Behringer tackle the world’s most iconic drum machine with the RD-808, a clone of the Roland TR-808 analogue drum machine. And, while original 808s regularly sell for several thousand pounds, the RD-800 will conform to Behringer’s “competitive” pricing model. Given their Minimoog Model D copy sells for only £299, as opposed to £3000 for a genuine Moog, we’d expect the pricing to be in the low hundreds.
The RD-808 isn’t a straight clone of the Roland hardware and adds a few useful features. The first is an analogue, resonant two-pole filter, like the one found on Behringer’s Neutron synth. Also, they’ve provided a transient designer/bus compressor with the ability to assign one or more sounds to it. This is a particularly useful addition as users of the 808 have for years been compressing the kick output of the 808.
It features eleven individual direct outs, trigger outputs, MIDI I/O via 5-pin DIN and USB.
