The drum machines on test
Arturia DrumBrute Impact
Unlike several machines in this group test, the DrumBrute Impact doesn’t claim to emulate the sound of a classic instrument, but there’s a decidedly vintage vibe to it nonetheless. The engine is all-analogue, from the sounds themselves to the output distortion. Unlike in synth world, where analogue is often seen as the Holy Grail, there are pros and cons to taking a purely analogue approach.
Pros: the kick and toms sound great – punchy but full-bodied, particularly with added grit from the distortion. For snares and claps though, while the sounds here sound great in the right context, analogue machines can’t match the variety of sampled engines. Ditto for cymbals and hats, which sound gorgeous but don’t offer much variation.
That said, the Impact offers more versatility than some analogue drum machines thanks to its ‘Color’ variations, which can engage a slightly altered version of each sound (with the exception of the cowbell).
The other significant ‘vintage’ trait of the Impact is its lack of MIDI control or automation for sound parameters. You can trigger the drums via MIDI or USB, but if you want to alter pitch, decay, levels, etc, you’ll need to use the physical controls. The main area where this becomes an issue is in the Impact’s FM drum, which really comes to life with a bit of movement and variation. To get the most out of it you’ll need to get hands-on with the carrier and modulator pitch dials.
Fortunately there are some modern sequencing tools, including pattern-saving and chaining, step rolls, per-track swing and automation, and a Poly mode, where users can set individual sequence lengths for each track.
Behringer RD-8
Behringer’s latter-day approach of releasing close remakes of vintage instruments can be somewhat divisive. The RD-8 has to be one of the less contentious though; Roland have made it clear they have no intention of relaunching an analogue 808, and the original was one of the most regularly sampled and emulated instruments of all time long before Behringer got involved.
In the flesh, the RD-8 differs somewhat from the design of the 808, but where it matters though, it’s bang on. The analogue sound engine is meaty and warm, and the kick, toms, rim and snares sound near enough indistinguishable from the original. There are slight differences in the tone and pitch of the cymbals, hats and cowbell, but we wouldn’t say they necessarily sound worse. The RD-8 hardware is chunky too, which could be seen as impractical, but it lends it an authentic feeling of heft that’s
missing from Roland’s Boutiques or, to an extent, the TR-8S. Its size leaves room for full jack outputs for every one of the 11 tracks, plus – one of our favourite features – a return input allowing for an external effects loop.
Updates to the sequencing side of things are generally pretty solid. Some changes are no-brainers, such as adding track selector buttons instead of the original’s dial, tuning for the kick, note repeat and introducing mute and solo features. Other areas, such as the revamped song system, probability steps, fills and flams, are welcome but aren’t quite as well implemented as on some rival drum machines.
Any slight misgivings aside, when taking into account sound, feel and workflow, this is the closest thing you’ll find to an original 808 on the market right now, which is remarkable given the price. That authenticity does come at a cost in some ways though – sonically, this is certainly the least versatile drum machine in our test.
Elektron Analog Rytm MkII
Despite the a-word in its name, this is very much a hybrid machine – the drum tracks themselves have fully analogue signal paths, rooted in classic percussion synth engines, but each also incorporates a sample playback engine and full digital parameter control/recall. There are obvious benefits to this best-of-bothworlds approach – sonically the
Rytm has all the heft you associate with the best analogue drum machines but also all the variety associated with sampling beatmakers. Users can import their own sounds via USB or sample directly through the hardware inputs, meaning there’s really no end to the range on offer here.
Each individual track offers a specially configured percussion synth, layered with a sample, then equipped with a stereo VCA, 2-pole multimode filter, overdrive, LFO and two ADSR envelopes. Beyond this, Rytm packs reverb and delay sends, a global distortion and a master compressor – the latter is great for adding punch and glue to grooves.
The real depth, however, comes from the sequencer. In standard Elektron fashion, this features Parameter Locks, allowing full automation of sounds to be input for each sequencer step. Not only does this allow you to create movement, but it can be used to completely alter the drum sound from one step to another within a single track. There’s a ton of rhythmic creativity on offer too, including conditional and probability triggers and micro-timing adjustments.
