Free Plugin
DrumAccess is a professional drum sampler designed from day one to be fully usable by blind and visually impaired musicians via screen readers and Braille displays. It is available as a standalone application and as a VST3 plugin for REAPER and other compatible DAWs on Windows.
From SFZ to native plugin. Previously, DrumAccess was distributed as a collection of SFZ files loaded into Sforzando, an external SFZ player. The new DrumAccess is a self-contained, purpose-built sampler with its own engine, its own mixer, its own effects rackmount system, and accessibility designed into every keystroke. No external SFZ player is required. The same professional drum kits and the same sound are preserved — what changes is that the experience is now fully integrated, fully keyboard-driven, and fully responsive to your screen reader and Braille display.
What is DrumAccess?
DrumAccess is a multi-microphone, multi-velocity-layer drum sampler with a comprehensive mixing and effects system. It loads professional drum kit libraries and gives you per-microphone control over volume, panning, tuning, width, gating, compression, three-band parametric EQ, and four send effects (Chorus, Flanger, Delay, Reverb). A master channel with its own compressor, EQ, and volume rounds out the signal chain.
What sets DrumAccess apart is not a list of features — many drum samplers offer comparable feature sets. What sets it apart is that every single feature was designed so that a person navigating with NVDA, JAWS, Narrator, or a Braille display can use it with full proficiency, using only the keyboard. The accessibility is not a layer on top of a mouse-first design. It is the design.
Key Features
Sampling Engine
- Loads professional drum kit libraries with multiple microphones per instrument (Close, Overhead, Room, etc.).
- Multi-velocity layers and round-robin sample selection for authentic, varied playback.
- High-quality 4-point Lagrange polynomial sample-rate conversion at load time — clean playback whether your project runs at 44.1, 48, 88.2, or 96 kHz.
- More than 52 professional drum kits, with new kits added regularly — the same kits that worked with the previous Sforzando-based edition, now natively supported by the new engine. A free starter kit is included with the installer; additional kits are sold separately, each with its own dedicated installer.
- Brush articulations with keyswitches, and per-zone note remapping — assign any drum piece to any MIDI note.
Built for Electronic Drummers
The note layout sent by your e-drum module rarely matches the General MIDI standard used by acoustic drum samples — DrumAccess solves this elegantly with drum maps and live MIDI Learn.
- Roland V-Drum mapping included. A pre-built drum map for Roland V-Drum modules ships with the installer. Select it from the drum maps list and every pad triggers the correct sample — kicks, snares and toms in the right order, hi-hat with open/closed/pedal articulations, ride bell versus ride edge, cymbal chokes, all working out of the box.
- More mappings coming. Additional pre-built drum maps for other major e-drum brands are planned for future releases.
- Build and save your own map with MIDI Learn. Navigate to the drum piece you want to assign (Snare, Crash 1, Tom 3, etc.), press Ctrl+L, hit the pad on your kit, press Enter — done. DrumAccess captures the note number and assigns it instantly. Save your completed map under any name; it appears in the drum maps list alongside the Roland V-Drum mapping, ready to recall in any future project.
Per-Microphone Mixing
- Each microphone has independent volume, pan, tuning, and stereo width controls, plus per-mic mute and solo.
- Per-mic effects chain: Gate, Compressor, three-band parametric EQ.
- Four FX sends per mic (Chorus, Flanger, Delay, Reverb) with pre/post-fader switching and per-send bypass.
- Output bus routing — send any microphone to any of 8 additional output buses (REAPER VST3 mode).
FX Rackmount System
- Eight independent FX rackmounts, one per drum category (Kicks, Snares, Hi-Hats, Rides, Toms, Cymbals, Percussions, GM Instruments).
- Each rackmount contains four FX slots: Chorus, Flanger, Delay (with optional tempo sync to host BPM), and Reverb (Room / Hall / Plate / Chamber).
- Series or Parallel chain mode, per rackmount. Reorder the chain on the fly with Ctrl+Up / Ctrl+Down, with no audio glitches and the new order saved with the preset.
- Master channel with Compressor, 3-band EQ, and Volume at the end of the chain.
