Post
by Tarekith » Wed Dec 19, 2007 3:28 pm
I think the samples themselves are very well done, though each drum machine has only 16 sounds per kit. You get some flexibility with how you can tweak each kit, but of course nowhere near what you'd get with the orginals. There's a couple things I don't like about drum machines though:
- The layout. Ableton chose to use the GM mapping standard to layout thier kits in relation to midi notes. Not a bad choice, except that the 16 drum sounds are now not in one bank of 4x4 pads on the drum grid as you would think would be obvious. So you need to scroll the drum rack a lot to get access to all the sounds. Why oh why could they not have left the note mapping the same, and just gone the MPC route where you can choose which type drum sound is assigned to each pad for all kits? You can drag the sounds all into one bank of pads however, but that leads to...
- The really funky (and IMO overly-complicated) routing in each drum rack. A few people including myself have been scratching our heads trying to figure out how Ableton has set up the note triggering in some kits. They've tried to explain, but I don't get it yet, and neither do the PureMagnetik folks like Micah who actually created the kits! Also, each drum sound is deeply nested in multiple instrument racks, mostly it appears to make things "easier" for the users by assigning some commands to the macro knobs. Downside is that if you don't want to tweak what's assigned to those knobs, it's lots and lots of horizontal scrolling trying to adjust things.
I think Drum Machines are ok if you just want to do some simple midi sequencing in Clip view without bothering too much with the actual Drum Rack layout and parameters. As part of the suite, probably a good deal, but if you're thinking of getting them on their own to replace your hardware, I'd maybe think twice.
If nothing else, there's PLENTY of free online samples you can already download of all these drum machines (and MANY more), so it wouldn't be too hard to just create your own drum racks the way you want them laid out. Do a search here for "drum machines" and you'll likely get plenty of links to those (completely legit) sites.
Just my $.02 though.