You could argue that this depth comes at the cost of immediacy; whereas there are some machines in this round-up that many musicians would be able to get to grips with pretty intuitively, new Rytm users can expect to spend a decent chunk of time absorbing the manual in order to understand its workflow. Even then, some elements of its design, such as Elektron’s rather clunky +Drive system, can feel needlessly complicated. Its feature-packed OS does bring an assortment of time-saving tools though, such as an abundant supply of presets and tight DAW compatibility thanks to Elektron’s Overbridge plugin.
IK Multimedia UNO Drum
Just like the Rytm, IK’s UNO Drum takes a hybrid approach to percussion, combining six analogue generators with a PCM sampling engine. Unlike the Rytm, these can’t be layered on a single track – although this is forgivable given that, with a street price of around £150, UNO Drum comes in at about a tenth of the price of Rytm.
UNO Drum offers some impressive specs for such a low price. It features 12 drum tracks, six of which have analogue generators, and all offer multiple sound variations and some shaping – in most cases limited to tuning, level and decay, but there are some extra parameters for the analogue kick and snare. There are global analogue drive and compressor effects, both of which sound really nice, and the sound palette can be expanded with a variety of free libraries bringing in sounds from a wide variety of vintage machines. The sequencer has a few tricks of its own up its sleeve too, such as stutter, roll and humanize effects, and the ability to go deeper with patterns using a free desktop/ mobile editor.
Where are the cost savings coming from? As with the UNO Synth before it, the hardware itself feels remarkably cheap. The unit is all plastic and rather lightweight. It feels like it could snap fairly easily if you were to accidentally sit or step on the UNO, although conversely the lack of moving parts used in its interface will likely add to the durability in the long run.
As seen with the slightly cheaper Korg Volca Drum, one of the main hardware drawbacks is the single mini-jack output. This is more of a pain than it is on the similar UNO Synth, because the 12 drum tracks really benefit from being processed and mixed individually. The UNO Drum does, however, outstrip the Volca by including USB MIDI and an audio input, for feeding external sources through that lovely compressor of theirs.
Korg Volca Drum
The cheapest in our group test, the Volca hardware is comparable to that of the UNO in size and weight, although the Volca feels a little sturdier and – to our eye at least – looks smarter. Both share other traits too – the aforementioned single output, as well as both featuring battery power operation. The Volca also adds a somewhat underwhelming onboard speaker.
Under the hood, however, the two machines are radically different. While the Volca range is mostly known for offering budget takes on
classic instrument designs, the
Drum stands out for its unique and modern sound engine. The six tracks here each use a dual-layered digital synth design. Each layer provides its own digital percussion synth with adjustable source waveform, plus percussive pitch modulation and amp envelopes. The two layers can be balanced using volume controls, then treated with bit reduction, wavefolding and distortion effects. It’s a powerful setup for such a small machine, and, despite the limited interface, it’s surprisingly easy to design and adjust sounds.
The Volca Drum’s real trump card though, is its Wave Guide tool. This is a resonator send effect with two physical modeling modes, tube and string. There are controls for tuning, decay and body of the effect, and adjusting these can create results that range from comb filter-like sounds through to effects closer to a pitchshifting delay. It’s a fantastic tool for hands-on tweaking and gives the Volca Drum a unique character.
It’s impressive to have something this powerful and unique at this price. If anything, the Volca Drum suffers from having such unique ideas held back by the budget hardware. As we said in our original review, we’d happily pay double for a version of this sound engine in a bigger box with more outputs.
Moog DFAM
DFAM – or Drummer From Another Mother, to give it its full name – is the wild card of this roundup. Technically speaking, this is a two-oscillator semi-modular synth, which doesn’t really fit the mold for what we’d usually characterise as a drum machine. While DFAM can be put to other uses, such as basses and leads or even drones, we feel it’s
“WE’D HAPPILY PAY DOUBLE FOR THIS SOUND ENGINE IN A BIGGER BOX”
at its best when treated as a beatmaker – and given the name we suspect Moog would agree with us on that one.
What makes it so suited to percussive sounds? Those two oscillators have a broad frequency range, and can be engaged for hard sync and cross modulation. Coupled with a noise source and the ability to apply audio-rate modulation to the filter, this makes DFAM great at gritty, atonal sounds, weird metallic noises and complex, full-bodied timbres. The envelopes, routed to VCO 2 pitch, filter cutoff and the VCA, are punchy and percussive, with just decay controls and fast/ slow switch for the VCA.
