Alesis SR-18 - Studio-Grade Standalone Drum Machine With On-Board Sound Library, Performance Driven I/O and In-Built Effects / Processors

My first SR-16 was made on 1/9/1993 according to the handsigned quality control label. The new one does not have that label, and the instructions on the bottom of the unit are in a slightly larger font. Other than that it appears nothing has changed except the AC adapter, and that is a good thing. My first one recently started having volume drops, so I grabbed a new one to backup my patterns. I hope the new one holds up as well as the old one.

A couple of years ago, I tried sequencing some of my hardware synths using my Novation Circuit. I used two of the four MIDI channels for synth sequencing, and the other two to sequence the Circuit's internal drums. Fast forward to late last year, I got a Novation Launchpad MK3 to use as a sequencer. Since the Launchpad has no internal sounds, I needed a drum machine.I bought an IK Multimedia UNO Drum, which worked fine for a couple of months and suddenly started frying power supplies (batteries and USB wall chargers). I got this SR-16 to replace the UNO Drum.I've had it for a few weeks and am happy with it thus far. The SR-16 comes with it's own power supply, which I am grateful for. The portability of batteries is nice but for equipment like this, I feel constant power from a "wall wart" is much more reliable. The unit itself is a good size; it, along with the Launchpad and hardware synths are piled up on a computer desk in a "DAWless" setup, so space is at a premium. The SR-16 is small enough to very comfortably fit on the desk, yet the onboard controls don't feel excessively small or difficult to access.In this setup, the Launchpad is my master MIDI clock in addition to sending note data, so my SR-16 is just playing drum hits as a slave unit. So, I can't comment about this unit's internal sequencer or other features regarding it's sequencer since I'm not utilizing them. I may do just that later on, if I ever get around to dusting my guitars off and getting back into playing guitar.As for drum sounds, I'm pleasantly surprised. I figured the SR-16 would just have a bunch of copies of the same drum hits with subtle changes (i.e. "Snare 01, Snare 02, Tom 01, Tom 02", etc.). To an extent, that statement is true. But the SR-16 shows it's age here by coming with a couple of cheat sheets. One sheet is a table of all the drum hits, specifically their names. The names of the hits also give a very brief description of what the hit will sound like. Reading the names alone, you'll see that there's a good variety of drum tones to be had in this unit, from more natural hits, to heavily edited hits, to full on electronic hits. Some of the hit names describe effects assigned to them, whereas some describe the intended genre of music the hit was designed for.This leads into my favorite feature of the SR-16: Creating custom drum kits.You can save your custom setups as well, which is very handy and helpful for me, since I'm very spontaneous about my DAWless jamming. I prefer to turn the equipment on and just start punching in note data on the Launchpad to hear what happens to the synths I send the data to. Being able to have a drum set that I know well since I'm the one that compiled it eliminates unwanted setup time, and eliminates guesswork about the set. I do see that you can create your own sequences but again, I'm not utilizing this feature in my current setup.All in all, I'm again quite happy with the SR-16. While I'm only using a fraction of it's potential, I'm happy it's such a flexible and feature packed unit; I have room to grow with this unit, but even if I always just sequence it off my Launchpad, it does so very well.

I decided that while this is a good drum machine, I am going to return it.Why? It does have a bit of a learning curve, which is fine if the effort yields the results you're looking for, and that's just going to depend on what you're trying to create. I'll put the effort to learn literally anything if it yields results for my goals.The only problem for me was that it didn't seem to fit with the kind of music I'm wanting to do. At least not to the point where I would justify keeping it. I didn't see myself using it quite as much as my Roland TR-6S.But I definitely see the value in this for other types of music. It's worth the learning curve if it achieves the sounds you're looking for.I'd say give it a try. You might like it. If you don't you can always return it and get something else.

I've been looking at this for a while considering purchasing it but just now pulled the trigger (received it yesterday) and I wish I had done it sooner. I do have drums in my studio but I'm not a great drummer, I am a guitarist and it's quite tedious when writing to have to play and record the drums and guitars for a scratch track. I've had a Boss DR5 drum machine since the early 90's that I've used as a writing tool but that thing and its sounds are extremely outdated. I actually did purchase the Alesis SR16 circa 1991 but at the time I was young and didn't take the time to learn it (and didn't even know what Quantize meant) and so I just returned it. So, now that I've had many years experience programming drum machines, the SR18 was a breeze to get right to programming in no time. My first impression was that the drum sounds are amazing. They really do have a "real drummer" sound and I haven't even built my own kit from scratch yet. It has tons of advanced features that I will have to get familiar with the more I use it but it already has a place in my studio during my writing sessions. I know that by many tech standards, this is pretty old but the drum sounds are kind of timeless from what little time I've had to go through them. It has a drum sound for most music genres that are on the radio today and I've not scratched the surface of listening to them all, let alone doing a deep edit. Another thing I like, is that I can midi my Alesis Strike Pro drums through the SR18 using it as the drum brain or sample the SR18 sounds into my Strike module. I've always told other guitarists that they should keep a drum machine close by even for practicing at home because it makes playing so much more enjoyable than just the guitar alone and this machine also has bass that is as easy to program as the drums so even looping a beat with a simple bass line draws out more creativity. I highly recommend this to anyone who is wanting a drum machine, regardless of skill level in programming.Oh yeah, lastly, Thank you Alesis for including an actual physical manual (and an extensive one at that) in a time that most companies have stopped including them. They also included a very handy reference list that shows all of the instruments, categories, their names and locations within the machine. Also, stuck right to the bottom of the machine itself is another reference list of the Names and Locations of the Preser/User Patterns.