kick2 for snares? If you drag and drop your samples directly on to the "Click" oscillators, it's not bad at all. Same with drum machine style hats. People also frequently use Serum for drum synthesis. Falcon2 Drum Designer is great, but not the same style workflow as Kick either.

 

Probably not what you're after, but if you were to use Nerve Drum machine you could import 8 different snares to the 8 pads and manipulate each one individually . Like I said, it may not be exactly what you're after but it will certainly do a good job.

 

You can try:

AAS - Chromaphone
Image-Line - Drummax
NI - Maschine

 

and the newest contender, Liquid Death Snare.

 

I honestly haven't really done that with Kick 2, Im gonna have to dive into that.

 

DMach drum machine if you use android (free).
The drum synth in Maschine is very very powerful indeed.
Drumatic 4 and Drummax also come to my mind.

But none of them snare only, if that is what you are looking for.

 

Maschine is one I haven't really tried because I don't have the Maschine hardware. Is it worthwhile without the NI Maschine controller?

 

Arturia Modular V (or something similar) is great for Kraftwerk style fully electronic snares but there's a programming curve.
Then there's IK Multimedia MODO drum- it's supposed to emulate acoustic snares but you can use it to make electronic (or emulate weirdly sampled) snares with extreme parameter settings.

 

Don't forget to mute or 0 the volume on the sub oscillator at the bottom right corner of Kick2. Or you will certainly come back and say I give bad advice

Rob Papen Punch2 is also a great option for any electronic drums. Sugar Bytes Drum Computer is another option, but it never clicked with me. DrumsSSX is another "drum audience targeted" plugin worth checking out: https://fuseaudiolabs.de/#/pages/product?id=300867907

it's like RX Music Rebalance.

 

Last edited: Nov 2, 2022

"Maschine is one I haven't really tried because I don't have the Maschine hardware. Is it worthwhile without the NI Maschine controller?"

you can try, you don't need HW. it's worth it? It depends on what you need or are looking for. it's actually a 4x4 plugin. you can do everything.