mini DrumZ

The concept of this plugin - to reproduce the drum sounds of various well known drum machines - is something that I wished someone would do for a long time. For the most part I think this has been done relatively well, but there are some elements of this plug that perhaps fall short of the mark.

Not much is required of the interface - the user simply dials in the drum machine that they want, and the drums are set up. That's it. There are options to apply filters, but these filters are very basic in nature. Other than that there is a volume knob.

The sounds are accurate, but problematic. There is no consistency of volume between them, and even differences in volume between various sounds for the same machine. This is pretty irritating, as you can't vary the volume of individual drums, so the volume levels need to be much nearer than they are. The problem with each machine being different in volume is not good either - the difference is very pronounced in some cases.

One other problem is the mapping of drums to keys on a keyboard not being consistent either. For example, from one machine to another the snare drum may move so you can't program MIDI then change machines as the drum in the kit might change.

Overall I like the idea but feel that there are some problems in execution - this software really needs to have the drums resampled to better volumes for the next version. As is, it's not that usable.