Whereas the clap is already drawn-out when it reaches a decent pitch, the snare is incompetent in offering sculpting options. Metronome: removed from the main output when headphones are connected, so you hear it and not your audience. The Drumbrute works as a sole analog drum machine, so it is not necessary to hook it up with the computer. Another factor you might like to consider is size. The original Drumbrute is both bigger and heavier than the Drumbrute Impact. What Type of Genres Are the Drumbrutes Best Suited to? Before getting into the details of the 10 drum synth modules, let’s talk about Color. This is a new feature unique to the Impact. As well as having editable synth parameters on the panel, each sound has a variant when it’s in ‘Color’ mode. You can latch a sound into Color mode indefinitely, or you can engage it on a per-step basis within each Pattern. To facilitate this, each sound has a second sequence layer for its Color state. The Color effect varies from sound to sound: it could be a drive boost, or different filter, pitch or decay settings.

If you’re looking at purchasing one of the Drumbrute machines it can be a bit confusing to know which one to plump for so in this article I will compare the two and offer some opinions and advice and hopefully this will help you decide which of Arturia’s drum machines best suits your needs. The Drumbrute has the advantage in terms of sheer number of sounds and also the amount of dedicated parameters you can tweak per sound (I count 36 dedicated rotary encoders for sculpting the Drumbrutes sounds and 22 for the Drumbrute Impact). Although I'm using it via DAW, I enjoyed playing live, using the countless sequencer features, and building patterns easily! I'm sure it will serve you well in a live gig. I think Drumbrute Impact sounds great with the build in distortion, so I would probably like to add analog distortion for bigger Drumbrute too.Upon taking the DrumBrute out of the box, we were impressed by the weight and overall build quality of the unit. Our eyes were drawn to the large pads at the bottom of the machine, which are satisfying to bash and pleasingly firm and springy. The major problem with the original drumbrute, in my opinion, is that it sounds too thumpy overall and not enough metallic percussion. If you can limit the thumpiness, use EQ to sculpt the individual drums and use the available metallic voices you can get a more balanced overall sound. I think this is why the impact sounds better - more balanced - although I did like the tambourine and congas on the brute. If you look at the chart above you can see an overview of the key differences between the Drumbrute and Drumbrute Impact. Below I take at a look at the differences in more detail, starting with the heart of both machines – the drum sounds. Being in the lookout for an analog drum machine I stumbled upon this little beast! The DrumBrute Impact made quite an impression to me, considering the price and the features:

Drumbrute Impact contains no sub-menus, touchscreens or anything else that takes you away from physically “feeling” the control you have over your music. The essence of hands-on, old-school beatmaking.Arturia’s BeatStep and KeyStep sequencers have become pretty much standard issue in hardware synth rigs, and the DrumBrutes get the technology built in. As far as I can tell, the sequencer is identical across both Brutes. Bank and Pattern are selected from the step trig buttons via specific modes. Pattern launching defaults to instant take-over, ie. the pattern changes instantly but maintains the same beat position. This is how I like it and is ideal for preparing and performing variations and fills. You can choose ‘At End’ behaviour if you prefer pattern changes to queue until the current pattern finishes playing. The world of drum machines, just like the world of analog synths, is considerably more fun now than it was a few short years ago. Then, your choices were slim—hard-to-find vintage gear, high-end offerings from Elektron or Dave Smith, or a slew of 90s drum machines that always left you wanting a bit more, sonically and otherwise. The snare section also allows for a similar amount of control, letting you to play with the tone of the initial ‘snap’ of the snare, its length and how loud it is. The tone of the ‘body’ of the snare sound is also tweakable, allowing you to tune it to taste. Decay and tone knobs are offered for the clap sound. Continuing across the various sounds, there are Rim/Claves, Closed Hat, Open Hat, Tom Hi, Tom Low, Cymbal, Maracas/Tamb and ‘Zap’ instruments available, all 100 per cent analogue. Judge the DrumBrute Impact by its size, do you? And well you should not, for theArturia's ally is aggressive, full force analogue sound.