What is your favorite plugin for (Roland) 808 sounds?
The Roland 808 drum machine? Or the TS-808? For the Tube Screamer I’m fond of Ignite Amps, the plugins TSB-1, inspired by the 808.
Their TS-999 is pretty bitchin’ too, a more faithful adaptation of the 808.
If you’re talking about the drum machine, then this is the one I use and the only one I know of…
https://www.pluginboutique.com/product/1-Instruments/7-Drum-Machine/376-TS-808
Sorry! I wasn’t even thinking! I meant the Roland 808. Good catch!
Then allow me to shorten…
https://www.pluginboutique.com/product/1-Instruments/7-Drum-Machine/376-TS-808
This one is what I use, and it’s free. I like the UI, it’s pretty versatile and I used it on my “Erotic Dishwasher” track. I switch between it and the LinnDrum (with extreme pitch manipulation) for electronic music.
Unfortunately it says it is PC only 
Here’s an example of what you can’t have then… the toms are Simmons though.
What’s your OS?
Right now NI Maschine with a mishmash of their expansion libraries. I have the Arturia Spark, which I thought would have done a better 808 since they’re really the kings of analog synth modeling imo. But the Maschine stuff is a little easier to dial in.
I also use Geist, Battery, and MOTU BPM. Rob Papen also has some pretty usable stuff. They’re old, but they work, and I know my way around the libraries pretty well. However, Maschine is really my go-to default for 808.
I supplement 808’s with the Waves R bass, the Boz Sasquatch, XLN trigger packs, and the Arturia Minimoog sample bass. Oh yeah. And U-He Zebra has some cool and usable drum stuff.
I’m running PT on a Mac
I had the exact same experience with my Spark. That’s exactly why I was asking actually. Lol
I came to the conclusion Spark was a phase in the Arturia company where they were feeling out if there was a market for hardware/software integration. They’ve clearly found their niche, but not on the analog drum machine side. I don’t know if its because their TAE tech doesn’t play as nicely with 808’s as it does with Moogs, but I thought the Spark 808 patches were bland.
@bozmillar or @ikmultimedia may have some thoughts on this, but I believe we’ve gotten pretty accustomed to hearing the plugin makers idea of what they anticipate the user ‘wanting’ the emulation to sound like, more so than being dead on true to what the emulation ‘does’ sound like. A good example is that 9/10 people will probably prefer XLN addictive to BFD3, because the snares and kicks appear enormous, strait off the cuff when you load them. When you unload the FX, and account for the compression that was committed to the Addictive sample, I believe Addictive and BFD are dead equal. Except for the fact that BFD has a much larger and far more diverse set of add ons. But it takes a little longer to get the BFD sound processed and production ready.
I’m going off on a tangent here, but for sample replacement, the question isn’t XLN vs Fxpansion. The question is: ‘who sampled the kit piece closest to the one I need to sample replace?’. Beyond that, its down to interface. Its a different question for the 808, because there’s only one sample set in question to begin with (opposed to a selecting from a variety of kit pieces). So to me, it then comes down to which one gets you up and running the fastest.
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So true. With any of these plugins we tend to expect the sounds or effects to instantly be what we’re hearing in our heads ahead of time. There’s a built-in bias that totally varies from user to user.
Limited needs with me, but I’ve used TS-808 - fine and free!
Yeah, I may need to just throw reaper on an old PC and try it out since they don’t make a mac version of the plugin.