N i g e l wrote:I disagree, for a lot of people the user interface is an important part of the process.
Of course.
I know what you are saying, but trust me, there is nothing about the user interface experience of using an RX11 that you'd want to pay £400 (or even £40!) for.
I've already said there *are* reasons to get *the good ones* if you like the hardware and experience - I'm not anti-hardware - and those ones are the extra pricey/desirable ones.
I mean, an RZ-1 might be fun but it sounds like pants and the main sampling feature is awful compared to *every other tool you already have*. A Korg DDM-110? A box that barely syncs to anything, has about three bars worth of memory and terrible short sounds that everybody hated even when it was released and digital drum machines were *the* sexy thing... Sure - get the samples if you want that aesthetic, but there is really no reason to buy the hardware other than to put more boxes on your desk.
If they were simply fun, "play with" money - sure, grab them, be reminded just how bad they were, discard them afterwards. But at *serious* money... it can be *much* better spent imo.
Let's take, say, the TR-707 - the first digital drum machine from Roland and it had that grid display and some other fun programming tools. Yes - the sounds can be perfectly replicated in software, and the grid programming we all have in our DAWs/sequencers of choice. But, I'd still quite like one - I think they look nice (nostalgia - hi!), and it'd be fun to play with (for an evening). However, the amount of money it would cost to play with one *vastly* outweighs it's musical usefulness, especially as I already have the sounds, and the programming environment (and then some) already. And that's one of the decent (& trendy) ones.
N i g e l wrote:The 808 is a good example because it bombed on release. "it didnt sound like real drums".
Thereafter It was picked up cheap, found its niche with the creatives and established as a classic.
For me, there's zero reason to want a hardware 808, but loads of people do, and for them, it's an expensive but valid purchase. I've no problem with that at all. Whatever inspires you etc.
Note though that my original point was specifically about the early, inflexible, bad-sounding *digital* drum machines that can be perfectly replicated by samples - *not* analog machines, where that's not necessarily the case, depending on how purist a given user is.