Alesis SR-18 - Studio-Grade Standalone Drum Machine With On-Board Sound Library, Performance Driven I/O and In-Built Effects/Processors

If you are looking for a drum machine at a reasonable price, this Alesis SR-18 is for you. Easy to operate, many digital drum samples, variable drum kits. Plug it in and go for any application. It sounds great!

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.

I bought the SR-18 to replace my old Zoom RT-123 that finally started failing after over a decade of serving me well. I have a full computer recording setup with high quality drum plugins but I still love the vibe and hands-on immediacy of a good old-fashioned groove box, and the SR-18 does not disappoint. It sounds better than I expected, with a good selection of surprisingly decent acoustic kits, but it's those deliciously dated kits and samples I actually like the most. My philosophy is, if you're going to use a standalone drum machine these days, embrace its mechanical nature and look to software if realism is what you're after. My favorite features: Fully customizable drum kits. You can either edit a factory kit or start fresh by choosing from an awesome selection of basic samples and then tweaking volume, pitch, panning, envelope and other parameters to taste. Super flexible. Multiple parts/fills. For each sequence you get an A part, B part and a corresponding fill for each. Record a song live. In song mode you can hit record and the unit will capture your pattern changes and fills in real time, making it fun and easy to arrange entire songs. I much prefer this style of arranging to the tedious and time consuming step editing song mode of other machines, though that mode is still an option here if you prefer that workflow. Deeply customizable. I like how much control you get over every aspect of the machine, including very extensive midi settings which is great for me since I'm using this in conjunction with other synths and sequencers Onboard effects. They aren't anything fancy but the eq and compression effects are very useful. There are only a few useful reverb settings but those few sound good and are nice to have on hand. Drawbacks: There are a few drawbacks keeping me from giving the SR-18 five stars but they're minor and by no means deal breakers. No USB. This machine was released in the late 2000s as an update to it's predecessor, the SR-16. It really seems like oversight that they didn't include a USB port for midi communication and firmware updates. It's not a big problem but should have been a no-brainer Doesn't automatically save. If you're editing a pattern, song or kit and you turn off the machine without saving, your work is lost. It should save your work automatically and perhaps provide an undo function if you need to reverse any mistakes Settings don't always save. Some of my record settings and system settings seem to get lost when I tirn off the unit. This could be user error but the manual isn't clear if you need to manually save settings or not. Again, this should be automatic No dedicated "exit" button. It's easy to get buried in a menu and not quite know what mode the machine is in. It would help to have a dedicated cancel or exit button that gets you completely out of whatever context you're in Pad response. I find that I really have to pound on the pads to get higher velocities from them, and it shouldn't be that difficult. They should have included a setting for pad sensitivity so this could be tailored to the user's playing style. Perhaps the pads will get "broken in" over time as I continue to play on them Low output level. The line outputs are pretty quiet compared to the output of all my other line-level instrumens. An option to boost the output level would be nice. I have to boost it on my mixer instead Overall I'm in love with this little box and for the price and what it is you really get a ton of samples, kits, beats and options. It is also just plain fun! I can spend hours tapping out beats, tweaking kits and arranging songs. It is really helping as a songwriting tool because you can organize all your parts, even with bass lines, and then jam over it on guitar or keys to get ideas and try things out. Overall I highly recommend the SR-18

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!

A couple of years ago, I tried sequencing some of my hardware synths using my Novation Circuit. I used two of the four MIDI channels for synth sequencing, and the other two to sequence the Circuit's internal drums. Fast forward to late last year, I got a Novation Launchpad MK3 to use as a sequencer. Since the Launchpad has no internal sounds, I needed a drum machine. I bought an IK Multimedia UNO Drum, which worked fine for a couple of months and suddenly started frying power supplies (batteries and USB wall chargers). I got this SR-16 to replace the UNO Drum. I've had it for a few weeks and am happy with it thus far. The SR-16 comes with it's own power supply, which I am grateful for. The portability of batteries is nice but for equipment like this, I feel constant power from a "wall wart" is much more reliable. The unit itself is a good size; it, along with the Launchpad and hardware synths are piled up on a computer desk in a "DAWless" setup, so space is at a premium. The SR-16 is small enough to very comfortably fit on the desk, yet the onboard controls don't feel excessively small or difficult to access. In this setup, the Launchpad is my master MIDI clock in addition to sending note data, so my SR-16 is just playing drum hits as a slave unit. So, I can't comment about this unit's internal sequencer or other features regarding it's sequencer since I'm not utilizing them. I may do just that later on, if I ever get around to dusting my guitars off and getting back into playing guitar. As for drum sounds, I'm pleasantly surprised. I figured the SR-16 would just have a bunch of copies of the same drum hits with subtle changes (i.e. "Snare 01, Snare 02, Tom 01, Tom 02", etc.). To an extent, that statement is true. But the SR-16 shows it's age here by coming with a couple of cheat sheets. One sheet is a table of all the drum hits, specifically their names. The names of the hits also give a very brief description of what the hit will sound like. Reading the names alone, you'll see that there's a good variety of drum tones to be had in this unit, from more natural hits, to heavily edited hits, to full on electronic hits. Some of the hit names describe effects assigned to them, whereas some describe the intended genre of music the hit was designed for. This leads into my favorite feature of the SR-16: Creating custom drum kits. You can save your custom setups as well, which is very handy and helpful for me, since I'm very spontaneous about my DAWless jamming. I prefer to turn the equipment on and just start punching in note data on the Launchpad to hear what happens to the synths I send the data to. Being able to have a drum set that I know well since I'm the one that compiled it eliminates unwanted setup time, and eliminates guesswork about the set. I do see that you can create your own sequences but again, I'm not utilizing this feature in my current setup. All in all, I'm again quite happy with the SR-16. While I'm only using a fraction of it's potential, I'm happy it's such a flexible and feature packed unit; I have room to grow with this unit, but even if I always just sequence it off my Launchpad, it does so very well.

Without paying a lot more this is the best drum machine you can get. I program it using a MIDI keyboard which is quick and easy compared to using the pads on the front panel. This is especially true for programming bass lines which have varied note durations, velocities, and other nuances. This replaces my ancient Yamaha RX5. The Yamaha can do bass and a few other instruments but only has enough memory for about eight songs. The SR-18 is so much smaller, sounds great, and I haven't come close to using up the memory with over 20 songs on board. The only shortcoming is the number of user patterns. If you program your own patterns you will likely run out of patterns long before the memory runs out.

Bought this for home recording studio......I am a guitar and bass player- it was very intimidating.....But I was able to use and record a song with it, custom beat within the first week. Have owned about 2 months now and have used it to record 5 songs total. I am not an expert yet, but I keep learning and getting better. Really cool to help learn make basic patterns. I play it live for my recordings and it works great.

I’m glad other people have enjoyed the machine and maybe it’s a user error issue but I just have not had luck with it. I find the pads extremely frustrating to use. It seems whether I have the velocity settings at soft, medium, or loud, it still requires bruising my fingers to get it to register a decent sound, and the hits are so inconsistent. On top of that, I spent all night creating patterns and songs only for the pattern to not even be there the next day when I turned it on. It’s not all bad though— the drums samples sound great. Maybe I got a lemon, and that’s on me for waiting too long till after purchase to test it, but it’s been a pretty frustrating machine to use for me.