Ableton's Orchestral Instruments

Orchestral Instrument Collection (Mac/Win, $599) is a bundle for Ableton Live 7 (ableton.com) of four orchestral instrument families: strings, brass, woodwinds, and percussion. The collections are also available individually for $189. Produced in partnership with Sonivox, this 25 GB collection of multisampled Simpler instruments embedded in Live's Instrument Racks with premapped Macro controls offers a variety of articulations, which are available either as individual presets or combined for real-time switching. All instruments come in 16-bit LE and 24-bit full and lite versions. CPU and memory resources are managed under the hood with Live's SmartPriming technology to maximize performance.

Big Fish Audio's Found Percussion

Found Percussion ($99.95) is the second Big Fish Audio (bigfishaudio.com) release to feature percussion construction kits (85) made of sounds produced from everyday objects. Like the earlier Tool Shed Percussion, this 6 GB collection includes 4- and 8-bar loops in Acidized WAV, REX, and Apple Loops formats that are organized in kits ranging in tempo from 49 to 190 bpm. The tempo-flexible formats let you easily mix and match loops from different kits, and each kit has one or more composite loops to use as a bed. Titles like Mallets on a Storage Bin and Slapped Coffee Tin tell you where this collection is headed.

PowerFX's All Them Beats

In the liner notes to All Them Beats ($69), PowerFX (powerfx.com) founder Bil Bryant recounts his first gig, at 16, as a dance-band drummer required to instantly recall countless rhythms. Fast-forward to this cross-genre collection of drum loops in 18 categories ranging from world (Africa, Caribbean, Europe, IndoAsian, Latin) to classic (Blues, Country, Jazz, New Orleans) to modern (Electronica, Hip Hop, Rock, FunkSoul). The intent is to use these with your own kits, so the main vehicle is Standard MIDI Files, but each loop is also provided in WAV and REX audio formats.