anyone tried the Zoom RT-223?

diogo

diogo

New member
hi everyone..

im searching for an easy to use (very), realistic sounding (as possible) drum machine and i ran into this...every button is supposed to do one and one thing only, so thats intuitive enough i guess...at 190 bucks, this sure looks cool, but as ive never tried anything like this before i wanna hear from you guys...

ive listened to the demo and the thing sounds decent..i dunno..again, i never played with a drum machine before...

i need simple patterns, that can go slooooooww as hell...sadcore kind of stuff...rock mainly, but very ambience stuff...i would also like some tribal sounds (dead can dance kind)...would i be able to get this stuff? the rest is pretty useless to me..

any views on this?

many thanks in advance!
 
I used to use a Zoom RT-123, It seems to be very similar to the 223....It sounded decent I would say, but not very believable when you tried to do anything delicate or expressive like you're explaining. I guess with some very careful programming you might get close but alot of the actual drum sounds are just terrible!. I know it's a little more expensive, but I use a Roland DR-770 and it blows the zoom away as far as realism and sound quality. If you've never done anything with drum machines before I'll tell you this much: don't go for the cheapest and simplest layout even if it seems easier to figure out, because you'll never achieve any kind of realism without some fairly in depth controls. There is a new model out from roland called the DR-880, haven't heard it yet but I'm guessing it's even better. Good Luck!
 
metalhead man,

tanx! one thing..how would u compare the roland units against the boss ones? i hear the boss units are very hard to use :/ kind of afraid of that if i jump into one..cause im pretty sure its gonna be either the ones you're recomending, a boss, or the alesis sr16...

tanx!
 
Actually. the Boss and Roland are one and the same. I called mine a Roland but it's actually a Boss - a company under the parent Roland name. Anywho - I would not describe it as hard to use. It has a lot of functionality that you don't have to use if you don't want to - but it's easy to get started with. If you understand meter and note values that will help alot with programming. but any drum machine will be like that.
 
oh ok. :)

thanks metalhead..

i just need to know one last thing...is the alesis SR16 a valuable option within the ones you pointed out? i mean, in terms of realism, etc...
 
I've never used one personally. But I know those are much older models so I would guess they probably sound a little dated and less realistic. Probably a lot less fine tuning controls as well. Again - I've never used one, just assuming.
 
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