Then there’s the eight-step sequencer, which has individual pitch and velocity lanes. The knobs here are fiddly and imprecise, making it a frustrating tool for programming melody, but fun for building rolling percussive grooves.
There are pros and cons to using a semi-modular synth as a beatmaker. It’s worth noting that DFAM is monophonic, so its the only instrument here that can’t output more than one sound at once. The sequencer can be tooled to trigger bass and snares, or melodic hits and hats across different steps though – and working around these limitations is half the fun. It plays nicely with modular gear too, thanks to its 24 patch points. There’s no MIDI or USB though, which can be something of a pain depending on your setup. A lot of modern hardware from Volcas up comes equipped with analogue clock source though, so it’s not a huge hurdle to work around.
Roland TR-8S
The first generation TR-8 was essentially an emulation machine, offering impressive digital models of Roland’s iconic TR-909, TR-808 and TR-707 using the company’s Analog Circuit Behavior engine. All of those capabilities are still onboard here, but the TR-8S adds sampled sounds and a vast amount of extra editing and effects.
“PULSAR-23 IS BONKERS AND WE LOVE IT! ”
Let’s tackle those emulations first – these are effectively the same sounds as those in the version one TR-8, as well as Roland’s Boutique range TR-08, TR-09 and TR-06. They’re digital, but that’s much of a muchness, as they’re high-quality and convincing, with more versatility on offer than the originals or any analogue emulation.
The TR-8S adds to these with a wealth of sampled sounds – which users can add to via the SD card slot – along with a basic FM synthesis engine, nice for adding weirder percussive tones and metallic timbres. There are a lot of extra sound-shaping tools too, including per-track effects and LFOs, and detailed sound-shaping parameters.
The sequencing workflow is essentially an evolution of that first found on the 808, based around the iconic 16-step button grid. This modernised version adds a multitude of modern niceties into the mix though, including motion recording of many parameters, flams and sub-steps, and a flexible system of variations and auto-fills.
As an all-round package the TR-8S is extremely flexible. It can even act as an audio interface, streaming its inputs and outputs over USB – but there are eight assignable outputs on the hardware itself too. While it doesn’t quite compete with the Analog Rytm in depth or flexibility – or boasting genuine analogue – the capabilities aren’t a million miles away, which is impressive given that the TR-8S comes in at less than half the price.
SOMA Electronics Pulsar-23
Pulsar-23 is bonkers and we love it! Much like DFAM, Pulsar-23 is a semi-modular analogue instrument that sits somewhere on the divide between drum machine and synth. Unlike DFAM, Pulsar has multiple voices, with four distinct percussion generators, the first two of which are more synth-like, creating tunable sounds for kicks, toms but also bass or melodies, while the latter two are more atonal, specialising in hats, cymbals and noisy percs.
The most distinctive aspect of Pulsar’s design is in the multitude of pins across its interface, which are used for patching the various elements. This can be connected using just your fingers or, more conveniently, the supplied crocodile clips. The machine virtually cries out to be experimented with, and some of the most fun you can have is by randomly patching and re-patching – the design has something of a ‘no wrong answers’ ethos, and it works great for inspiring unusual sounds and patterns, particularly once the SHAOS pseudo randomiser gets involved in matters.
Rather than use a standard step sequencer, the four generators use loop recorders that capture and repeat patterns of triggers. These are great for polyrhythms and unusual drum patterns. For more conventional use however, each of them can also be triggered via external CV or MIDI.
This is a machine that excels at experimentation. Sonically, it would suit leftfield techno, EBM or drone musicians, and anyone working with modular setups. In fact, with with multiple CV inputs, attenuators, inverters and clock dividers, it’s a handy utility station in its own right.
This is the most expensive machine in our roundup, which reflects both the complexity and its boutique nature. Speaking very broadly though, in use it’s a little like playing four DFAMs at once, but with added effects and creative tools, which makes the price feel more reasonable, comparatively. It’s the kind of machine that could really become the cornerstone of a setup too. Of the instruments on test here, Pulsar-23 is certainly the most inspiring, even though it certainly won’t be for everyone.