Customer Reviews

Alesis SR18 Drum Machine with Effects Engine

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I had the SR-16 and out of all the drum machines I ever owned it was the most user friendly so when I noticed the new SR-18 I had huge expectations, basically this is the same machine but they have made some very weird changes, my first complaint is you have to save every single thing that you do, they took this to the point of being completely ridiculous,every single edit you make must be saved I am not kidding. and then something weird; I noticed that whatever tempo you decide to play a pattern in it is automatically saved, one of the least important things (to me anyway) so now every pattern has it's very own tempo, that just seems strange to me, one thing I liked about the SR-16 was when you wanted to change the length of a pattern you were give the option of taking bars off the end or the beginning, the SR-18 is like every other drum machine and you can only cut off the end, the SR-16 also had an output to dump all of your data onto a tape or cd (or whatever you prefer) so then you never run ot of memory, The SR-18 does not have this cool feature either,the sounds are good,lots of cool presets but drum machines still have a very long way to go before I will get too excited, I thought this was supposed to be an upgrade. ?

This is just a huge sounding drum machine. Forget what they used to sound like years ago - this sounds like a real drummer - and a very good one at that. With the basslines added this machine can be used to back a singer / guitarist / keys player and you could go on the road solo (what I plan to do).

It can be complicated if you want to go the whole mile and programme it rather than use the sample tracks, but it comes with a very thorough instruction manual. Plan to learn how to do most of the good things during a month of tinkering with it in your spare time. I bought it with two Yamaha FC5 pedals to work it 'live'.Yamaha FC-5 Sustain Pedal for Portable Electronic Keyboards (But it does work with other on/off pedals like the Yamahas as well.) This allows me to start stop and switch between A / B fills and A / B rhythms. You'll need pedals like these if you plan to use this box in front of an audience - but you won't need it for practice.

This is a great tool. And better than a drummer because it doesn't have an ego, doesn't need beer to fuel it, and I get to keep all the money from gigs. (I'll do a video review soon.)

If you're on a tight budget or want something a bit easier to programme, try the SR16. Alesis SR16 Drum Machine

I've had an SR-16 for years. Loved it; used it regularly. I loved it so much, I started writing Alesis about 10 years ago, asking them to update the sounds to 16-bit. I bought the SR-18 the day it came out. Now I'm going to Ebay it.

I need a drum machine for practice. With a couple of foot pedals, you can run the SR-16 while you and the other guitarists do your thing. Stop, start, decent fills that are completely logical and predictable.

But the SR-18 is just about worthless in that role. Yeah, it sounds gorgeous, but it's just unusable as a live-performance tool. I mean, maybe it's OK if you want to program every single song you do, but to just start it and jam on a song, forget it. Here are some of the weird things:

Genres not grouped together. Wouldn't you expect one click to take you from Rock 1 to Rock 2? Not so. If you're looking for a rock beat, you have to look all over the list to find the next one.

Different tempos for each pattern. So. . .you're playing along a 130 bpm but you decide you need a slightly different rhythm. You dial in a different pattern and wham, you're suddenly playing at 210 bpm. What's with that??

Different track lengths for each pattern. On the old SR-16, all patterns were 2 bars; eight beats. Boring, maybe, but useful and predictable. It was easy to insert a fill because you knew what was coming. On the SR-18, some patterns are 16 beats, some are 8, some are 20. . .I forget. But there you are, jamming along and you go to the Fill function to bring you to the chorus. . .and it starts the fill 8 beats too late. Sheesh. With the SR-16 I got so good, I could just tap my footswitch and get a single cymbal crash at the end of a phrase. Not possible now. . .at least, not without years of study.

So: this machine is probably swell if you intend to program each song you do--and play it exactly the same way each time. If, like me, you used the SR-16 for practice, for extending a jam while your lead guitarist got his act together, for a quick simple beat that did the job most of the time. . .save your money. Stick with your old SR-16. That's what I'm doing. Alesis, you broke my heart! Why couldn't you just give us the same great functionality of the SR-16, but with better sounds?

I have owned an HR16 by Alesis for over 10 years but it eventually started to misbehave so I decided it was time for an upgrade. I chose the SR18 and have been very happy with it. Very easy to use and lots of great sounds Great price too!

The Alesis SR18 Drum Machine is amazing. I have had many problems with every computer based drum machine program. It's not that they didn't work right, but the fact that they just weren't for me. I am very good with computers, do photography editing, and music editing, etc, all on the few computers I own. As far as doing drums on my computer, It just wasn't clicking. Everyone has to find their path of least resistance, and THEIR best method for doing things, since everybody is different and everyone has their own path of least resistance. Hence, to each, their own. What works best and is the easiest for one person, may be the most complicated for the other. What is most complicated for you, may be the easiest for the other person.

Basically what I am saying is this drum machine, once in my hands, really clicked. This was MY path of least resistance. It's good to know I can sit down with this machine, and only this machine, and make full drum tracks. As far as some people saying this is so hard to use, or takes a couple months, for me it took two days. Hence, 6 one way, half dozen the other. The first day I just messed with it, without directions. It was confusing. The second day, I read the directions, and by the end of the second day, I had already made three full length drum tracks, doing everything from customizing my entire drum set and sounds, making a bunch of patterns, and then piecing all those patterns together to make tracks.

