D16
16 years after the original came out, version 2 is here. But does Andy Jones really need yet another 909 drum machine emulator?
Some software updates are a surprisingly long time coming – we’re thinking NI’s Massive, for example. But D16’s latest Drumazon update is probably a record breaker in terms of the time it’s taken to leap to version 2 – a full 16 years! And it’s only another bloody 909 drum machine, right? So how can it possibly be worth that length of waiting time? Well, Drumazon 2 goes back to basics, updates the concept and comes up with a software instrument that doesn’t just leave the original hardware in its wake, but is totally the 909 for the 2020s and could well be the drum machine of this decade.
Simple is best, right?
Yes it’s packed with huge amounts of sounds, patterns and drum kits, but it’s what you can do with them, and how simple it is to make a pattern totally unique to you, that are what sets Drumazon 2 apart and above other drum plugins. If you were to rate a product based on how quickly you are inspired by it, then Drumazon 2 scored a 10 within about 10 seconds of booting it up. But let’s not get too carried away, too quickly. Deep breath.
Like the original – although it was such a long time ago, we had a hard time tracking down the review – you get both Sound Control and Sequencer sections of the UI, but updates within these are so many and varied and such a long time after the original, we might as well focus on 2 as a new instrument and run through its features, of which there are many.
The Sound Control section firstly offers 11 drum sounds and main parameters on each one to tweak, including level, tuning and decay.
Where it gets hugely interesting and completely flexible is in the Strips section. You start by selecting your drum sound from the 11 on offer, and can then tweak its decay, tuning, filter and compressor setting. Then (and this is the best bit) you get to direct any or all of these drum sounds into one or both of Drumazon 2’s effects engines. Each of these has five slots running in series from left to right but, importantly, these can be reordered, with any slot dragged into a new order, or even sent to the other engine. You can even drop a drum sound into a different slot – 3, for example – to bypass previous ones. And you have this flexibility on each drum sound.
A few tweaks in and these patterns felt totally unique to us, with pretty minimal effort, it has to be said
By this point we had already customised not only some of the amazing patterns on offer but customised the sounds with effects too. D16 might have done the hard work programming them, but a few tweaks in and these patterns felt totally unique to us, with pretty minimal effort.
But that’s not everything. Once you are happy with your pattern, you can pass it through a master effect sec
