The NBA season is just over a month away from starting and our man Stix has layed us up something tasty. The world-renowned drummer is back with the 5^th release in his infamous Stix – Jampack series. I’ve always liked what Stix has released so be sure to check out the following reviews Stix Jampack, Stix jampack Vol. 2: Sonically Vintage Review and Stix Jampack: Guitar Edition. I’m hoping he gives us a slam dunk! You know, one of those all-star weekend, I believe I can fly sort of dunk.

Stix has teamed up with Hip-Hop producer Thelonious Martin aka King Thelonious. Thelonious has produced tracks for the likes of Smoke DZA, Chance The Rapper, Vic Mensa, Curren$y, Joey Badass and more. Stix has taken a whole new approach to this jampack. Thelonious was enlisted to orchestrate the drum kit / sample library with producers and beatmakers in mind.

The first thing I noticed with this jampack was the organisation. If your expecting a well organised kit from the off, you may be a bit disappointed. All of the sounds can be found in one folder, leaving it up to the end user to organize. I am an organization freak, so I prefer to see sounds organized in folders specific to their type; Kick, Snare, etc. Not a flagrant foul, but worth mentioning.

Moving up-court, NBA is jampacked with 162 original sounds that includes breaks and oneshots. These have all been performed, recorded and engineered by Stix and Thelonious Martin. I can say from the T-off that this pack caught my ear. The sounds are clean and crisp, carrying a generous amount of weight. The library of sounds is quite large with various amounts of drums. The drum kit selected has a beefy low end that kind of has that “rock” feel to it. Stix performs various amounts of loops, drum fills and shuffles, all of high quality.

All the breaks are really nice and easy to chop up. I found this really quick and easy to do. You can lace them up with some tasty effects (EQ, Reverb, etc) and adjust them to taste. You can tune these drums in various ways. These are aimed at the Hip-Hop market, but can easily be adapted into different genres. Stix has layed us up with some tasty weighted drums and the reverb is sitting, waiting to suck it up and go for the 3 pointer.

As mentioned before we are also given various one shots comprised of Crashes, Hats, Kicks, Snares and Toms. You can use these at your own pleasure, creating whatever play comes to mind. All of these sounds were used in the loops that are already gifted to us. Its so hard to pick favourites with such a huge pack, but here are a few of mine are SabuMartinez 58, SabuMartinez 35, DISTORWON.

These are really nice sounding breaks and they push this pack into the premium market. We also get all the oneshots, which is a really nice bonus. NBA really comes packing a punch,  and delivers a large library with a nice vibrant, authentic feeling. Be sure to grab yourself a copy at DrumBroker for a very decent price of $24.99.

Be sure to catch me at @UKAntSmith, and be sure to stay tuned to MaschineMasters for reviews on all the latest sound libraries and drum kits.