Arturia DrumBrute Impact

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:

There are 10 clean & punchy analog sounds which sit well in a modern track. The kick and the snares are the most prominent, however the entire drum set sounds tight and well thought out musically.

My most praised features are the "Color" function which transforms each sound, and the FM drum, that acts like a wildcard! Meaning you can transform it to many other sounds. Finally the distortion at the master bus makes the sound gritty and harsh, adding that special "brute" sauce!

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.

To the cons, I would add the lack of a rimshot, and midi control over the sound parameters! Also a big minus is the lack of a complete list of SysEx messages in the manual.

Nevertheless in regards to it's sound, I think this drum machine is a future classic!

This is an amazing analog drum machine. However, you have to have some understanding of its capabilities, because even though it offers a good amount of controls, you can't dramatically change the sound of it.

The Arturia sequencer is just great, very intuitive and easy to use. It is convenient to enter patterns both live and in step mode. The only thing that is missing for me is that it can't record automation of the knobs.

I would love to see stereo output in this device, though it provides separate mini-jack outputs for kick, snare, hats and fm drum.

Overall it is really good offering for the price and its sounds can fit a lot of music genres.

This 'laptop-size' drum machine inspired me from the very begining. The sounds are great, deep and if you use Distrotion - dirty. But always the sound is well controlled so when you experiment with maximum values of the knobs - it's still great. Sequencer is simple, logic but also very deep and effective. Especially with Swing, Random or Step Repeat use.
Before I have used Volca Beats, that I loved but found some limits.
With Impact it seems for me even more music styles are possibles to explore even though Impact is a strong position for any electronic, edm or hiphop styles.

Pros: Analog Sounds (Kick Decay ...), Color function (change a little bit main sound of the pad), Distortion, Interface and Hardware quality, logic sequencer with 64 pattern, additional FM Drum, Computer application for configure/upgrade HW and import/export patterns, multiple connections. Good sync options with other HW/Daw.

Cons: Maybe one - Not all instruments are equipped with 3 knobs for more sound modify but two only, but well you can always trigger two instruments on same time to get more rich, combined sound.