Arturia has introduced a new new hardware drum machine, the DrumBrute Impact.
The newest in their ‘Brute’ analog hardware line, 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.
DrumBrute Impact features 10 sounds, which are accessible through 8 performance pads:
- KICK: pounding bass drum with nice attack transients and variable pitch and decay.
- SNARE 1: a big-bodied snare with great, editable snap and decay.
- SNARE 2: a trashy snare with a hint of clap, with adjustable tone and decay.
- TOM HIGH: simple but powerful high tom with sweepable pitch.
- TOM LOW: pants-shaking low tom that can get so low you could use it as a 2nd kick.
- CYMBAL: zingy, metallic crash with adjustable decay.
- COWBELL: a simple but effective percussive cowbell.
- CLOSED HAT: hard-hitting hat with variable tone that also effects the Open Hat.
- OPEN HAT: open up the hat sound with changeable decay with a mute controlled by the Closed Hat. FM
- DRUM: a percussive synth voice with adjustable carrier pitch, decay, FM amount, and mod pitch.
Arturia says that the sounds have been crafted by their sound designers to create a cohesive “kit” sound that gives the DrumBrute Impact a unique voice.
New Color Layer
DrumBrute Impact also features a “Color” layer, allowing the user to create “dramatic” changes to the sound on the fly. This can be activated channel-by-channel, or can be programmed using the sequencer, generating unique tonal changes in the drum sounds.
DrumBrute Impact also features a drum-optimized distortion on the output bus, with a simple “gain” knob and an on-off switch.
The DrumBrute Impact features a polyrhythmic 64-step, song-capable sequencer, with by a variety of immediate performance controls. You can also Swing, inject some Randomness, glitch it up with a Step Repeater, quickly spice up patterns with the Roller, add Accents, and even record Unquantized.
The DrumBrute Impact features 4 extra output busses for post- processing or multi-tracking, Clock In and -Out to enable the DrumBrute Impact to sync with vintage or modular gear, MIDI In and -Out to sync with synths and outboard, and USB for integration with your DAW and the Arturia MCC, for extra customizations behind the scenes.
Features:
- True analog drum machine with 10 drum sounds
- Drum sounds include kick, two snares, high tom/low tom, cymbal/cowbell, closed hi-hat, open hi-hat, and FM percussion
- Stores up to 64 patterns, up to 64 steps each
- Song Mode allows you to chain patterns for expanded compositions
- Apply swing and randomness globally, or on a per-drum basis
- Separate accent for each drum
- Manipulate your patterns in real time with Step Repeat and Pattern Looper
- Roller effect creates drum rolls
- Each track can have a different length, allowing you to create polyrhythms
- 4 individual audio outputs make it easy to record your patterns as multitrack audio
- Sync options include USB, MIDI, Clock (with four different clock formats), and Internal
- 1/8″ headphone output
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.
Nice, that FM is going to add a fun flavor to it.
It only needs sample support and this machine would be awesome….
Not seeing the point of this. TR8S and Rytm are the only real contenders for self-contained drum machines. Otherwise go with MPC Live or Maschine.
This is literally half the price of a TR8S, and less than a quarter the price of an Analog Rytm.
MPC Live is a workstation, not a drum machine, and Maschine is an entire hardware-software hybrid beatmaking solution.
The point is that it’s a $349 standalone drum machine.
Well, he was making a point on features and functionality. If they made a drum machine for 1 dollar that was just a drum pad in a plastic bag, the price would still be low but what you could do with it would match as well.
You pay for what you get and this price seems really reasonable if you want a limited sound set and few features to really dive into and expand from. You could be doing new and interesting on the RYTM for years and still never scratch the surface of Scenes and Performance locks.
Very good post… It amazes me that people consider a Rytm expensive, especially as you can pick up a mint unit on eBay/Reverb for like $700!
Even new a Rytm is less than a decent mid-range geetar, and as you say, you could literally spend the rest of your life trying to master it, especially if you combine a FaderFox unit to really control FX, Perf, and mixing…
For the price of any of those you can get a Impact and a Microbrute and have much more fun just messing around with those two, sending things through guitar pedals. Also, I for one dislike the basic sound character of any of those other choices mentioned here. The Impact seems to have a nicely open sound in the demos, while for example Elektron sounds somewhat weird to me. Different tools for different tastes really.
Also, spending $700 for anything is a quite huge price for me, when I can have two great sounding machines doing different things each for the same money.
Well, classic drum machines (x0x series) were not much different.
Okay, it was a long time ago.
But it did work; so if this sounds good, I would completely see the point.
I was a little bit disappointed about the sounds of the first Drum Brute though, hope this one is going to have its own ‘thing’!
No problem about doing one thing, if it does it well.
350 is a good price for this.
I have a Tempest and an MPC Live. They are both amazing instruments, but I like the idea of a simple, fast and intuitive device that isn’t maybe so feature rich but quick to work with. I think at the price point they’re going for, this is going to be a huge success.
Why would they restrict the pattern storage to 64? That just seems silly.
i just pray it sounds good. I hope they have improved all the sounds because if they have, then I will actually purchase this I wanted to purchase their last offering so much but the sounds were just meh. cant wait to hear this!
This gonna be the killer stab for Dave Smith Instruments Tempest!