Arturia DrumBrute Impact - Drum Computer

Product Information

Yea I tend to agree - I LOVED the interface and the feel of the device as well as the knobiness but the sounds just weren’t that good with exception of what you mentioned. The hi hats were particularly unusable for my taste. In Step mode you can create and edit patterns on the Step buttons using the TR convention; in fact you can do this at the same time as live recording. Regular triggers light blue, and Accented steps are shown as red. Slightly confusingly, to add Accents you switch to a dedicated Accent mode. From here you can create new Accented steps or convert regular trigs. But if you switch a step to Accented, then tap it again, it will remove that step entirely, rather than revert it. In other words Accent is a property of specific notes, rather than being a separate layer that modifies trigger events. Deep Impact I think Drumbrute Impact sounds great with the build in distortion, so I would probably like to add analog distortion for bigger Drumbrute too.

Metronome: removed from the main output when headphones are connected, so you hear it and not your audience. Taken together, we really like the sounds of the Impact. It’s perhaps not the most sonically flexible drum machine on the market, but producers of certain electronic genres will find a lot to like. To our ears, these sounds lend themselves most to rugged analogue house and techno, but there’s also enough punch and bass for hip-hop production too. Individual sounds can sound a little dry straight out of the box but we don’t find that too problematic. It is a cheap little machine so don't expect this to cover all your needs, Behringer drum machines cost about the same and offer much more both in terms of sound and versatility. If you look at the chart above you can see an overview of the key differences between the Drumbrute and Drumbrute Impact. Below I take at a look at the differences in more detail, starting with the heart of both machines – the drum sounds. Arturia’s Drumbrute has found a home in many a professinal setup. Composer Tom Salta is a fan and DJ/Producer Carl Craig is a fan, to name just two. Who Uses the Drumbrute Impact?

As well as Color, the Impact employs the tried-and-tested Accent concept, implemented the same as on the original DrumBrute. Sounds have two trigger levels (accented or not) and generally sound slightly different from one state to the other. As we’ll see later, Accent sequencing is handled differently to Color. First though, let’s run through the sounds. In an ideal world the Drumbrute Impact would have the Steiner-Parker filter too – and a reverb woud be sweet too! – but obviously that would bump up the price. Which Drumbrute to Buy? The major problem with the original drumbrute, in my opinion, is that it sounds too thumpy overall and not enough metallic percussion. If you can limit the thumpiness, use EQ to sculpt the individual drums and use the available metallic voices you can get a more balanced overall sound. I think this is why the impact sounds better - more balanced - although I did like the tambourine and congas on the brute. It would have been great to see the inclusion of a cowbell, but once again, we must remind ourselves of the price of this unit. Sounding Off Each of the eight instruments has a row of knobs to control the parameters of the sound, and given that this is an-all analog machine, there are no presets or sound settings to be stored—essentially, what you see is what you get.

The faux-wood panelling on the sides of the unit isn’t fooling anybody, but considering the low price, it’s perfectly acceptable and ties in nicely with the design of other Arturia products. Compared to its obvious competitor, the Roland TR-8, the design of the DrumBrute is more mature and classic, which was definitely a plus from our perspective. Whereas the clap is already drawn-out when it reaches a decent pitch, the snare is incompetent in offering sculpting options. The coolest feature here would be the FM drum (which you can sculpt) and polyrythmic options for each voice. Arturia have added a feature called “Color” that changes the timbre slightly for each instrument. Color can be added per instrument or per step, and paired with the accent function, meaning there are four different levels for each sound (Normal, Accent, Color, and Color with Accent). I had a drumbrute and replaced it with the impact, and I think the impact sounds better, but not just because of the distortion.Pads turn orange to show when Color mode is active and each step in your beat can have Color activated or deactived on a per instrument basis. Overall the Color feature is a worthy addition to the Drumbrute, especially if you tend to favour drums with bite and grit. If you like clean, sterile or clinical sounding electronic drums then you might find the Color mode is not to your tastes. Upon taking the DrumBrute out of the box, we were impressed by the weight and overall build quality of the unit. Our eyes were drawn to the large pads at the bottom of the machine, which are satisfying to bash and pleasingly firm and springy. In terms of sound quality, it is quite gritty, low pitched, and punchy which would be a better fit for edgy mixers.

Everything from straight forward pounding rhythms to more complex phasing polyrhythms, you’ll enjoy every moment of the step-sequencing thanks to the intuitive controls that removes the obstacles between you and your music. Both snares have wide ranging decay controls, which can go from long washes of sound to tight rim-like hits. The low and high toms are fairly vanilla, Roland-style sounds, but both have enough punch and body to cut through a groove. Although they can be sequenced independently, the two sounds share a pitch control, so it’s impossible to tune one without affecting the other. Both lean towards the low-mid end of the spectrum, making them good for techno-style bass. Snare 1 sounds like it’s based on DrumBrute’s, but with the controls re-imagined. It’s 808-esque, with body tone and noise (snap) components. The original had granular control over the tones of the body and noise, as well as the decay and level of the latter. The Impact Snare circuit has fixed tones for the body and snap, a Decay knob which only affects the snap, and a Tone/Snap knob which crossfades between the two. Color mode pitches up the body tone. This is more limited overall but does mean you can almost make a pure noise sound.When comparing the Arturia drumbrute Impact vs drumbrute, the original device seems to get ahead regarding the organized settings. French developer Arturia create not only emulations of vintage synths but original hardware products too. In recent years Arturia have released not one but two analog drum machines in the shape of the Drumbrute and the newer Drumbrute Impact. Another factor you might like to consider is size. The original Drumbrute is both bigger and heavier than the Drumbrute Impact. What Type of Genres Are the Drumbrutes Best Suited to?