I am looking for high quality saxophone vst or kontakt bank for detroit and trap, thanks

 

on the compact vst plugin side, try Audio Modeling SWAM Saxophones 3. There is an R2R release of that, and it is only a 150 mb file compressed. Or Linplug Sax Lab 2, also an R2R release exists which is 350 mb compressed.

If you are going to have that part way out in front in your mix, then you probably want to go with a much larger Kontakt instrument.

 

+1 ^^^^

I have had that on my pc since 2015 and it still sounds great!

 

Audio Modelling SWAM Saxophones.

 

DSK Saxophones --> Free Download --> www.dskmusic.com/dsk-saxophones/

Features

Saxophone VST instrument

– 2 Saxophone types: Soprano & Tenor
– ADSR envelove control
– Velocity curve selector
– Reverb fx included
– Available for Windows and Mac (32 and 64 bits)

 

Sex requests are not allowed on audiosax

 

I never pay for sax.


Thanks, I'll let myself out

 

Oh... I misread that

 

Probably not what you're looking for but appropriate to some of the comments lol

Embertone - Sensual Saxophone

 

Yes, Sensual Saxophone is surprisingly good.

Edit: in terms of realism, what are the top Sax libraries for pop music or synthwave these days?

 

Last edited: Jun 17, 2025 at 9:08 PM

Another vote for Sensual Sax, although it's a pretty specific sound (by design).

SWAM can be extremely realistic, but it's not out of the box. You have to play a lot with microtuning and growl and various things to keep it from being sterile. But the potential is in there.

DSK is just slightly inferior to jamming ice picks in your ears. It sounds like dialing up a saxophone on an Ensoniq Mirage or something.

 

Was Sax Lab ever made 64bit? Linplug Alpha made the transition at least, around the time the company folded. Yes, yes, bridges exist, I know.

 

It works on MacOS Catalina. It has to be 64bit.

 

Cheers for the info. Ok, I tried the last Windows version, and it is indeed available also as 64bit VST2. Works fine at least on the latest Ableton.

It's not for solo instruments, but for the occasional horn section flourishes I've found Native Instrument's Session Horns to be usable, enough articulations to make the thing dynamic and it doesn't sound half-bad. But then again, I basically use it because it's part of Komplete and never had the need to look further. But again, it's useless for solo sax etc. instruments.

 

Thanks, I'll take a look at this, I'm waiting if you have more suggestions.

 

For its size and its day, Saxlab 2 sounds great. Until you run it next to actual sax samples. It becomes quickly obvious. But further back in your mix, with a nice reverb or other effects; it is passable as a saxophone. I'd use it for lo-fi or house music. For HQ, I would use a kontakt library.
How often do you need something like that?

 

hq would be better because I'm looking for realistic sax sounds I often use sax in detroit and normal trap tunes