EastWest LA Riot 3 Audio

-been making music for 10 years or so
-trip-hop & hip-hop, but also everything else (punk, post rock, etc.)
-i use cakewalk sonar 3.0 and acid pro 4.0
-i've been using LA Riot 3 for over three years
-yamaha NS10m monitors

LA Riot 3 was DEFINITELY worth the price tag. I chose it because of the price (soundsonline.com was closing out of it, so it was on sale- majorly- from 89 to 29 bucks).

The double-disc is set up in construction kit format mostly, but the second disc has a ton of great horn riffs (muted trumpet, sax, etc.) as well as a ton of single drum hits (which I have used in EVERYthing.. they're THAT good). Lots of great stuff. Some beats are Portishead-ish, which is a great thing. A lot of the beats are similar to the sound of Tribe Called Quest, which I find to be incredibly useful. Great rhodes/electric piano licks, funky guitars.. the basslines are always subtle but heavily grooving at the same time.. great stuff. The scratches are great, too.. never annoying, just a solid groove. Lots of usable sounds, loops, and single hits.

The thing I hate about audio libraries, though, is they take FOREVER to chop up in Sound Forge... since the sounds have to be "ripped" into .wav format... I'm still not fully done chopping up the last few tracks (horn riffs, etc.) :) But for the price I paid... definitely worth it. I wish all sample libraries came with an audio disc and a .wav/loop-ready disc.... would make life so much easier. I noticed that a lot of sample libraries are doing that now though, like e-lab.

To sum this up-- I give this a 10 because of all the usable sounds, and the quality (or should I say "grit"), of the samples. Great stuff, hard to find this library though... if you can find it, definitely pick it up if you need a solid hip-hop sample disc.