I am looking for a cheapo rythm machine, and thought about the Beats, but, from what I've seen, a lot of people seem to be trying to get rid of theirs.
What's wrong about this thing exactly?
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Snare sucks, but has a mod that seems to help. Incredibly little pattern memory. Otherwise its pretty fun.
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Joliette, QC, Canada
Most people sell their Volca Beats to get the Volca Sample !
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England
nothing is wrong with it really. it is just a really basic piece of kit, no presets, no saving. write it down on a piece of paper thing, so it depends what sort of functionality you want.
mine is midi and pulse sync'd to some other bits via the korg sq-1. its a lot of fun. but i mainly use it for improv and to sample loops from.
and yes the snare does suck.
the Teenage Engineering PO-12 Rhythm Pocket Operator looks a bit more versatile and i think it has a groove setting?
Last edited by Jellica (Jan 8, 2016 7:04 pm)
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Toronto, Ontario, Canada
If you plan on controlling it via MIDI then they're worth far more than they cost. My only complaint is that each has a few parameters that can't be addressed by MIDI, so you've got to ensure those particular values are set by hand, but it's made up for somewhat by the fact that there are often parameters that aren't available with the physical interface that can be addressed in MIDI.
They're certainly not without their flaws, but they're quite a lot more powerful than most people - even fans of them - really give them credit for. The fact that they can easily handle effect speed parameter and pitch changes (making chip arps totally doable) puts them ahead of a lot of other MIDI synths which will just crash if you send stuff that fast.
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Milwaukee, WI
There is absolutely nothing wrong with that snare. It has a unique character and sits really well in a mix. Sure it's not so shrill it makes you blink at high volumes, but you'll just EQ it out anyway.
Layer it with the clap. Good stuff.
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Oregon
TSC wrote:
Layer it with the clap. Good stuff.
I do the same. The Beats has really found a place in my heart, especially when paired with percussive sounds from Nanoloop.
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TSC wrote:
Layer it with the clap. Good stuff.
Im just layering mine with a volca sample, poor mans elektron 
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Earth
I like the snare and the hats the most, weirdly. I kind of take issue with this thing being called an analog drum synth, when almost half of the drums are PCM, but whatever. It's good for the price.
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Germany
Its a nice cheap device. I like the whole volca range. You must see what you get for this price. As help, you can plug an effect device on it to get more sounds and ... there is an editor software from italy. I mean the builder of it is named fabricio poce. With that editor you can control and switch via pc/ midi conection your knobs for sound design. Thats my ideas for that. There is the rhythm wolf. He has got bad reviews to but here it is the same. Check out if you like it and tryout that gear with an effect device. There are coming new lower price devices from AKAI in the future i read
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Czech Republic
oliver wrote:
no swing.
You can make some swing patterns using shutter. It is actually a great drummachine for polyrythms, because you can use shutter for retriggering / delaying individual instruments. Each one could have different timestructure with shutter. Also Shutter used in this way could add some kind of accent. I'll upload some of my patterns for imagination later. If You run it at about 35 BPM and you program it with shutter in 2x, 3x, 4x faster time, it's great. But if you use it this way, you can't sync it to other gear without some clock divider or something (as a slave)...
And yes, it has only 8 pattern memory, individual instruments volume sucks, muting sucks, you have to use both hands sometimes etc. Snare mod is actually extremly easy to do.
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Interesting. The absence of swing held me off buying one so far, but I always wondered if stutter could be used as a workaround. I don't need actual swing, just something to vary the rhythm outside the 1/16 grid. Looks like automated stutter may work even better for that.
Thank you.
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breakphase wrote:
I like the snare and the hats the most, weirdly. I kind of take issue with this thing being called an analog drum synth, when almost half of the drums are PCM, but whatever. It's good for the price.
quick no one tell him about the 909.
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New York City
Jellica wrote:
no saving. write it down on a piece of paper thing
Seriously? I thought it had memory for 8 patterns or so.
That's a deal breaker.
[edit] Korg says "Up to eight sequence patterns you create can be stored in internal memory". Do these not keep after power is off?
Last edited by akira^8GB (Jan 11, 2016 5:14 pm)
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England
they do, i meant the sounds, not the patterns, sorry :)
Last edited by Jellica (Jan 11, 2016 5:34 pm)