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.
MusicRadar's got your back Our team of expert musicians and producers spends hours testing products to help you choose the best music-making gear for you. Find out more about how we test.
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.
“We tried to capture the heart of what a Gibson Custom guitar is, and I think we really have done it”: Epiphone expands and upgrades its flagship Gibson Custom collab with eight stunning vintage-inspired electrics
“It's probably my Behringer Model D monosynth. So simple and obviously cheap, but it’s just so versatile. I’ve used it on basically every track that I’ve created”: 10 producers share the tech they can’t live without
“No one noticed that half the playlist was AI-created, and a few even preferred the AI tracks”: Should today’s music-makers and producers fear AI - or embrace its inevitability?
