Akai has a huge collection of free samples from various drum machines:

• Akai Kit of the Week samples

They’re mostly vintage drum machine samples, ranging from the Linn Drum to the ubiquitous 808 and 909 to some truly weird ones like the Rhythm Ace and Mattel Synsonic. There are also some non-vintage sounds, mostly generic drums and percussion. The samples are in WAV format within ZIP files. Programs are included for Akai samplers, but the individual samples work fine in the software sampler of your choice.

Via Analogue Industries, who also have a few collections of samples available somewhere, but their site has reorganized and I can’t find them. I’ll update this when I do.

I used to dream of having a portable DAT recorder so I could record audio in the field—the ambience of a peaceful lake, or even better, industrial noises—and use them as samples. Technology marches on, and now DAT recorders are nearly obsolete. Fortunately their solid-state equivalent is becoming affordable: The M-Audio MicroTrack is an iPod-sized recorder that can record from a microphone or audio source to CompactFlash media in MP3 or WAV formats.

For $400, this would be a wonderful sonic sketchpad and sampling tool, not to mention its other uses—recording live performances, bootlegging, podcasting…

A competing product, the Edirol R-1, has been around for a while, but is larger and has no digital input.

[via Music Thing and CDM ]