MIDI Loop Player
- Built-in MIDI loop browser with the Groove Monkee Freebie bundle (369 loops) included free.
- Loop playback synchronised to host tempo, with optional manual tempo override and correct handling of unusual time signatures (3/4, 6/8, 5/4, 7/8, etc.).
- Insert any loop directly onto a REAPER track with Ctrl+Enter.
- A dedicated Load GM Instruments button loads all 23 additional General MIDI percussion instruments at once, so every Groove Monkee loop plays exactly as intended, with no silent notes on fills and breaks.
- Additional Groove Monkee MIDI loop bundles for DrumAccess are available at groovemonkee.com, each with its own dedicated installer.
REAPER Integration
- One-keystroke track building: create properly named REAPER tracks for every microphone of the loaded instrument, with per-mic renaming via F2.
- Numeric keypad shortcuts to navigate REAPER's edit cursor by measure and beat directly from the MIDI Loop tab.
- Standalone mode automatically hides REAPER-specific features when no DAW is present.
Accessibility — First-Class, Not An Afterthought
- Compatible with NVDA, JAWS, and Windows Narrator. Every control reports its name, role, current value, and state through the Windows UI Automation API — no silent controls, no "unknown" announcements.
- Persistent Braille display support: parameter names and values appear on connected Braille displays and stay visible while the control is focused.
- 100% of the plugin is operable from the keyboard. Six tabs are reached instantly via Ctrl+1 through Ctrl+6; arrow keys navigate lists and effect chains, Alt+arrow adjusts values finely.
- Contextual help: press H on any control for a spoken description, Ctrl+H for a navigable list of every shortcut in the current context, and F1 to open the full bilingual user manual.
- MIDI Learn: map any parameter to a MIDI controller with Ctrl+L and a single physical move. Mappings are saved with the preset and announced as they change.
Modular Kit Building
DrumAccess organises drum instruments into eight categories called cages: Kicks, Snares, Hi-Hats, Rides, Toms, Cymbals, Percussions, and GM Instruments. Each cage can hold as many kit pieces as you want — load a single classic snare, or load several snares from different libraries into the same cage and audition them side by side without ever leaving the plugin. This is the foundation for building hybrid custom kits: combine a DW kick with a Sakae snare, Gretsch toms, and cymbals from another library. Your custom configuration is saved as a user preset (a shareable XML file) and can be recalled instantly in any future project.
Included In The Installer
DrumAccess is immediately playable the moment installation finishes. With no additional purchase, you get:
- Free Kit — a complete, free, multi-microphone, multi-velocity-layer drum kit, ready to play.
- Percussions Kit — 26 percussion instruments (bongos, congas, timbales, shakers, guiros, cowbells, tambourine, triangle, woodblocks, and more).
- 23 General MIDI instruments covering the full GM percussion kit.
- 369 MIDI loops from the Groove Monkee Freebie bundle.
System Requirements
- Windows 11.
- For the VST3 version: REAPER is recommended for full feature support (track building, multi-output routing). Other DAWs work for basic plugin use.
- NVDA, JAWS, or Windows Narrator (optional, but strongly recommended for the intended user base).
- About 1.1 GB of disk space for the installer.
Available only on Windows, as a standalone application or as VST3
Installation
DrumAccess is installed and kept up to date through the ReaperAccessible Installer Manager, a single accessible application that downloads and installs our products for you. There are no archives to extract by hand.
Click here to download the ReaperAccessible Installer Manager.
DrumAccess Sampling Video
ReaperAccessible has two recording studios, one in Montreal, Canada, and another in Clermont-Ferrand, France. In this video, we invite you to discover our Montreal studio, where we capture the Mapex - Mars Birch Shell Pack drums to create high-quality samples. Join us as we explore every step of the DrumAccess library development, from conception to the final product.
If the player does not appear, watch the video on YouTube (new tab).
Audio Demos
DrumAccess comes with the Free Kit and the Percussions Kit. The demos that we offer you are guaranteed without any additional audio processing, what you will hear will be the raw sound of the drums.