Scarbee has made the Imperial Drums collection available in the Kontakt (version 1.53) format. It's a free update for registered HALion 2 users.

The instruments were recorded at 24-bit, 88 kHz and downsampled to 44.1 kHz for release. Scarbee says the collection captures the dynamic range of every drum, providing nearly 30,000 individual drum samples on three DVDs. Scarbee recorded each drum using multiple microphone positions, including close, overhead, and ambient perspectives. Some drums were recorded from multiple close perspectives. For example, a single key offers over 420 bass drum samples in 7a5 velocity layers, and there are over 3,000 samples dedicated to the 14-inch hi-hat alone, for almost 2 GB of data.

The Scarbee Imperial Drums includes hits using wooden drum sticks, reversed sticks, several types of brushes, mallets, hands, and fingers. There are a total of 59 Emperor kit banks, 85 Emperor Single Drum programs, one GM mapped kit, and 174 additional banks and programs. For more information and demo songs, visit www.scarbee.com.