Arturia Drumbrute ..... ?? (analog drum machine for 449 euro)

[transmetropolitan]

Must say I'm not really getting the hate for kick and snare from listening to demos. I think they nailed it...

Looks like an awesome bit of kit for great value to me. And a lot of fun to play. I'd be amazed if they don't sell this by the boatload.

[Jorgeelalto]

So any news? What's your impression buyers?

[Stupid American Pig]

Must say I'm not really getting the hate for kick and snare from listening to demos. I think they nailed it...

Looks like an awesome bit of kit for great value to me. And a lot of fun to play. I'd be amazed if they don't sell this by the boatload.

Im sure its a difficult conundrum(pun sort of intended). You want to be able to sorta nail x0x sounds but have your own personality. Akai failed badly with rhythm wolf, this seems to be a bit better to me, but its too soon to tell for me.

[transmetropolitan]

Im sure its a difficult conundrum(pun sort of intended). You want to be able to sorta nail x0x sounds but have your own personality. Akai failed badly with rhythm wolf, this seems to be a bit better to me, but its too soon to tell for me.

Yes you're right.

The one area I am questioning with this device is the hats. I think there are some softer hf options with the tambourine and shaker, but the tone of the hats when open is on the harsh side.

But they have a bit of personality and will be nice for some things.

It will be interesting to see how moddable they are. I've seen some interesting mods on some Arturia synths.

[SLiC]

Mine turned up today, lovely bit of kit (£300 + VAT from BAX)

Well made, solid, nice feel, good pots and very easy to use. Its much more 'playable' than my Analog RYTM- great fun tweaking live.

Only had an hour or so and haven't put any external effects on yet (I like the raw sound) but there is no doubt it sounds very good overall, everyone will have an opinion on an individual drum or hat sound, its personal preference, but the sound of the DB playing any of the 17 analogue sounds 'together' is very good, and the range of tweaks is musical. Its well thought out with a very flexible and easy to use (beat step pro inspired) sequencer. Song mode for chaining patterns is useful as is roller, random etc for variations- just can't complain at all for the cost...

[sin night]

I'm just starting out with the DrumBrute (I don't have much time to play with it right now, unfortunately).
At first I was partly unsatisfied, but now I'm getting accustomed to its sound and I like it.

My main problems is the sound of the raw kicks. Kick 1 doesn't offer the low end I wish (it could be my untreated room, but I know it well enough to say there's something lacking in the source), while kick 2 lacks transient in the highs (the kick is not strong on 5" speakers because of the lack of highs, while it's fine on 8" the lows can be heard). I'm also unsure about the effect of the impact knob on kick 1.

My problems went away after some aggressive equalization on my Souncraft Signature 22 MTK (a few dB of boost with the lowshelf, several dB of boost in the 2k-4k area). The channel was close to overdriving (because of the eq). That added the lowend I was missing on kick 1 and enhanced the definition on the highs for both kicks. Impact knob seems to do a nice job when the sound is equalized.

So, in my opinion, kicks require some processing because I'm not fully satisfied with the sound out of the box. Eq does the job, so now the problem is that I run out of channels on my mixer, so I'll have to consider a second one to premix the things I don't use much, orto buy a mixer just for the DrumBrute (given the number of separate channels I may want to use). Probably I'll come up with something diy (maybe not a full mixer, but a pair of diy strips to use along a commercial mixer), both because cost, features and avaibility.

Snare, clap, rim and hats have some nice transients, which gives a lot of room for sculpting your own sound. I have yet to figure out how to process them, but I think I'll use some compression/limiting (maybe in parallel?). Anyway, I can do this later at mixing stage because the raw sound is not bad at all, while the kick really bothers me and I need to fix it while I'm still jamming/recording.

I haven't play mich with the other sounds, so I can't comment on those.


I also tried processing the kicks with the MF-101 and MF Drive. The distorted sound was good (of course!), but I don't like distorted sounds in general, so I'll rarely use the DrumBrute that way.

A word on the MF-101: I wasn't able to take advantage of the onboard envelope follower. With many settings, I heard some bad sounds, almost like a "double transient" when I tried sweeping the filter. The same happened when I tried triggering my MS-20 Mini through the ESP (with many setting, I couldn't layer it to the kick effectively). My guess is the DrumBrute kicks have a very short and fast initial transient, but I have yet to record it, so it's just a guess untill I'll see the actual waveform).

A nice thing is the swing is kept while synced to external MidiClock (my MPC-500 doesn't, because it swings the internal midiclock, so it's rigid and lifeless when synced to Cubase).
I have yet to verify how's the midiclock output of the DrumBrute in regards to the swing (both when using the interal clock and when synced to an external one, not to mention a swinged clock like the one coming from the MPC-500); this is something I'm really curious to see.


All in all, the DrumBrute looks like a keeper, though in my opinion is that it needs some work/experience before it can be fully appreciated, it's not an instant-gratification purchase (at least not for me).
I think I'll use it a lot.

[sl1914]

Matrixbrute is now shipping.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ggtee2-Mt-o