AudioThing SR-88 review

Pocket-money price drum beats

  • €29
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MusicRadar Verdict

In terms of authenticity, AudioThing's virtualisation does the business and lands at a fair price.

Pros

  • +

    Well priced. Authentic.

Cons

  • -

    Sounds aren't terribly desirable.

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This cheap and cheerful drum machine bundles the sampled sounds of 80s classic the Sound Master Memory Rhythm SR-88 into an intuitive interface, complete with its own step sequencer.

SR-88 has five sound channels: Kick, Snare, Cymbal and two HiHats
(HiHat 2 in fact being the sound of the original hardware's snare drum triggered in pattern edit mode).

Each sound has Pan, Decay, Pitch and Volume controls, and their mixed output runs through a 12dB/octave low-pass filter, then overdrive, reverb and compressor effects.

The sequencer runs up to 32 steps, and as well as a regular Randomize button on every sequencer lane, there's also the option to have individual lanes randomise every time the sequence cycles back round to step 1 - very jazz. Sequences can also be dragged from the GUI into the host DAW as MIDI clips.

SR-88 is fun to work with and very easy to use, and the only issue is that the SR-88 itself just doesn't sound very nice these days - 'small' and 'cheap' are the operative words.

Computer Music
Computer Music

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