Xfer Records is a label started by Deadmau5 and his longtime friend and studio accomplice Steve Duda for their collaborations, such as BSOD, and WTF? with Tommy Lee and DJ Aero.
Their latest CD offering is not a music CD, but rather a sample CD-ROM for music producers, featuring a plethora of WAV loops and one-shots, ready to be loaded in to any popular music-making software. This CD-ROM Features 555 Megabytes of WAV sample content:
336 Loops at 128 BPM
425 Kick Drums
229 Clap sounds
1500+ percussive sounds
322 Hihats,
158 Snare drums
100+ Cymbal and Cymbal-effect sounds
227 synth/tonal sounds composed and engineered by Duda and the mau5 themselves.
An extensive amount of gear was used for the CD-including circuit-bent and analogue drum machines, vintage analogue synths such as Moog and Arp, original acoustic drums and other sounds recorded in various professional studios. A variety of digital sound sources were used as well for creating new sounds, such as FFT synthesis, additive/subtractive synthesis, even custom DSP routines coded by Steve Duda in C++.
"Despite the large amount of sample CDs out there, we saw a niche for one geared towards building blocks of EDM with a twist - this one is royalty-free, so it can be used in original productions with no fear of legal repercussions from the original artists who often are sampled on other CD libraries", says Steve. "We tried to make an assortment featuring a variety of sound sources, which aren't overproduced so they can fit into a production workflow without stamping their own flavor on a mix and being overly-recognizable".
One thing for certain, the sounds of the XFER Sample CD will be featured on dance tracks for decades to come.