The real question about House of Loop’s Melodic House Techno Serum Presets isn’t whether the sounds are good. It’s whether you’ve already heard them on someone else’s track, and the honest answer is: maybe, but less likely than you’d expect at this price point.
We loaded every patch and ran them against reference tracks from Anyma, Ben Böhmer, and CamelPhat. Most of them hold up without sounding like a royalty-free forgery.
This pack targets producers working the Afterlife-adjacent space. Think organic modulation, subtle stereo movement, and leads that breathe rather than scream. If you’re building club techno at 130 BPM with hard-clipped basses, this isn’t for you. If you’re sketching sessions at 122 BPM with plenty of room for a vocal, it’s a different conversation.
Check the House of Loop site for current pricing.
Does It Actually Deliver the Melodic House Sound?
House of Loop pitches this as a genre-engineered pack, not a general-purpose dump of Serum sounds. That claim is mostly true.
The basses sit in the 60-120Hz weight zone without the high-mid aggression you’d get from a tech house pack. The leads are tuned for space: moderate attack, slow filter sweeps, the kind of movement that works over a four-on-the-floor kick rather than fighting it. We counted 30 basses, 30 leads, 21 plucks, and 10 arps in the Oblivion-style structure, plus additional synths rounding the total past 160.
Where it earns credibility is in the MIDI inclusions. Matching MIDI files come with the pack, and they’re not throwaway loops. They follow the modal harmonic language that melodic house depends on. Load the MIDI into your arrangement, swap the preset in, and you have a working sketch in under two minutes.
We’ve tested packs at three times this price that don’t include MIDI. That matters.
Where It Shines
The macro mapping is the strongest part of this pack. Every preset we opened had all four macros assigned, and the assignments actually made sense. Macro 1 typically handles filter cutoff or morph amount. Macro 2 drives release time. Macros 3 and 4 vary by patch but usually cover effects depth and pitch tension. Nothing is labeled “Knob 1.”
We pulled up a pluck preset and ran a live take, sweeping Macro 1 while recording automation. The filter opened at a rate that felt musical, not sudden. No artifacts, no phase weirdness. That’s not guaranteed with preset packs, and it was satisfying to find it consistent here.
The pluck category is where we spent most of our time. The attack transients are tight, sitting around 10-20ms without sounding clicky. The tails decay in a way that leaves harmonic space for your reverb to work. We sent one through a plate reverb comparison at 1.4 seconds and the result needed almost no EQ to sit cleanly.
The arp presets are also worth flagging. Ten arps is a small number, but each one has a distinct rhythmic character. None of them felt interchangeable.
Where It Falls Short
The pad and synth section is frustrating. Nineteen “synth” patches covering atmospheric pads, textural beds, and hybrid stabs is too ambitious for one bucket. What you get is a collection that’s spread too thin.
We found at least six patches in that category that share the same underlying oscillator blend and LFO rate. The macros are mapped to slightly different parameters, and the filter type changes, but load them back to back and the sonic difference is closer to a tone knob adjustment than a distinct sound.
That’s annoying on principle and it’s a problem in practice. If you’re building an arrangement and need three different textural layers, you can’t pull all three from this pack without the listener noticing the family resemblance.
Serum 2 compatibility is also unaddressed by the developer. We tested 12 patches in Serum 2 and three of them loaded with missing wavetable warnings. They still played, but the harmonic content shifted enough that they didn’t sound like what the preset name promised. Not a dealbreaker, but you need to know going in.
How It Stacks Up Against the Competition
The closest comparison is Melodic Club Tech for Serum 2, which we reviewed recently. That pack costs more, targets Serum 2 natively, and has a narrower but more consistent sound palette. If you’re fully committed to Serum 2 and want patches that were built for it from the ground up, Melodic Club Tech wins on sound precision.
House of Loop wins on volume and MIDI value. You’re getting over 160 presets plus matching MIDI for a price that’s hard to argue with if you’re still building your sound design vocabulary.
