Cost Effective Drum Machine Review

The Pacific Digital DrumXtreme DX-MIDI-PRO digital drum kit is the perfect kit for space- or noise-constrained musicians and would-be musicians. That is the main reason I decided to try it out in the first place and I found that I couldn’t have made a better decision. Here’s why.

The Pacific Digital kit features adjustable percussion sensitivity. No matter what velocity the player performs at, the drum machine produces professional-quality sound that can be played full-blast or muted, to spare the ears of family and neighbors. A headphone jack is also included on the module. When you drink one too many beers and want to jam all night while your wife and newborn sleeps, this feature is huge!

DrumXtreme is easy to assemble and take little time to set up and fold down. Standing, it’s 36-inches high, 36-inches deep and 18-inches wide. The kit supports up to 7 drum pads (hi-hat, snare, tom1, tom2, tom3, ride, crash) and 2 pedals (bass drum and hi-hat control). Mix and match samples to your liking. I really got every result I was looking for quite swiftly.

Audio inputs and outputs let you feed external sources into your playing, and let you amplify or record your playing. The recording feature lets you record your drum music to the sequencer in real-time (only one track at a time though). MIDI channels, however, are recorded simultaneously. All of these features are very handy when it comes to really composing the proper groove for your jam.

The drum kit package includes a Pacific Digital CD software tutorial which features training videos, play-along 4-level drum game, exercises, interface to select from 20 different drum sound banks, with over 380 usable voices, and a tone effect feature that helps beginner develop snare, tom, hi-hat, crash, and ride skills. It also includes a CD with pre-recorded play-a-long scores, which gives you a virtual band to perform with (50 preset songs, 4 user songs, plus 1 demo song). This Pacific Digital kit has received positive reviews from drum legends such as Neil Peart and Travis Barker. If its good enough for them, its probably good enough for your pansy drumming, don’t you think? Anyways, I highly recommend this device. Check it out next time you’re in Guitar Center or Sam Ash (Guitar Center if you have any self respect of course!).

Your drums sound better with ginger sugarsnaps in the mix!

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