Arturia DrumBrute Impact - Drum Computer

Product Information

Both snares have wide ranging decay controls, which can go from long washes of sound to tight rim-like hits. The low and high toms are fairly vanilla, Roland-style sounds, but both have enough punch and body to cut through a groove. Although they can be sequenced independently, the two sounds share a pitch control, so it’s impossible to tune one without affecting the other. Both lean towards the low-mid end of the spectrum, making them good for techno-style bass. 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). Arturia have added a feature called “Color” that changes the timbre slightly for each instrument. Color can be added per instrument or per step, and paired with the accent function, meaning there are four different levels for each sound (Normal, Accent, Color, and Color with Accent). 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.

Finally, you turn on the Remote features on the Drumbrute, and you can gain access with the sync from the Drumbrute in Ableton. Can I Use Drumbute With An Amp? The Drumbrute works as a sole analog drum machine, so it is not necessary to hook it up with the computer. 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! 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.I think Drumbrute Impact sounds great with the build in distortion, so I would probably like to add analog distortion for bigger Drumbrute too. Arturia Drumbrute vs Drumbrute Impact Feature comparison chart. Specifications & prices correct at time of writing (June 2021) Drumbrute vs Drumbrute Features: Key Differences Explained. Addictively fun, intuitive and easy to getmeatydrum and percussive loops going -straight out the box. Drumbrute Impact is a game-changer for an analogue groovebox that won't break the bank. If you can’t get enough cowbell then note that the Impact comes with one pad for 808 style Cowbell (shared with Cymbal) whereas the Drumbrute offers Tamborine and Maracas instead.

Regardless of which Drumbrute drum machines you opt for, you’re unlikely to be disappointed especially if you favor gritty, electronic sounds. Both machines deliver in terms of meaty, juicy analog sounds and both machines represent excellent value for money. It would have been great to see the inclusion of a cowbell, but once again, we must remind ourselves of the price of this unit. Sounding Off Note that on both drum machines, when drum parts share the same pads (such as the Hi/Low Toms on the Drumbrute Impact), you can record independent patterns for each sound. Each machine with special features will benefit you in different ways, thus broaden the whole creative music horizon! One of the most fun things about using the DrumBrute Impact is inevitably going be the touch-strip just underneath the volume control. There are rhythmic divisions from 1/4 to 1/32 notes, and this can either add a beat repeat effect to the entire pattern, or create rolls when a pad is held down simultaneously. Rolls can also be recorded into the pattern itself.

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.

Yea I tend to agree - I LOVED the interface and the feel of the device as well as the knobiness but the sounds just weren’t that good with exception of what you mentioned. The hi hats were particularly unusable for my taste. The Impact’s sequencer will be familiar to anyone who has used a drum machine. Steps can be input in real time or while the sequencer is stopped. Handily, there’s the ability to record without quantization, which immediately gives the DrumBrute Impact a leg up over much of its competition that is tied to a 16th note grid. Copying, saving, and erasing patterns are all simple affairs. Thankfully, there is a metronome with its own separate volume control, as well as individual buttons for mute and solo. The mono main mix out is the tool you need to find this time. It is a common instrument cable that enables you to connect any music device such as a mixer, a guitar amp, etc. Do I Need To Connect Drumbrute With My Computer?Snare 1 sounds like it’s based on DrumBrute’s, but with the controls re-imagined. It’s 808-esque, with body tone and noise (snap) components. The original had granular control over the tones of the body and noise, as well as the decay and level of the latter. The Impact Snare circuit has fixed tones for the body and snap, a Decay knob which only affects the snap, and a Tone/Snap knob which crossfades between the two. Color mode pitches up the body tone. This is more limited overall but does mean you can almost make a pure noise sound. The Toms are fixed as short and punchy, with Hi and Low simply two different variations of the pitch, which is the only user-controllable parameter. Color lengthens the decay a touch and gives a little drive push. Cymbal is characterful, ringy and grungy with a rattly decay with an almost low-res digital character. It’s rather wonderful. You can control the decay manually, and lower the pitch with the Color effect. The Cymbal channel shares its trigger pad and level control with the Cowbell, which has no user-adjustable parameters. It’s a straightforward 808 cowbell, although it doesn’t quite capture the original’s exciting zing. Other features include the touch strip which allows you to create real-time breakdowns with completely natural sounding inflection. You can use the “Random” knob to get more of an organic feel to your instrument or the entire pattern or syncopate your groove with the “Swing” function. Hands-On Tactile Control In an ideal world the Drumbrute Impact would have the Steiner-Parker filter too – and a reverb woud be sweet too! – but obviously that would bump up the price. Which Drumbrute to Buy? I had a drumbrute and replaced it with the impact, and I think the impact sounds better, but not just because of the distortion.

The other significant change from the original DrumBrute is the master effects. The Impact loses the Steiner-Parker filter of the original, but gains an output distortion with level control and on/off switch. While this isn’t the most extreme analogue distortion in the world it adds a nice bit of saturation and compression-like gel to the overall sound.In addition, the main output also features a handy distortion control, which can be turned off with the adjacent button. I found that keeping it on around 60-70% added a nice glue to the proceedings. It’s worth noting that using the individual outs does remove that instrument from the main output and thus the distortion circuit. In Step mode you can create and edit patterns on the Step buttons using the TR convention; in fact you can do this at the same time as live recording. Regular triggers light blue, and Accented steps are shown as red. Slightly confusingly, to add Accents you switch to a dedicated Accent mode. From here you can create new Accented steps or convert regular trigs. But if you switch a step to Accented, then tap it again, it will remove that step entirely, rather than revert it. In other words Accent is a property of specific notes, rather than being a separate layer that modifies trigger events. Deep Impact When it comes to built in effects you’ll need to decide if you’re a filter or a distortion kind of person! With the Drumbrute you can toggle a high-pass/low-pass Steiner-Parker filter on and off and adjust the filter’s resonance control.