Alesis D4 Drum Module

An excellent buy used from $150-$200. Keyboard Magazine did a test on midi response by drum boxes and the DR and SR16 came in tops with one of the Boss units coming in last! If you need just a piezo transducer to midi box look for old KAT MidiKITIs. I own two and wouldn't part but sometimes they show up like Yamaha TX802s and Roland MKS-20s. PAiA has something they call the Drum Brain which I am set to explore. It would enable you to keep your cherished drum machine and not have to buy a D5 which I would not recommend. Some bothersome bugs in that unit.

As stated above-Keyboard Mag found the D4 had the quickest response to piezo transducers. Radio Shack sells them for $1.79!

I have D4s at two schools and the sounds are very useful-not super cutting edge electronica but most drummers want fairly standard sounds. I prefer the drums in the D4 over most drum machines. I own a Boss DR770 triggered by two MidiKITIs for a total of 18 triggers. I use no more than 13.

I have taken units apart to "tighten" up the front controls. I also upgraded a first generation D4 with a $20 upgrade from Alesis which was very simple.

Hopefully Alesis will have some autonomy but that seems iffy with Numark now in control. Time will tell. In a year maybe Alesis will be reduced to DJ oriented stuff.

If you see a D4 buy it! Hold on to it. Pass on the D5.

I bought this unit to replace the sad drum sounds on my Yamaha V50 (not the world's best board, but I have too much sequenced into it to lose it now.) Editing is pretty easy, and though I've read the DM5 has some other parameters, I really can't complain about the D4's offerings. It's pretty straight forward. I don't think I've ever opened my manual.

Great basic sounds, but I do wish there was an effects system in the downstream instead of built into the sounds themselves. I also kind of wish there was a card slot for sound expansion, even if I've never used all of the ones I've got.

The first weekend we took this thing out I hadn't quite matched all 61 sounds in my V50 to the D4. One of our programs had a symbol crash we'd not tweaked down and it absolutely ripped my head off, like standing next to a real drummer. That's how I knew I'd spent wisely...I've used it for live rock and recording, and it sounded great both ways. It doesn't call attention to itself by sounding like it's electronic, and that's the most important thing in a drum synth.

I can't imagine that much would go wrong with a rack mount, short of all out meltdown.

I give it a less than perfect score because the volume pot on the front gets dirty too easily, and I have to deal with the crackling noise from time to time.

In fairness, I haven't dealt with Alesis for this product. However, I have an Alesis mixer, and they were less than helpful with it. I'll leave this 5 for marginal previous service.

Lost or stolen, I'm looking for a new one tomorrow. $200 ? El cheapo.
I MIDI it from the drum machine sequencer on my V50, a workhorse I really should retire. I also have an EMU Proformance Plus piano unit and a full PA system, and I play guitar, and it sounds great with everything. Unnoticed as anything but drums in a recording, but plenty of punch through the big PA at live gigs.

I didn't compare it to anything else, I heard this unit triggered by an acoustic drummer and knew I had to have one. It has the distinction of being a piece of gear that does exactly what I bought it to do with minimal fuss. I'd like to move to a DM5, but there's no real reason to do so.

