Splice Sounds Review
If you’ve been making music for a while, you’re probably aware of how expensive sample libraries can be. Thousands of sample libraries exist in forms as diverse as Kontakt, EXS24, Acid, and Reason Refills, ranging from floppy-disk based Akais and Emulators of the last century to CD-ROMs and digital items of today. They haven’t always been cheap. With its low-cost membership price, Splice Sounds, which advertises itself as an artist-to-artist sample service, intends to throw the entire economic model out the window. You may obtain access to a huge library of libraries and artist packs for as little as $7.99 per month. Splice Sounds is worth a look if you’re weary of the sounds in your audio editing program and want something more “of the moment.”
Splice has four different plans to choose from. 100 downloads are included in the $7.99 base plan (or credits). Upgrades to 300, 600, or 1,000 credits are available for $13.99, $21.99, and $29.99, respectively. You get to keep whatever you’ve downloaded if you quit paying. That means you only pay for the samples you use, and because you can pick and choose what you want, you don’t have to buy a $100 library only to acquire the two or three things you actually want.
When you enter the Splice realm, you’ll find millions of samples, loops, and presets to search through and be inspired by. There are a lot of 808 samples, ambient sound effects, and loop grooves to choose from. Some of this content is restricted to Splice, while the remainder is available as part of standalone sample libraries that you must purchase separately if you are not a subscriber to Splice. Everything on Splice is completely royalty-free and has no usage restrictions. You may search the sample libraries by featured, popular this week, genre, and instrument, and you can listen to unlimited previews. You can download anything you want utilizing a simple helper software that you must first install. You can then drag and drop samples as WAV files into your digital audio workstation.
Studio, Splice’s free cloud-based backup and collaborative music recording platform, and its related online community are among its most well-known products. Splice has paid out $15 million in royalties to music creators that have disseminated sample content through Splice Sounds as of March 2019. I would personally exhaust whatever possibilities your present DAW provides before subscribing to Splice Sounds—been it’s years, and I’m still exploring the depths of Logic Pro X’s integrated synth Alchemy and my now-10-year-old purchase of Spectrasonics Omnisphere. However, given the low barrier to entry, if you’re making modern techno, hip-hop, or pop music and need a new source of sonic inspiration, Splice Sounds is a no-brainer.