Audiothingies has introduced DoubleDrummer, a 12-voice drum synthesizer with sample playback capability.
Drum Synthesis
DoubleDrummer has 6 channels of drum synthesis (kick, snare, toms, clap, cowbell and hihats). Each of these 6 channels has been fine tuned to provide a wide range of sounds within a limited set of parameters per channel:
- Bass drum: tune, attack, decay, pitch mod level, pitch mod decay time
- Snare: tune, tone decay, noise level, noise decay, color, emphasis
- Tom: pitch, low pitch, hi pitch, decay, pitch mod level, pan spread
- Clap: attack, decay, color, emphasis
- Cowbell: tune, offset, decay, harmonics, emphasis
- Hats: closed decay, opened decay, color, emphasis
Sample Playback
DoubleDrummer also has 6 channels of drum sample playback, with 56 internal drum sounds to choose from, within a wide variety of kick, snares, toms, cymbals, and other percussions.
Audiothingies has chosen to emulate the sound of the early eighties drum machines. Each of the sample channels have tune, decay, comp and a 2-pole lowpass filter with frequency and resonance parameters.
These channels can be useful for natural sounding sounds that can be more difficult to synthesize with a limited parameter set, such as cymbals.
And if you prefer sampled sounds, the 6 main synthesis channels can be switched to sample playback mode, turning the DoubleDrummer into a 12-voice old-school sounding drum sample player.
Mixer
Each one of the 12 voices is sent to a mixer with mute, drive, bit crusher, pan, level and fx send level per channel.
FXs
2 send FXs are available: delay and plate reverb. Each channel can send to one of these 2 FXs.
On top of that, you have a multi-FX on the master stereo bus. This master FX has drive, sample rate reduction, bitcrushing, and a 2 pole lowpass filter with frequency cutoff and resonance parameters.
Other features:
- 128 memories for storing your kits
- USB MIDI
- A PC/Mac software will be available to send your own drum samples to the internal memory
Audio and video demos are still to come.
Pricing and Availability
The DoubleDrummer will be available in November 2017, priced at 252.50€. See the Audiothingies site for more info.
This looks very interesting. It’s like a baby Machinedrum UW, sans the sequencer.
Anyone who owns or has used the Micromonsta should know that Audiothingies makes great synths. I, for one, am excited about this one.
This could be interesting to use with drumpads and a nice replacement for Nord Drum 3.
Why, though? No samples on the Nords, but I prefer the open-ended nature of the synthesis, where each channel can be whatever “drum” the user wants… it seems like for the audiothingies thing, we get one kick, one snare, etc. But maybe I’m wrong?
Just a pat on the back to this company.This looks stunning. I hope they produce one with 8 or even ten outputs for those of us making tracks in a studio environment.The opportunity to load our own samples is perfect.Please consider an eight output version.
Looks great and going by their other stuff probably sounds great. At the price point, thinking the new Electribes are its only competition.
Not if it doesn’t have a sequencer built in.
I like the simple set of functions and the form factor.
It’s not clear if when you load your own samples via computer, whether those are loaded into flash rom or if they persist between power-down cycles. I’d assume so, but they didn’t specify.
I wish the price was a little lower.
Looks like Digitakt has a new friend!
I thought the same thing
The price given above seems to be excluding VAT. So if you’re in the EU, the end price (as given on the audiothingies site) is actually 303 €.
Finally! someone who makes a little, lightweight capable drummy / sample player, that is 100% perfect for people with sequencers like the cirklon or the pyramid (who mostly actually really play live) who don’t want or need 4 drummachines with 4 different sequencers on stage. The monsta is by far one of my favorite little synths, no doubt this is gonna be a match made in heaven!
well, it says “with 56 internal drum sounds to choose from, within a wide variety of kick, snares, toms, cymbals, and other percussions”
So it has variety.