Alesis SR-16 - Studio-Grade Standalone Drum Machine with On-Board Sound Library, Performance-Driven I/O and In-Built Effects

The Alesis SR18 Drum Machine is amazing. I have had many problems with every computer based drum machine program. It's not that they didn't work right, but the fact that they just weren't for me. I am very good with computers, do photography editing, and music editing, etc, all on the few computers I own. As far as doing drums on my computer, It just wasn't clicking. Everyone has to find their path of least resistance, and THEIR best method for doing things, since everybody is different and everyone has their own path of least resistance. Hence, to each, their own. What works best and is the easiest for one person, may be the most complicated for the other. What is most complicated for you, may be the easiest for the other person. Basically what I am saying is this drum machine, once in my hands, really clicked. This was MY path of least resistance. It's good to know I can sit down with this machine, and only this machine, and make full drum tracks. As far as some people saying this is so hard to use, or takes a couple months, for me it took two days. Hence, 6 one way, half dozen the other. The first day I just messed with it, without directions. It was confusing. The second day, I read the directions, and by the end of the second day, I had already made three full length drum tracks, doing everything from customizing my entire drum set and sounds, making a bunch of patterns, and then piecing all those patterns together to make tracks. Ok, so now for what it can do: * I saw one review where they said you cannot change the length of the patterns. This is not true. You CAN indeed change the length of the patterns. You can use whatever tempo you want, 120, 140, whatever, and you can make the patterns 4 beats long, or 8, or 16, etc. * You can customize your own drum setup, so you have have a couple bass, etc. Rule of thumb if you are trying to re-create double bass, is to make two sounds, almost identical, BUT make the second sound a little different tonewise. Because in real life, you can tell the difference between both bass drums. This makes it sound more realistic. * There are a TON of different sound variations for every kind of drum sound you want. * You can tweak each individual sound. For instance, if I find a crash I like, but think to myself that I want it to sound softer, offset it to the right a little, change the pitch to a slightly lower pitch, and also make it ring on longer, ALL of this is possible. * Learning this machine really is not that hard. Can be done within a good weekend. All in all, this machine is amazing. I am a heavy metal guitarist, and I record my own tracks on a Tascam DP-02, and this works great in conjunction with that. This machine works very well with the metal genre, or rock, or any genre at all. It lets me put together full length tracks (from all of my combined patterns I made), does very very well using it in a double bass aspect (you can program the bass to sound like double bass, and as fast as you want), and you end up with very realistic sounding drum tracks! Since I play metal, this is VERY important, since it's hard to find a good drum machine that can go with the metal genre. Last, all I have to do is plug it into my Tascam recorder, and record! Love it! This sounds amazing! The one and ONLY downside to this is the fact that there is NO connection to connect it to your computer. I want to make this clear. There is a way to hook up through your instrument cable connections, but then I'm not sure how this hooks to your computer through a 1/4" cable connection. But all I have to do is record them into my Tascam, then send them to my computer, where I can save them for later. Hope this helps, and sorry about rambling. Any questions, feel free to comment and I will surely answer them for you the best I can, to help out.

Ok, I JUST received this yesterday. BUT, I have been using the SR16 for over 15 years and used the HR16 before it since the 80s. As some have said, right away you can hear the improvement in the sound, not that the SR16 sounded bad... but this sounds great. I have yet to build my own patterns with this but I see all the familiar buttons to do that, so I suspect it will be very similar to the SR16, which was easy to use, though certainly time consuming to build the patterns, but thats ok. I have gone through about 10 of the patterns so far only because I plugged in my guitar and jammed on each one. Here are the early thoughts: Number 1, if you are a guitarist who has to jam alone a lot, you are going to absolutely love this thing because of the fact that you can get some really nice drum and bass going on at the same time. The pads that give you the drums also give you the notes for the bass for you to program that. Each of the patterns I whipped through took me into different guitar ideas and such, same as jamming with a live drummer and bassist would do. It was fun... and, you know, if you ever have to spontaneously just play SOMETHING for someone it kinda sucks when there is only guitar unless you are a world class guitarist. With this, you get the drums and bass along with you and it makes what you do sound more interesting. Number 2, I think the existing patterns are pretty cool for jamming, but they seem a bit busy for recording... so look at this drum machine as a tool in that its greatest use out of the box is jamming... and then you get the bonus of having the ability to program it for song demos. I have a real drumset and mics and processors and let me tell you trying to record good sounding acoustic drums is a nightmare. In the end the better sounds of a good drum machine, while not always as organic as you'd like still lead to a better sounding demo most of the time compared to live drums in a home demo situation. Number 3, reiterating Number 1, if you are a guitarist or keyboardist... really... the ability to have bass involved as well as drums is AWESOME. I thought the bass would just be a nice little bonus.. its done better than that to make it more than a little thing. I read many reviews on here of people downplaying the bass feature saying they would record their own bass. I agree with them... when recording, you would. But... for simple fun and jamming... this rocks. My SR16 is still going strong. The only reason I really got this one is because I thought it might be fun to keep one drum machine by my recording unit and one by my keyboard amp for quick live jamming (its no fun always having to unplug and reconnect in different spots) and then I searched Amazon for drum machines and saw Alesis had put out this newer model that I was never aware of. I would say, for any guitarist, its hard to spend $200 and get a tool/toy better than this! Now the trouble is I will want the SR18 in both locations. If you are not sure whether the SR18 is worth the extra cost from the SR16, TRUST ME... it IS!!! I will update the review in the future if I have anything significant to add... but in an hour or so of jamming, I already think this has proven to be a fantastic purchase!

Very useful for composing song. I got it for special price at Amazon .

Cette drum machine est très bien! Les sons sont très bons. Il y a pas mal de bon rythmes. La programmation est différente des drums machines actuelles, mais elle fait son travail. Pour moi, c'est un bon achat.

O produto veio em total segurança, com uma qualidade incrível.

One of the best things I ever bought. Sounds great on my multitrack recordings and makes playing by myself a lot more fun when hooking it up to my amp's auxilliary input. Although many of the patterns aren't usable to me (hiphop or salsa crap), I've found that playing to some of the funk or industrial and other patterns has helped my lead guitar skills as it forces me to adapt and play things in ways that are different from what I usually play so it has also become a learning tool to me. After 3 or 4 weeks of using it, I feel I haven't even scratched the surface of its possibilities as I haven't even got into programming beats yet but the addition of a footswitch ( https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B00U2Q8YU0/ref=cm_sw_r_taa_aXODybBFCJ70Y ) allowing me to switch from pattern A to pattern B during a song makes it a lot of fun.

Très bon matériel