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The DTX range has won lots of fans for Yamaha over the years.

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Sound judgement

Assessing the quality of electronic drum sounds is an area fraught with difficulty - it is obviously subjective, and influenced by the fact that sounds can be tweaked to alter them far beyond their original state. But try we must to give an idea of the nature of the DTXtreme IIS.

So we'll say that the majority of acoustic kits are pretty decent, with a tendency to sound quite produced (in as much as they give the impression of a sheen of studio compression and EQ), and that we really liked some of the ethnic stuff. There is, however, a lack of dynamic three-dimensional character to much of what's on offer, and as such the out-of-the-box sound of the Xtreme isn't as engaging as that of some (admittedly more expensive) electronic kits we have come across.

It's great for workaday tasks - practice, rehearsals, songwriting (surely the most common uses for such set-ups) - but lacks that magic sparkle to make it really special.

A couple of issues really drag the DTXtreme down, unfortunately. Perhaps the hardest to work around is the way in which the hi-hat works and feels. The fact that it mounts on a proper hi-hat stand should be a real boon, but it just comes across a bit clunky.

Admittedly extremely difficult to recreate accurately, that 'in-between' half-open hat sound eludes the Xtreme almost entirely - the leap between tight-shut and completely open is too, ahem, extreme and means that subtle hi-hat stuff is pretty much impossible.

The DTX range has won lots of fans for Yamaha over the years and with good reason - the kits are well priced and offer real functionality. The DTXtreme IIS sticks to the theme in terms of its capabilities and relative affordability; its physical attributes are appealing and it feels better to play than kits with smaller playing surfaces.