Wave Alchemy Revolution £149

Following on from Wave Alchemy’s well-regarded Transistor and Digital Revolution libraries comes a new all-encompassing Kontakt instrument simply called Revolution. It combines the sound of 14 classic analogue and digital drum machines with a highly effective sequencer. Kontakt Player (not the full version) is required to run the instrument, which employs 8GB of sample files.

There are 14 voices per instance, which can use any of the relevant drum machines, allowing hybrid combination kits to be created. The mixer offers volume, pan and effects sends, and each voice can be edited in a similar way to its original counterpart. For example the TR-909 Kick offers Tune, Decay and Attack. Adjusting these will play back a different set of samples taken from the original machines (with round robin sampling throughout). The results are certainly authentic. A further Character control switches between differently recorded or processed versions, including tape, SP1200 and analogue mastering chain options. It should be noted that these are ‘real’, rather than emulations. Each voice also has a wealth of amp, filter and pitchrelated parameters for altering the samples themselves and the effects options are strong.

The sequencer section is also comprehensive, with classic X0X-style step programming plus a more elaborate graphical mode where even the grid spacing can be tweaked for unusual push/pull groove programming. Once you’re happy, patterns can be copied into your DAW as MIDI data.

Purists might quibble over the differences between TR-909 versions, analogue vs digitally summed drums, and the way in which slight differences in sample editing in the originals had a bearing on the groove of individual machines. However, there’s no denying Revolution’s attention to detail and allied to its versatility, this is a powerful combination.

VERDICT 9.4