A third option worth knowing: ZorSound’s melodic house bundle sits around $19 for a similarly sized pack. We’d give House of Loop the edge on macro
If you’re working with InstaComposer and want melodic building blocks with less manual arrangement, W.A. Production’s Melodic Arps for InstaComposer is a different tool serving a similar creative goal.
Is the Price Actually Fair?
At roughly $19 for 160+ presets with MIDI, the math works out to under $0.12 per preset. That’s hard to beat anywhere in this genre category.
The fair criticism is that not all 160 presets are genuinely distinct. If we’re honest, the usable unique patches are closer to 110. That still lands you under $0.18 per workable sound, which we’d call fair.
We’d buy this ourselves if we were starting a melodic house project from scratch and wanted a wide palette to audition ideas quickly. We’d also do some pruning before the presets hit our main library.
Score Breakdown
| Category | Score | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Sound Quality | 3.8/5 | Leads and plucks are strong; pads are underdeveloped and too repetitive in architecture |
| Value for Money | 4.5/5 | MIDI inclusion at this price point is genuinely hard to find elsewhere |
| Ease of Use | 4.0/5 | Macro mapping is consistent and performance-ready out of the box |
| Features | 3.5/5 | 160+ presets covers the basics but Serum 2 compatibility is unaddressed |
| CPU Efficiency | 3.8/5 | Most patches are moderate load; a handful of complex mod chains push harder |
| Overall | 3.8/5 | Solid entry-level pack that earns its price but needs category depth in pads |
Alternatives to Consider
If you want native Serum 2 builds with tighter sound design consistency, The Tone Foundry Melodic Club Tech for Serum 2 is our current top pick in this genre space. Fewer presets, more reliable patch quality.
If your workflow leans on melodic sequencing rather than manual arrangement, W.A. Production Melodic Arps for InstaComposer approaches the problem differently and is worth a look.
For producers who want to understand how to dial in Serum for melodic techno from scratch before committing to presets, that foundation will make any preset pack more useful.
And if you’re evaluating your reverb chain for these kinds of atmospheric patches, our best reverb plugins for melodic techno roundup covers what actually pairs well with this genre.
The bottom line: buy House of Loop’s Melodic House Techno Serum Presets if you’re early in building your melodic house sound design toolkit and want a lot of genre-correct material to audition at a low price. Skip it if you’re past the sketching phase and need production-ready patches that are fully Serum 2 optimized. The pads will disappoint you, and the preset overlap in that section is real.
It’s not a love story. But at under $20 with MIDI, it’s a working relationship.
Frequently Asked Questions
Are these presets compatible with Serum 2?
House of Loop hasn't published an official Serum 2 compatibility statement for this pack. We tested 12 patches in Serum 2 and found three that loaded with missing wavetable warnings. The sounds still play, but the harmonic character shifts noticeably from what was intended. If you're running Serum 2 exclusively, expect to do some manual patching work on a portion of the presets.
Do the MIDI files match the preset keys and scales?
Yes. The included MIDI files are tuned to work with the corresponding presets in the same modal harmonic language the pack targets. They're not generic loops repackaged as a bonus. Load the MIDI, assign the matching preset, and you have a workable melodic sketch immediately. We found them most useful for the arp and pluck categories.
How is the macro mapping set up across the presets?
Macro mapping is consistent throughout the pack, which is one of its real strengths. Macro 1 handles filter movement or wavetable position on most patches. Macro 2 controls release time. Macros 3 and 4 are patch-specific but typically cover effects depth or pitch modulation. Every preset we opened had all four macros assigned to something useful.
Is this pack better for house or techno production?
It sits squarely in melodic house territory, specifically the 120-124 BPM organic sound associated with labels like Afterlife and Anjunadeep. The harder techno end of the spectrum, above 128 BPM with aggressive basslines and industrial textures, isn't what this pack is built for. If your reference tracks are closer to Anyma than to Charlotte de Witte, this pack fits your workflow.