Fresh off the press this week is Black Diamonds, a Kontakt 5 library that is delivered by Delicate Beats. This tasty instrument is aimed at the Trap producers, but like a shaky hand with an Uzi, it hits its target and alittle more. Earlier this year Delicate released his first Kontakt plugin, Smoke, be sure to check out the review from our boy Broadway.

Black Diamonds is loaded with 7 kits, which will allow you to instantly create music, as everything is already at your fingertips. This plugin has a total of 202 samples, which include, Drums hits, 808’s, Synth Basses, Chords, Loops, Synth leads, Transition FX’s and Noise loops.

 

Interface
Black Diamonds has a very similar interface to Smoke. It’s slick and really looks like a finished product. Its dusty, dark interface makes it difficult to read at times, but there’s something about that smokeyness that I really like. The layout is idiot proof. Everything is right in front of you, except the FX, which we will come to later. The darkened knobs with gold rims have a nice window, allowing you to tune to your desire. You can play around with the knobs as much as you want, but until you press that darkened text below, nothing will happen. Black Diamonds comes equipped with a compressor, reverb, equalizer, tape sat and filter.

 

Black Diamonds doesn’t stop there. It goes one step further and gives you the option to add Sidechain, Stutter, Wobble and Panner. You simply turn it on from the right side of the interface, adjust the desired amount and rate, BOOM! That’s it. The FX is implemented, and you can tinker away to your hearts content!

 

How It Sounds
Let me tell you from the off. These are all high quality audio samples. 7 Kits are stuffed into a small Black Diamond, that gives us sharp and colorful Snares. These are accompanied by those PHAT sounding kicks, that are full of volume.

Each kit has a pretty much identical layout on the keys. With one or two keys being add for certain kits. So once your familiar with the lay out there’s no stopping you. There’s such a mix of Synths, Pianos and some Noise effects, you will be spoiled for choice. Delicate has made it really easy to start creating; you will not have any excuses. The samples that Delicate has chosen are really nice. You can easily integrate them into different genres.

I only have one criticism with this plugin. Its limited. Yer the samples sound great and you get 7 kits, but once you have used these 7 kits, what more can you really do? Personally, I would only use the kicks and drums on a regular basis. Plus, many producers will own a copy of Black Diamonds, which means that everyone’s going to be working from the same hymn sheet. Maybe delicate will release some add-on’s, which will spice things up, but who knows.

Verdict
I don’t create Trap, never have and most likely never will, but I have been able to adapt and manipulate the samples to make Hip-Hop. The interface is really easy on the eyes and it doesn’t take too many brain cells to navigate round. It comes equipped with a handful of effects, which surprisingly, actually sound pretty good and were really easy to use.

Black Diamonds is really fun to play with and it’s not just for Trap producers. This can be manipulated into many genres that like PHAT drums and great sounding samples. This definitely gets the seal of approval.

Be sure to grab a copy at an amazing price of $29.95 from Delicate Beats. These guys are producing great instruments for unbelievable prices.

Be sure to catch me at @UKAntSmith

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