So I started with the BeatBuddy. It had a great sound all the time, but it is not meant for creators, rather for cover players that purchase patterns. If you want to make your own patterns the way is too long. After having tasted the complete freedom of the SDRUM I had to look further.

My experiments with the analogue synths did not deliver. You had to sacrifice a whole synth for one drum sound! OK for studio but not for live.

The Arturia DrumBrute Impact was a great addition to my rig. It is an amazing sounding manual drummachine, can record great patterns, but there in no way to record any automation. It has a very musical and live oriented randomization that even adds notes on high settings. The BeatBuddy was only needed for its great acoustic sounds.

I have tried to get my hands on a Digitakt already a year ago. On a second hand market I was unlucky enough to make a deal and pay an untrustworthy guy that have been commiting fraud for months, he never delivered. About two months ago I found a great offer and got my Digitakt. I need more time to utilise it completely but I started using it for productions quickly. It gave me these sounds DrumBrute cannot deliver and oceans of gems, like a full digital synth engine, a unique sequencer with conditional triggers, midi channels and more. I was very lucky as an amazing firmware upgrade was delivered just as I started making recordings with it. It’s biggest weakness is for my workflow its limmited audio outputs, meaning I cannot give him the bandwidth it otherwise reserves for recording projects, it’s impossible to process 8 mixed channels. For live this is not an issue, but as we know the concept of DUCA is keeping little differences between live and recorded songs.

The BeatBuddy is going out, I might use it only for the live singer songwriter program.