What to listen for
A snare has three parts: the stick attack, the tone of the drum head, and the rattle of the snare wires. Tight, dry snares suit funk, boom bap and modern pop; roomy snares with a long tail suit rock and ballads; bright, compressed drum machine snares suit house and electro.
Tune the snare to your track. Pitching a sample up a semitone or two often brings it forward without extra EQ, while pitching down makes it fatter and slower. Watch the tail: on fast tempos a long ring will overlap the next hit.
Where these come from
The list mixes field-recorded acoustic kits from Creative Commons archives with classic machine hits from drum machine banks and free sample packs. The verdict on each card tells you whether you can release a track with it, and whether you need to credit the author.