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

Tiene excelentes funciones para su precio. Cumple bien con su tarea, solamente hay que saber bien cómo programar.

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.

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 sequencersOnboard 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-brainerDoesn'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 mistakesSettings 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 automaticNo 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 inPad 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 themLow 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 insteadOverall 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