Best Drum Machine sub-300$

[Kylemac]

So my Dad is looking to drop some coin on some basic home recording gear and we've been talking drum machines lately. He wants an Alesis SR16 I believe and I just took a look at it and frankly I'm not impressed. I guess it is an industry standard and is a great value now apparently. Is he misinformed or am I just too skeptical?

Personally I'm drawn more towards something from Akai's MPD series, like the 24 or better. The pads look a lot more playable than the Alesis', it has more controls with the pots and faders and isn't too much more expensive at 100$ more.

Can anyone attest in favor for either or give me some advice. Anything really would be appreciated Thanks

-Kyle

[tyfurious]

Akai or PadKontrol. I like the PadKontrol more, but it's mostly up to your taste (keeping in mind I don't actually own either of them).

Akai is more compliant though, meaning that it'll probably work better in Live or other production software. I would stay away from the Alesis, not future proof by any means.

[DigitalDevil]

I'm not an expert on these type of controllers by any means but I did play around with a friend's MPD24 (which I believe has now been updated as the MPD26?) as a Traktor controller and as a drum rack controller in Ableton and loved it. Very solid build quality with big, responsive buttons and enough faders and knobs to mess about with parameters on the fly. The only other similar kind of controller I've used is the M-Audio Trigger Finger, which isn't bad but the MPD is definitely better in my opinion.

[dirkd]

I think really the question here is do you want a hardware drum machine or a MPC type of controller to control a drum machine AU/VST/RTAS in a DAW?

And in my opinion sub 300 you're hard pressed to find something better than the Akai MPD series unless you're looking at obscure vintage drum synthesizers.

I also think you're better off getting a controller type of unit to control software in a DAW instead of a hardware drum machine, advances in computing power and DPS processing have made most hardware drum and sampler modules all but obsolete.