Some of you aren't going to relate to this but that's ok.
I like the Alesis HR-16. The drums are more natural and more tunable than on the later Alesis modules I've tried. But I could use a little more fi, especially on the dreaded cymbals.
If I were looking for a newer-tech triggerable module with real natural drum sounds -- not a lot of caricature stuff -- and cleaner recordings in it, what should I be looking for? I know it ain't the DM5; its sounds are frequently silly and not significantly cleaner than the HR's; and the tuning range is very small...
By the way, I don't believe that I need to pay thousands for this. If the HR-16 could be as good as it was 20 years ago; I should be able to get something that sounds a little better for a few hundred now. Unless drum machines haven't gotten any better in 20 years, which is a little hard to imagine.
Thanks
H
Comments
i believe that you will end up having some sort of compromise he
i believe that you will end up having some sort of compromise here, the problem is that most (if not all?) very tweakable drum mashines / modules do have rather very electronic sounds, e.g. roland 808 / 909 / korg ER-1 / etc. and the modules which have lots of natural sound samples are usually not very tweakable...
i use mainly a Korg ER-1 for programing / triggering, i like it most because it has lot's of "live" play features and i like the way you can really fine tune the velocity... / groove feel.
but the built in sounds are limited, so i use the midi pattern to trigger ultrabeat (logic) or battery with any sample outhere, and that's millions of natural drumsounds of any kind and quality (i like batterie's zildjian samples for example...) , battery and ultrabeat then lets you tweak the hell out of a sample (much better than in hardware modules i know of!), that's all i need!! it works fine for me...
also ultrabeat or battery (there are many others among them, it's just the two i use mostly!) can be triggered by any midi device... if you want.
but i second that e-mu made a lot of nice modules, in terms of sound if it has to be hardware, but you need still a keyborad or any old drum mashine to trigger the module....
hope that helps!
look for a used emu procussion...they are had cheap and sound go
look for a used emu procussion...they are had cheap and sound good...of course its strictly a module, u need something to trigger it with...