25 thoughts on “Beat Kangz Beat Thang To Ship In October”

1. This is sort of funny, coming less than a week after the note from Roger Linn about the nebulous status of the BoomChick… everyone seemed so confident that a new Linn beat machine was a sure thing but that the Beat Thang would be vapour-wear. But now the Thang has a firm ship date in the not-too-distant-future. Which goes to show how little most of us know about the actual insides of the synth business, I guess.

   Of course, I'd feel a lot more confident if the video had some actual… well, video… of the product, instead of a static still that just hangs there doing nothing.

   I could care less about custom grills and stuff like that, but the price point, size, and feature set of this unit look like a definite winner.

2. I've seen lots of videos of the Beat Thang in action, and it still seems a little too good to be true…which means it will be an enormous hit if they can actually pull it off.

3. The real test will be once it ships and people start giving it a workout.

   Remember, this will be the first version of the product, so it's probably going to be buggy. How long have MPC's been around?

4. so this beatbox is like a superexpensive maschine for black dudes!?…and what with the clip? it's like some retard is trying to get rid of the duct tape over his mouth, stupid ad!

5. Their videos are always horrible, but the Beat Thang still looks nice.

   Why do you think $999 is to expensive? Have you priced MPC's lately?

6. I emailed the beat kangz over a month ago and they said you could pre order it july 17

7. who needs this anyway when you can have a NI MASCHINE for less money??

8. because the NI Maschine is buggy, has a crippled feature set, bad feeling pads, an the NI sound engine. EPIC FAIL. (it would be nice if they could offer midi that works, good plugin integration, destructive editing, sampling that rivals SOMETHING, chopping that isn't so basic, better sounds, and better import options. O and time stretch…. and DFD…. and get the other midi port to work… and let us assign outputs in a more intelligent way… and give us a 1.0 release that doesn't feel like beta… and stop rehashing the battery drum kits and selling it as a brand new product… i could go on…)

9. still that buggy? i wonder because NI is known for their great Software

   haven´t got a chance yet to test maschine, but the idea of maschine is great

10. In fact Maschine i one beast of a drum maschine. I use it since the first day on stage and in pretty much every track i produce. The pads feel great and midi out will be in the next update. I would never ever go back to the MPC4000.

    Cheers

11. So whats so dope about those specs in your opinion ? For me its just an overpriced and overhyped "My first little Drummachine" thingie.

12. have you even read the specs? Don't compare it to software compare it to the mpcs and other grooveboxes.

    256mb ram standard, built in sounds, plus you can put two 32gb flash cards in it. No loading times on any of your sounds, rechargeable laptop battery, so it's mobile. Add all your own sounds to it and go.

    compared to other hardware drum machines/samplers it crushes them all as a nice little production station.

    I use an mpc 4000, and this thing looks very sexy compared to that, especially that it's portable. Not to mention the hardware integrates seamlessly with the software…

    it's way more than a "my first little drum machine" lol

    it has things that mpc and mv users have wanted for ages.

    could it add a few more things? yes….

    but they knew what to put in it, in my opinion

    it doesn't replace the mpc as a central midi control center for your studio, but as a groove box/sampler/drum machine it definitely competes, especially at the pricepoint

    you can't show me a "first little drum machine" that has any of these specs

13. I know what you mean but so far they only showed pretty basic stuff that you could do with pretty much any other drumbox. The MPC4000 hast excellent timing and sound quality for example but we have to see first how da Thang will perform in this area. And you are right that it can never ever be the center of a real studio cause the ins and outs are too limited. Also if you have to handle 64 GB of Sound on such a small device, im not entirely sure if this works out. I really wish them all the best with their thang but so far i dont see whats so special about it.

14. I'm not talking about what they showed, they just showed making a track. I'm talking about the specs, and features. It has built in sounds on top of being able to sample, it has effects, and all the like. Not just drum sounds either.

    To me, it's like the EMU command stations, taken to the next level. Those machines where dope and just as capable as my mpc 4000 in terms of sequencing and timing, I had one of those as well.

    But I always wished it could sample, that's how I look at the Beat Thang, it has it's own sound library, plus your own via sampling or loading wavs.

    I don't know everything because I don't have it, I just think a lot of people are not taking it as serious because they are turned off by the marketing of it, and that's fine.

    spec wise, yeah, it's a big deal. Show me a truly portable drum machine with these specs…you can't.

    the mpc 500? that's a joke lol.

15. Good points. It really looks like they're putting a lot of power into a very portable, attractive MPC.

    They need to get a decent demo dude, though.

