Dynacord ADD-one advanced digital drum hardware

[insaneacyde]

hello!

anybody know anything about this hardware? i cant find any info google'ing it (only many pics and the fact that the drummer from toto used it)
it's a drum sampler???
it can be midi triggered???
(i.e. with a trigger pad)???
there's alot of info pages for it in German, wat ek spreken nien
i think it's like really old but the price i can get for it is really worth it if it's a nice piece of equipment.
Please help

oh yes what i'm really looking for is a really cheap way to play one or two midi drum pads in a live situation. i really dont understand why drummers and guitarists have to bust the bank when it comes to digital or MIDI.



!thank Dibli for FrettedSynth!

[BertKoor]

It seems it's a drum sampler triggered by midi or directly with pads indeed (not included)

Found an article in German, a rough translation follows (my German is rather bad, but it's sufficient to understand the most)

Some years ago when the TR-909 too expensive was, I was searching for alternatives. After the beatboxes of the 70ties came sample-based drumtools in the 80ties. At friends I saw the first devices of Simmons, Tama and others, the Dynacord ADD-one. A hammer [??] on sound, usage and editing.

The ADD-one was created between June 1985 and February 1986 in a collaboration of Dynacord and the american designerteam Fast Froward Design. [more useless details on who worked where]

in 1987 the ADD-drive followed, which was shipped with RAM banks. It also provided an analog XLR input and a 3.5" disk drive for external storage. Without this RAM extention you can only have sounds of up to three ROM banks.

Outside
Remarkable are the eight pots below the 80-char LCD display. These are for editing the parameters, in four menus. Or you change one parameter for eight sounds in one go! Handy for common parameters like volume, pan, or pitch. Alas the processor is too slow to handle "live" changes of the parameters.

Left of the display there are eight trigger buttons that are helpful when editing. You can play all sounds at maximum volume. Next to it are the knobs for trigger sensitivity. These control the threshold for the triggering of sounds. The eight trigger inputs at the back make the ADD-one the perfect 80ties Drum Machine.

At the right side you find buttons for all menu and editing functions and choosing samples. Also you find buttons to store, copy, midi settings and "chain" function (important for live usage, something with program change commands) The biggest pot is to choose the program. There even is a help function, a concept ahead of it's time.

At the back the ADD-one impresses also: there you find the suspected eight trigger inputs next to two monophone or polyphone outputs (so live you can get seperate monitoring without problems) and eight solo outputs. With a switch the summed mix or direct outputs can be used. Ofcourse at the back you also find the three midi jacks, and I assume after many attempts that the ADD-One doesn't support sysex commands, alas. Further you find connectivity for the ADD-drive, a cassette tape recorder for data storage and the Triggerpads.

Inside
The ADD-one uses samples as basis material for it's sound. In the preinstalled sounds you find Bassdrums, Snares, Congas, Hihats, etc. bu also waveshapes like Sinus, Saw, Triangle, Pulse, diverse noises and more. So you can create your own sounds like with the Waldorf Attack. The samples have a resolution of 12 bits and samplerate can be 25 or 50kHz. My proposed setting is 25kHz because then the ADD-one sound really "satt" [?fat?]. Then you hear the distinction with e.g. Native Instruments Battery, that seems to have lent the concepts of this unit on many points. Alas a voice can only be fed by samples.

With help of the ADD-drives you can [record and] set parameters like start and end point, loop start and end point and the name. Apart from one-shots you can also use multi-samples for drumming! The ADD-one has no normalize function, but it has a gate and compressor you can engage during sampling. You don't get it that brutal anymore these days. Swell is also the exact level display in bar view on the display. With that you can set the threshold very easy. You can edit parameters like frequency, pitch bending modulation through ADSR, LFO or external controller. After that are the DA converters.

The data on the sampling unit are a guarantee for a swell sound already like with the EMU SP-12 or Sequential Circuit Studios 440, the analog section "shoots the last bird". Each of the eight voices goes through an analog volume controlled filter, amp and panner. The filter seems to be 24dB/oct with self-oscillation on highest resonance. Lots of modulation options on filter and resonance by two envelopes and LFO.

Next in chain is the amp that can be modulated with a second external controller. The volume of samples is sensitive to touch sensitivity of midi keyboards. Odd is the "Duration" parameter. Samples can be shortened without the need to trim them. This parameter can be modulated with external dynamic triggers. There also is panning for the otherwise mono samples. The panorama position can be modulated by second envelope or LFO. Some details on the envelopes (ADSRs): the first one is always steered by touch velocity and can only be changed with a decay. The second however is a classic ADSR and not sensitive to velocity. To use them properly that must be clear. The LFO is nothing special: waveforms are square or random/hold and the speed is well adjustable.

the ADD-one today
Who buys a stand-alone sampler these days? In live usage the robustness makes sense, but else? Who isn't tempted to use 24bits/96kHz resolution? What for is a box like the ADD-one?

In the first place: the fun factor! As a mouse-hater with latent sight-problems the touch of pots is simply fun. It's intuitive and you hear directly what it sounds like. With screen-based samplers you only look, while music should be for your ears. This way you get outstanding and individual results, and it's fast to work with. It does (or does not) matter weather you use all ROM expansions or use the RAM through the ADD-drive.

And secondly: the lovable sounds! If you want to make sounds punchy on PC, you have to use masses of plugins. Save that on the ADD-one. Out of the box it sounds simply horny and super punchy. [can't make chocolade of this sentence, but for the time it was ok] The plenty modulation options bring unexpected liveliness to the sounds.

Conclusion
For sounds for House, Techno, HipHop, R&B and LoFi there are better devices. A pity it doesnt have a sequencer. But it's designed to be a studio and live usage tool.

Some things on support by EVI-Audio: not all replacement parts are available, and it's not cheap.

The added file "Old School" (at the bottom, links under "Klangbeispiele") uses only samples that are found on all ADD-one units. The sounds are fitted to the character of 80ties Chicago House. The same loop, but with self created drum sounds from pure waveforms shows the versitality in the file "Older School". If you tweak it a bit, the samples don't sound too dated. The last file shows the loop processed and how the internal gate and compressor work. These are pure Roland TR707 sounds!

Considering the age of this device you may not compare it to samplers of today. 128 voices and half a gig of RAM were not imaginable back then. But do you need to? To complement an Xbase09 or DrumStation the ADD_one is perfect and scores for me 9 out of 10.

Plus
- intuitive operation with pots
- simple menu structure
- genius sounds of walkers [???]
- both drum- and multisampling possible
- analog VCAs, VCFs and VCPs for each voice
- very good drumsynth
- professional hardware (outputs, trigger inputs, etc.)

Minus
- does not process SysEX data
- RAM and ROM cannot be mixed
- RAM extention very hard these days
- not designed for nutty professor on the knobs
- only eight voices
- no stereo sampling
- EVI Support are not the nicest people
- problematic walking (conversion?) from trigger impulses to midi notes

[insaneacyde]

BertKoor you are a superdude!
Thanks very muchos

[BertKoor]