Wood by AudioThing is a Kontakt sample library of wooden percussion sounds: sticks, claves, castanets, bowls, boards and raw drum hits, packaged into 17 instruments and 4 multis at $5. It's built for a narrow use case, and that narrowness is exactly what trips buyers up.
Quick verdict: At $5, Wood is a honest, focused library that does one thing reasonably well. If you score films, cut foley, or produce music that calls for organic wooden textures, it earns its place. If you bought it expecting a general percussion toolkit or seamless chromatic playability, you're likely already frustrated. Score: 3.5/5. It's not for everyone, and the .nkm compatibility issue is genuinely annoying.
Who Ends Up Regretting This
The buyer who regrets Wood is usually a producer who wanted a versatile percussion library and grabbed this because the sample count looked promising. 278 samples sounds like a lot. But every single one is wood.
If you need chromatic wooden instruments that track cleanly across a keyboard range, the round-robin inconsistency will frustrate you. Owners report slight tuning and timbre drift between hit variations. For rhythmic foley work, that drift is invisible. For a melodic castanet line or a tuned wood-block part, it's a real problem.
And if you're running a modern Kontakt setup, check the version before you buy. The .nkm multi files don't load correctly in Kontakt 4 and later. That's not a minor footnote. Those 4 multis represent a chunk of how the library is meant to be used.
What Owners Actually Say
The consistent praise is for the source material itself. Owners who work in film sound and foley report it's genuinely useful, and a few point to oriental and middle eastern music production as a sweet spot they didn't expect.
The custom performance view gets a mention too. Having Saturation, Rotator, Delay and Reverb accessible in one screen without diving into the Kontakt rack keeps the workflow moving. That's a satisfying design decision for a library this focused.
The complaints cluster in two places. First: the round-robin behavior. Some mapped instruments show slight variation between hits that sounds organic in isolation but becomes a problem the moment you try to use the instrument chromatically. Second: the .nkm compatibility issue. This one comes up enough that it's not an edge case. It's a known limit that AudioThing hasn't resolved, and it's an ugly oversight for a library that ships multis as a feature.
Nobody's calling it a bad library. But several owners are clear that they wished they'd known exactly how narrow the use case was before they bought it.
What You Actually Get
Seventeen .nki instrument files and four .nkm multi files. The instruments cover wood-block, wooden bowl, castanets, wooden boards, claves, sticks, raw drum samples, and a range of hits and effects. Some are tuned, some aren't. The sample set runs to 278 stereo files at 44.1kHz / 24-bit.
Each instrument supports up to 3 round-robin layers and up to 3 velocity layers. In practice, the velocity layering works cleanly. The round-robin is where things get inconsistent across certain instruments.
The four onboard effects: Saturation, Rotator, Delay and Reverb. All accessible from the performance view without leaving the instrument. Clever layout for a specialized tool.
You also get the samples in WAV format, which matters. If the Kontakt compatibility concerns you, you can load the raw files into any sampler you already own. That's a meaningful safety net at $5.
The full version of NI Kontakt 3.5 or higher is required. Kontakt Player won't cut it.
The Smarter Route
If your primary concern is the .nkm compatibility issue, the WAV format gives you an exit. Load them into Ableton's Sampler, Native Instruments' own Battery, or whatever sampler sits in your signal chain already. You lose the performance view and the built-in effects, but you gain flexibility and skip the Kontakt version headache entirely.
If you're buying Wood specifically for the Kontakt instrument experience and the onboard effects workflow, test your Kontakt version against the requirements before spending anything. The library needs the full version of Kontakt 3.5 or higher, and the multis have known issues with later versions. Verify first. Returns on sample libraries are not always straightforward.
Buy or Wait?
Buy it if you make film music, score to picture, or cut foley and you want a dedicated wooden texture library that loads fast and has basic effects baked in. The $5 price means the risk is low.
Wait, or skip entirely, if you need chromatic wooden instruments that track perfectly, or if your Kontakt setup is version 4 or later and you care about the multis. The inconsistent round-robin makes melodic use unreliable, and that .nkm compatibility problem has no fix on offer.
It's a specialist tool. Not a general one. Buy it like that or don't buy it at all.
Specs & Technical Details
| Developer | AudioThing |
| Price | $5 |
| Plugin Format | Kontakt Instrument (.nki / .nkm) + WAV |
| OS Support | N/A |
| Activation | N/A |
| CPU Usage | N/A |
| Trial Available | N/A |
| Version Reviewed | N/A |
| Sample Count | 278 stereo samples |
| Sample Resolution | 44.1kHz / 24-bit |
| Instruments | 17 .nki files, 4 .nkm multis |
| Round Robin | Up to 3 layers |
| Velocity Layers | Up to 3 layers |
| Kontakt Requirement | Full version, 3.5 or higher |
Score Breakdown
| Category | Score | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Sound Quality | 3.5/5 | Source material is clean and specific; round-robin drift hurts chromatic instruments |
| Value for Money | 4.0/5 | WAV files included means you're not locked to Kontakt; low risk for the right buyer |
| Ease of Use | 3.5/5 | Performance view is well laid out; .nkm compatibility issues complicate setup |
| Features | 3.0/5 | Four effects and dual format are good; the multi loading bug undermines the library's own feature set |
| CPU Efficiency | N/A | No data available |
| Overall | 3.5/5 | Honest and focused; earns its price for the right workflow, frustrating for everyone else |
Wood isn't a library you love or hate on instinct. You buy it for a session, it does its thing quietly, and six months later it's either the one you keep reaching for on foley jobs or the one sitting in your library folder unopened. The WAV format means you're not stranded if the Kontakt compatibility sours on you. But the round-robin inconsistency is real, and the broken multi support isn't a quirk you learn to live with. It's just broken. If wooden textures for picture or percussion color for a specific regional style are what you need, it's worth it. If you want a playable chromatic instrument, keep looking.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does Wood by AudioThing require the full version of Kontakt?
Yes. You need the full version of NI Kontakt 3.5 or higher. Kontakt Player won't load the instruments. If you only have Player, the WAV files give you an alternative route through your own sampler.
Can I use Wood in Kontakt 5 or Kontakt 6?
The .nki instrument files should load in later versions, but owners have reported that the .nkm multi files fail to load correctly in Kontakt 4 and later. That's a known compatibility issue. If the multis matter to you, verify your version before buying.
Is Wood useful for anything other than foley and film scoring?
Owners report it works well for oriental and middle eastern music production, where wooden percussion textures are common. Beyond that, the sound set is genuinely specialized. If your sessions don't call for wooden hits, sticks or castanet textures, this library won't get much use.
What's included in the WAV format version?
The library ships with all 278 stereo samples as raw WAV files at 44.1kHz / 24-bit. You lose the Kontakt instrument mapping and the built-in effects, but you can load them into any sampler that accepts WAV. It's a useful fallback if Kontakt compatibility is a concern.