Ok, so now for what it can do:
* I saw one review where they said you cannot change the length of the patterns. This is not true. You CAN indeed change the length of the patterns. You can use whatever tempo you want, 120, 140, whatever, and you can make the patterns 4 beats long, or 8, or 16, etc.
* You can customize your own drum setup, so you have have a couple bass, etc. Rule of thumb if you are trying to re-create double bass, is to make two sounds, almost identical, BUT make the second sound a little different tonewise. Because in real life, you can tell the difference between both bass drums. This makes it sound more realistic.
* There are a TON of different sound variations for every kind of drum sound you want.
* You can tweak each individual sound. For instance, if I find a crash I like, but think to myself that I want it to sound softer, offset it to the right a little, change the pitch to a slightly lower pitch, and also make it ring on longer, ALL of this is possible.
* Learning this machine really is not that hard. Can be done within a good weekend.

All in all, this machine is amazing. I am a heavy metal guitarist, and I record my own tracks on a Tascam DP-02, and this works great in conjunction with that. This machine works very well with the metal genre, or rock, or any genre at all. It lets me put together full length tracks (from all of my combined patterns I made), does very very well using it in a double bass aspect (you can program the bass to sound like double bass, and as fast as you want), and you end up with very realistic sounding drum tracks! Since I play metal, this is VERY important, since it's hard to find a good drum machine that can go with the metal genre. Last, all I have to do is plug it into my Tascam recorder, and record! Love it! This sounds amazing!

The one and ONLY downside to this is the fact that there is NO connection to connect it to your computer. I want to make this clear. There is a way to hook up through your instrument cable connections, but then I'm not sure how this hooks to your computer through a 1/4" cable connection. But all I have to do is record them into my Tascam, then send them to my computer, where I can save them for later.

Hope this helps, and sorry about rambling. Any questions, feel free to comment and I will surely answer them for you the best I can, to help out.

I've owned the SR-16 for years and not till just lately have I used it for live performance. The machine was adequate. Being an x-drummer helped in finding the right preset to the right song. Remember, the kick/bass relationship is key. I used primarily presets and only programed 10 of my own grooves. I created no songs. I kept it real simple. Along comes the SR-18. Not only are the sounds far more realistic on the SR-18, but Alesis seemed to have recorded the grooves into the machine with a real drummer playing a drum pad kit. The grooves have a superior human feel over the SR-16. This equates to the fills also. Much more human. The length of beats have changed in the SR-18. Most on the SR-16 were either 4 or 8 beats. The SR-18 has many patterns at 16 beats. This makes the SR-18 more musical to use for a broader scope of musical styles. I'm old school. Most of the songs I do have been around for some time and the guys at Alesis have intelligently programmed the SR-18 to fit what I do like a glove. However, unlike my old machine I'm inspired to put together some actual songs. The sounds and technology is there, all that is missing is the time to do it. Also, for you tweak heads, the ability to create your own patterns and songs or tweak the USER patterns is much like the SR-16. The old machine was very thought out in that respect. Alesis is working on a very old cliche... "If it ain't broke... don't fix it".

There is a reason Alesis has been one of the top drum machine manufacturers for all these years, and basically still unchanged, only improved. That is why I was somewhat disappointed by the way Alesis has designed the human/machine/software interface.
To put it lucently, it's damn hard to program...
It's bad enough that the process is anything but natural for a musician, but making the different segments into a song is most tedious. Alesis could do much better by far than what they have produced in this unit.
That said, I know my hearing is not what it use to be, but I have yet to be able to hear the cymbals or high hats. I don't know for sure, but the high end on all the drum kits sound like they are at too low in volume... I need to investigate further.
I admit that I have only used this unit on one song as I write, but trying to use the poorly written manual is a chore and pain in unmentionable places...
I do recommend this unit for its sampled sounds, but be prepared to fight, claw, and wrestle this beast to the ground. You are going to have a real struggle on your hands, but it could be worth it...

I believe this to be the best sounding drum machine made today for the price, it is fairly simple to program, has the most real sounding drums has a nice fill feature... it realy looks cool and has large pads...it doenst save very well, seems once saved, the original is there forever... but still one can create patterns you can save in in cubase, magix or samplitude or another recording program once youve done your program to be sure except for future tempo changees could be off and funny sounding...

I have both the Zoom tr-223 and this and i feel the Zoom tr-223 to be more a Toy compared to the sr-18....but the Zoom can come back to previous patterns once shut off...Zoom has a little better sounding bass, but ill record my own real sounding bass with a real bass ....both can be used in your studio

The output is rather weak using line outs...Neither drum machine is perfect, but the Alesis is a more professioanl Drum machine in my humble opinion....Jim

I have used drum machines in the past, but for performing live, the Alesis SR18 is the best one I have ever tried. Good manual makes programming and editing patterns and kits a piece of cake. The sounds are really good, and the feature that really rocks is the tap function to set the tempo, which can even be done with a foot switch. Since I play keys, the idea of using foot switches to stop and start, set tempo, and trigger pattern changes and fills is the greatest. The other thing I love is the large, brightly lit, lcd display which is a life saver in dark clubs when playing live.

It is a great product at a really great price.

Great product and service when coupled with the price a Real winner thanks Alesis SR18 Drum Machine with Effects Engine