Arturia DrumBrute Impact In-Depth Hands-On Demo

The latest loopop video takes a look at the new Arturia DrumBrute Impact drum machine.

The DrumBrute Impact is smaller and more affordable than the original DrumBrute, but offers analog drum sounds with hands-on control, a new “Color” layer, output distortion, and powerful sequencing capabilities.

Topics covered:

0:00 Intro sound

0:55 Analog vs digital

1:25 Overview

2:35 Impact vs. Drumbrute

3:05 Accents and colors

3:30 Kick sound test

4:15 Snares

5:25 Tom, cymbal, cow

6:25 Hats

7:15 FM drum

9:05 How patterns are organized

9:30 Step sequencing

10:20 Swing and random controls

11:05 Ratchet options

11:30 Quantized and unquantized recording

12:00 Looper and roller functions

12:50 Distortion

13:20 Mute and solo

14:00 Polyrhythms

14:50 Songs

15:40 Pros & cons

Pricing and Availability

Arturia DrumBrute Impact is available for pre-order now for US $349 / 299 €, and is expected to be available in August, 2018.

25 thoughts on “Arturia DrumBrute Impact In-Depth Hands-On Demo

  1. Arturia are the masters of big and small versions. I want the small matrixbrute. I also love how their products look. No fluff, straight to the point. Like when you collect the whole set, you feel like you won the game.

    This with their 2 new semi-modulars and the matrixbrute would make an awesome combo for some very specific music since sampling would be out of the equation. Would love to see a sampler from these guys.

    1. I dont think the big brother has individual pattern lengths. I think that was one of the things people griped about. Maybe they have updated it since.

  2. Dang, was really hopin’ for a modular drum machine in line with the other modular stuff they’ve been doing. I’d be happy with 4 voices with extensive patching capability and BSP MB2S’s sequencer… Maybe later?

  3. Love that in a number of ways you could see this as an upgrade on it’s “big brother” – some very useful features, tone colour, distortion, repeats etc. And the smaller form-factor suits me better.

  4. I love the drumbrute since I first got it, and this smaller version looks like a great machine in and of itself. The panel printing looks cluttered though – I just wish they would have stuck with some of the design cues they had right with the earlier version. Minimal printing on the pads (ideally none), mostly black and white color scheme, lay off the orange a bit. : P But whatever, in the end what counts is whether it’s fun to play and at looks like this won’t disappoint!

  5. sounds better than the drumbrute, i’m in the market for a new drum machine but i’m looking at sample based not analogue.

  6. The best sounding affordable analog drum machine I have ever heard. I can see this being a future classic. Sounds better than the original DrumBrute.

  7. I had a tr505 a while back and dumped the samples onto a digitakt. I love the digitakt, but I miss that 505. There was something really cool about a simple drum machine with a few features that always sounded good. You turned it on, programmed a song by chaining some patterns together, and presto. This thing is just a little bit more money than those older 80s entry-level TRs (obvs not the 808, 909), but it has so many more features in a straight-forward way. Like a modern, analog take on those cool boxes. Very interested.

  8. Kick is a marked improvement over the first Arturia incarnation. But why oh why must the hats still sound so low-pitched and raspy ? with no ability to tune them right up and high and sweet. Lets the whole machine down yet again. Daym….

    1. I’m not a big fan of analog hi hats, but I think these ones sound nice (I prefer them over TR-606/808 hats, actually, but I also prefer the Rhythm Wolf’s hi hats over the TR-808 ones). The snares sound really nice, which makes it a nice compliment to a Volca Beats or one of the old Korg ElecTribes, since every Korg drum machine I have used always has had issues making a decent snare sound.

  9. On paper, this looks like a really cool drum machine. But once again I am completely underwhelmed by the actual sounds it produces. And this seems to be the rule rather than the exception for many recent analog drum machines: DrumBrute, Rhythm Wolf, recently the ADS-7, … Even the more expensive ones from Vermona and the Tempest all suffer from the same problem.

    The kick on the DrumBrute Impact is fairly ok, I’ll give you that, but all the other sounds aren’t really up to standard. It’s been reported that the 808 sounds were originally prototyped on a system 100 modular and then reverse engineered and built into circuits. The problem with the sounds I am hearing on all these modern analog drum machines is that any kick or tom sound seems to be generated by someone who has just discovered he can sweep a sine wave with an envelope generator and get a percussion sound, or filter some white noise and get a primitive snare or clap sound. You’ve got to put a little more work into it than this! I am not even going to talk about making a drumkit with a bunch of sounds that actually WORK & SOUND TOGETHER REALLY WELL!

    This becomes very apparent when these sound demos show how the sounds can be manipulated/modified. In fact, what it shows is that there is only a very small region within the parameter where the result sounds more or less acceptable. Move a potmeter to an extreme value and it takes the drum sounds into dinky toy land, making them completely useless for any serious music composition.

    I love Kraftwerk and 70s electronica as much as anyone else on this board, but trying to sell some badly filtered noise as a snare or clap sound in 2018. C’mon, really ? An 808 or 909 snare sounds like a badass snare sound no matter where you change the potmeters.

    Can anyone point to an actual decent commercial track, commercial top-50 music or underground techno or whatever, where a DrumBrute etc. has actually been used ? These boxes sound extremely weedy to my ears … Don’t give me the “you’re hearing this on laptop or iPhone speakers” either, an 808/909/etc.or the drumsounds on a radio hit or underground techno track sound good on laptop speakers without having to hear all the intricacies of the full-on sounds.

    Sorry I just had to rant a little 🙂

    1. I get your rant man. But you want me to point to an actual decent commercial track? here you go: Starboy – The Weeknd at the start. Daft Punk used a crappy sounding drum machine for the effect of … a crappy sounding drum machine. In other words, you play to their strengths in a production.They are not going to be your “big main drum sound” but they can be useful when you want something to sound…er….average. So they still have a use.

      what do i win?

      1. That Anderton’s video must be an incentive for many not to buy this little machine! As was said previously, this is a KING WITH NO CLOTHES understanding of analog drum synthesis. But there are demos that are a little more subtle, and show its strengths, without drowning it out in so call colour. And there are belated improvements compared to the Drumbrute original. I still believe this machine can offer a few, limited sounds, that will work in a mix. Thus the poor suffer for their incompetence in matters of finance! Moi aussi…

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