Chaos Tones has released Deviant Drums FREE Edition, a free acoustic drum instrument for Kontakt Player.
I already have more than twenty acoustic drum libraries in my collection, but every time a new freebie pops up, I just have to grab it. I’ve always dreamed of learning to play a real drum kit (apart from the most basic rhythms that I kinda learned to play), but space and talent are both limited commodities in my case.
Smacking out rhythms on a MIDI keyboard isn’t quite the same, but it’s a surprisingly satisfying substitute, and Deviant Drums FREE is perfect for jamming. But to be fair, it’s also great for serious production.
This isn’t just a basic kit with a few handpicked sounds to help market the full version of the product. Deviant Drums FREE Edition is a powerful virtual drum instrument that you have to check out if you want free drums for Kontakt Player.
It offers a single acoustic kit pulled from the full version, but retains all the customization features and pro-level sound quality you’d expect from a premium drum library.
The standout feature for me is the virtual drum mixer. You get precise control over the close mics, overheads, and room channels, and you can shape each individual drum with EQ, transient shaping, and reverb.
There’s also a master bus section for compression, EQ, and saturation. It’s basically everything you’d do in a real studio session, all inside one plugin.
Chaos Tones also packed this free version with a surprising number of control options. You can remap drums, tweak velocity curves, assign multiple drums to one note, and even trigger randomized layers with keyswitches.
You can even stack electric and acoustic elements using the EDM Unison feature, or push things into sound-design territory with tonal keyswitches that bend the kit in some wild ways.
The kit was recorded in a low-noise treated room with up to 8 velocity layers and 7 round robins per drum, which helps explain why it feels so responsive and alive.
It works for more gentle indie rock tones as well as something bigger and more aggressive. You can really adapt it to your liking using the mixer and available customization tools.
Deviant Drums FREE Edition runs in Kontakt Player 8.1, which means it’s 100% free to use even if you don’t own the full version of Kontakt. It works on macOS 13 and up, or Windows 10 and 11, and supports VST3, AU, and AAX formats.
You’ll need Native Access to install it, but once you do, you’ve got a full-featured acoustic drum kit ready to go.
Download: Deviant Drums FREE Edition
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Last Updated on July 11, 2025 by Tomislav Zlatic.