16. Yeah, I hope I get a chance to do a demo of it, the power seems crazy, but none of us have touched it yet so we don't know.

    pitch and mod wheel too? crazy.

17. The MPC500 is half the price and built like a tank sounds good and is a good MIDI controller too. I know, I have one. Had a MPC1000 and it was made really well too, had a built in power supply and a large display and was $999. I moved to software and got the 500 to have a portable machine.
    The marketing on this has been horrible. Even if it is good, the marketing and BS attitude makes it so undesirable. I'm not interested in giving my money to people like this. The "paintz and grillz" stuff is pandering and degrading. It seems like they got a boy band fronting for Zoom (Streetboxx) or some other out of touch company. They could at least have gotten someone that people have heard of. Who are the Beat Kangz? Never heard anyone mention them, except themselves. Specs are great but specs don't mean anything to workflow. There are interfaces with great specs that sound like crap and a bunch of old tube gear with crappy specs that sounds amazing. The real deal will be to see how it's made, how it sounds, how the timing is and how well it's laid out. They have some good ideas but have executed it poorly. If it really is some new company and not Zoom fronting, they have a deep hole to dig out of.

18. I've been an mpc user forever, the real mpcs, not the toy 500 and half button 1000. spec wise it's not touching this machine.

    I will agree with you about their markeitng angle, I don't like it much myself, but it doesn't put me off of the specs and workflow of the unit.

    From what I can tell, just from the few videos I saw, the workflow is exactly how a producer works, not how some guy in a lab works.

    but like you said, if it don't sound good, don't work right, then it don't really matter, but I am optimistic just based on the specsheet

    I dont' care about their name, there are many producers out here that are nameless, doesn't take away from their knowledge. The real test will be the workflow, coming from a company of producers…the workflow should be pretty much flawless, a lot more than you'd expect from other companies.

    the company is real, and despite what many thought, the machine is real….and it's going to give many grooveboxes some competition.

    ..I just want to see if it works like they say

19. I have the Ni Maschine and I totally agree with you on every point, it suck!…but I still like it!…it's nice to make sessions with though, and it would still play the shirt of that stupid negro-orientated beat krapz any time.

20. how do you know it's better if you've never tried the beat thang?

    I say use it all man! as long as it helps me make music it's good.

    maschine can't be used without a pc so it already lost in the portable beat machine area.

    I'm pretty sure they both are dope devices, that's the important thing about having choices.

    I don't think it's "negro" oriented, it's hip hop oriented…which as we all know, covers various ethnic groups….

    the target of the marketing isn't really my angle, I'm not all into the grillz and such…

    I just want to see how it works, because it looks dope.

    same as NI maschine, i can't wait to get mines.

21. yes. it is still very buggy. NI used to be at the top of the heap…. but that was like 5 years ago. They really need to retool their sound engines. Everything they make has that cold "NI sound" to it. My problem with machine is that it is not made for professionals in a studio. It is made for those who don't know any better. A sampler with no normalize? Chop that is unusable? NO timestretch? These are things you get with FL studio…. even most freeware…

22. Did you ever see the Ensoniq ASR X series? It's actually 13 pads layed out in an octave…

    asr x were great samplers, 16 level functionality is definitely a huge part of workflow for us mpc users, but i'm not blind to the other features that are here.

    I don't know if it can do the same on it's 13 pads, which are also bankable so they go up and down the entire octave range.

    we will just have to see. I don't see this as a replacement for my mpc 4000 because that thing is setup to be the main nerve center of any studio. It has 4 midi outs from the start, this only has one I think.

    I think they are taking it in a different direction while still offering a lot of sampling and other features that many sampler users want.

    but like everyone else, I'm just speculating and won't know until I actually use one.

23. you guys are not even givin it a chance… regardless of what everyone is sayin, the specs are more powerful than EVERY drum machine in that price range… im an RS7000 user, and when i compare it to that machine, its right there… and its NEWER!!! and portable… im gettin it… if they sell only ONE in the world, i'll be the one with it.

24. It's a balanced input, I asked the same thing lol. You can use one of those rca to stereo 1/4" plugs. I don't know about the bit rate they haven't said yet. Linndrum is about as ready to drop as this is…we have no idea on it either. On a side note…I had a dream I went to best buy with my wife and they had a linndrum2 for 799 lol…I was getting ready to buy it then I woke up! Dang…I def wanna see that one too, but I think this "thang" is going to be pretty serious once we actually see what it can do and such.

25. You know I'll have one too lol.