Our eight contenders…
Let’s meet our line-up of percussive personalities
Arturia DrumBrute Impact £265
RELEASED 2018
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The DrumBrute Impact is a cheaper and more compact follow-up to the original DrumBrute, Arturia’s first analogue drum machine. This is more than just a cutdown follow up though – the Impact refines the sounds of its bigger sibling, adding extra punch and added flexibility through each sound’s Color variation. The Impact features 11 analogue sounds including an FM percussion channel with tunable carrier and modulator generators. Control comes from a 64-step sequencer with randomiser and per-track swing. A meaty global distortion is the only onboard effect. arturia.com
Behringer RD-8 £280
RELEASED 2019
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Possibly the most prominent of Behringer’s glut of analogue ‘tributes’, the RD-8 is heavily influenced by Roland’s iconic TR-808. All the sounds and sequencing tools you’d expect from an 808 are here, from the long, bass-heavy kick to the punchy toms and cowbell. There’s enough innovation to make the RD-8 feel like more than a straight copy though, with features including selector buttons for each sound, probability and step repeat. There’s also a bi-directional analogue filter and wave designer effect buss. behringer.com
Elektron Analog Rytm MkII £1,299
RELEASED 2017
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The Rytm is Elektron’s top-end drum machine and, like all high-end Elektron gear there’s a lot of depth here. The sound engine combines analogue percussion synthesis with sampling, letting users layer both approaches in each track, which amounts to serious drum-design power. Per
Elektron’s USP, the real depth comes from the sequencer, stocked with an abundance of chance, probability and conditional tools, along with full parameter sequencing, letting you create the most complex, varied sequences possible outside Eurorack.
IK Multimedia UNO Drum £150
RELEASED 2019
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The UNO drum is only IK’s second hardware instrument, following 2019’s UNO Synth, and sporting a near identical hardware design. The price is cheap and the lightweight, plastic build reflects that, but as with its synth counterpart there’s surprising power under the hood. The engine here makes use of both analogue percussion synthesis and PCM sampling, offering a fair breadth of sounds across its 12 tracks. There are analogue drive and compressor effects onboard too, along with a stutter effect-equipped sequencer. ikmultimedia.com
Korg Volca Drum £119
RELEASED 2019
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While we await the promised Drumlogue, Korg’s current line-up of beatmakers is split between the budget friendly Volcas and the mid-range Electribes. We’ve plumped for the Volca Drum for our head-to-head. While it might not be as fully-featured as either of the current gen Electribes, with its esoteric digital sound engine and waveguide resonator it’s undoubtedly the most unique of Korg’s current drum machines. As for its siblings, it outstrips the Volca Beats and Sample on the originality front, and packs more flexibility than the impressive but single-voice Volca Kick. korg.com
Moog DFAM £539
RELEASED 2018
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The wildcard of our round-up. Should we really call DFAM a drum machine or a semi-modular synthesiser? The fact that the D in its name stands for ‘Drummer’ makes a pretty convincing argument for the former, as do its snappy, percussive envelope generators and noisy sound engine. Based around a pair of hard sync and FM equipped analogue oscillators, a noise generator and resonant Moog filter, it’s fair to say though that DFAM doesn’t quite fit the mold of being either a beatmaker or a standard monosynth. moogmusic.com
Roland TR-8S £559
RELEASED 2018
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Roland have put out a fair few drum machines in recent years, mostly with their vintage-styled Boutique range. While the Boutiques do a decent job of recreating the feel of classic gear, the Aira-branded TR range remains the high point of the company’s current drum machines. The TR-8S is the second generation iteration, which keeps the circuit-modeled emulation engine found in the original TR-8 (and the Boutiques) but adds flexible sampling and basic FM synthesis, along with expanded effects and sequencing tools. roland.com
SOMA Pulsar-23 £1,729
RELEASED 2020
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The most expensive and ‘boutique’ entry here, Soma’s Pulsar-23 is described as an ‘organismic drum machine’. At its most basic level, this is a four-channel beatmaker with bass drum, bass/perc, snare and cymbal channels. As you’d expect given the price though, there’s far more to it than that. As well as flexible CV control, there are also multiple loopers, a DSP effects processor and a fantastic pseudo-random generator. It comes in a choice of three colours too, more modest white and black designs and the eye-catching orange on display here. somasynths.com