The Korg Volca Beats Rhythm Machine is an analogue drum synth and an Electribe style sequencer in a compact, battery powered form.
With a tip of the hat to the analogue grooveboxes of yesteryear, the Volca Beats brings the power and fat sounds of analogue drum machines that integrate into your DAW environment via MIDI. Featuring analogue oscillators for the Kick, Snare, Toms and Hi Hats, the Volca Beats brings you a distinctive tone where acoustic drums fall short. There are also controls for crafting the individual sounds, including click, pitch and decay meaning you can tailor the overall sound to the music material.
Korg has also included a PCM engine, covering the percussion, clap, claves, agogo and crash. The engine has been developed for a Lo-Fi and rough sound to add character to the overall instrument and compliment the analogue drum section with controls for pitch and speed.
The Volca Beats also includes an Electribe-style sequencer for the easy input of rhythm patterns. You can use each of the 16 step keys per voice to enter the notes as the sequencer is running, getting visual feedback from the LEDs within the measure. There’s also a stutter function to add drum rolls and delay effects.
The main highlights of the Volca Beats include:
The value you receive from the entire volca range is unrivalled. The rich sounds you can get out of them when plugged in to stereos or headphones is brilliant, would highly recommend the volca beats as a drum machine for a first timer
Amazing little machine that cannot be touched by any other device for this price. It is a real analogue drum machine with enough "oomph" to take on some of the big boys (the kick is near 808 territory) and yet its really small and easy to use. MIDI in and CV sync cater to professionals too.
Simply unbeatable!
What can one say but you are getting a pretty good analog kick. More towards the 808 side of things. The Hats are also good but often too low against the kick. You really have to turn your mixer gain up, kick way down so you can hear the other parts.
No automation, and the same problems if you try to go into a balanced mixer with a TRS connector out the dual mono headphone output.
There seems to be some mods out there that can get the levels of the snare louder and other parts but I have not tried them yet. Still for the price it is a good value and can get you into the analog drum sounds. They really do sound better than most plugins.
Real analog drum machine, the kick is out of range!!! I recommend to buy it just for it!!!!!
Separate outputs are very good option and is possible to do it. Very well designed and super portable, with MIDI capabilities is the perfect companion to upgrade your live setup (I am using it for DJ-set as well via Traktor line input). Amazing device....