I was looking on Harmony Central and I noticed some DM-5 reviews, but no D4 reviews. Since the D4 is still popular and out there on the used market, I thought I would contribute a review.
Alesis advertised the D4 as having the best sounds from the HR-16 and SR-16 drum machines. While it does probably have some of those sounds I can tell you from experience (I own an HR-16, and three friends have SR-16's, which I've programmed extensively for them) that the D4 sounds WAY BETTER THAN THE SR-16 and HR-16.
If you've heard an SR-16 (and who hasn't) don't assume the D4 sounds just the same. I don't know what they did, but the cymbals in particular (except for the short cutoff, which they share with the SR-16) sound a lot better.
The D4 was released in late 1991, and was later replaced (in 1995?) by the DM-5. While the DM-5 was an improvement over the D4 (better display, 18 bit converters, more sounds) it wasn't a big enough improvement to make me want to upgrade.
The new Alesis Drum Module, the DM-Pro is really all new, whereas the DM-5 (which I understand is still in the lineup, at around $350 street price)is really a "turbo" D4.
Not sure of the software version - I bought the unit in mid 1993 about a year and a half after it's introduction. I'm not sure if an update was ever offered or not.
The presets (drum sets) I never really used. I programmed my own sets right from the start. The preset sounds though, except for the cymbals are excellent. Lots of variety in Kicks and Snares, not so much in toms or other percussion. Most of the sounds are kind of bread and butter sounds, not too much for techno fiends or really odd sounds.
The cymbals due to the short decays are not so good. The intitial tone is ok, but they cut off very early. If you bury them in a track, you don't notice so much, but solo'ed they are not too hot. They really should have provded more hi-hat sounds also.
Editing patches is really easy, especially using the "note follow" feature. This lets you strike a pad or key and the editing screen will advance to the correct drum. Be careful programming it with a drummer striking pads though - drummers tend to hit the drum you want, then get antsy and hit two or three more drums. Then the note window changes as you are turning the dial and you've just screwed something up.
A patch editor helps a good bit, especially because you can see the volume levels of all the individual drums for balancing the set, as well as all of the individual instruments. I use Midi-Quest, by Sound Quest, which works great. Just be sure to turn the midi through function off when dumping a drum kit to your computer.
This thing is so easy to edit though, I rarely use the computer to edit kits.
HERE'S A HOT TIP. If you are using a D4 (or DM-5, or DM-Pro) with a pad type setup, you are only going to have maybe 16 sounds going at once max. Go into the mix screen and set all the drums you are NOT using to a volume level of 0. That way, while editing, instead of wondering if "wet tom" is part of the kit you are editing, you will know IT'S NOT IF THE VOLUME IS SET TO 0.
The Alesis drum modules allow you access to 61 sounds (one for each key on a 61 note keyboard) at once within a kit, but if you are not going to play more than 16 at once, it's much easier to just deal with those 16 drums rather than trying to figure out which ones are being used and which ones are not.
You can store 21 kits, which seems kind of small. I would like to be able to store 128 or so, to allow a different (if even just slightly different) kit for each song.
You can't really edit much on the sounds, nothing like decay or nuance like with the Roland drum modules. You are pretty much limited to pitch level, and panning, along with output assignment (main or aux).
The manual is very good, especially the triggering section. They really provide a lot of good advice.
This thing is real easy to program, I'm taking off a point for the small number of drum kits, and the small display w

Polyphony is 16 notes, which doesn't sound like much, but for a drum module it's plenty. Who's the last drummer you saw that could play more than four notes at once?
Even with cymbal overring, and adding some percussion tracks, you usually won't run out of notes. I know that I never have.
No built in effects (the new Alesis DM-Pro has effects, but costs $650 - $700), but many of the drums are recorded with a bit of reverb or ambience. If you like a fairly dry drum sound, these are fine, but if you like it wet, use an outboard unit. This unit combined with a decent digital reverb can achieve outstanding results.
No expansion capabilities (again the DM-Pro has a card slot, but hey it costs a lot too), the stock memory is 3 Meg of samples, which is a lot for drums (a lot of synths from that era [1991 - 1995] only had two to four meg of waveform rom).
Obviously no keyboard action, it's a module. It is very responsive when used with a pad type of controller. I use a DrumKat setup, and the D4 really shines with it. You can get good results playing the drums from a keyboard, but do yourself a favor and buy a pad setup.
There is an "audition" button on the front, which is velocity sensitive. This is a real nice touch.
Another nice feature (shared with the HR-16 and SR-16) is FOUR audio outputs. The stock D4 assigns all the drums to the Main pair, in stereo but the thing to do is to put your kick on the aux output, pan it to the left side and the snare on the aux output, and pan it to the right.
Then send all four outs to your board. This way you can process the kick and snare separate from your other drums (with reverb, compression etc.) and turn the kick and snare up or down without having to go into the mixer screen.
The one feature I feel is kind of lame is only 7 positions of panning. Basically you get center, and three positions on either side, one of which is all the way over, so unless you want extreme panning to your toms and cymbals you are limited to two postions each that are off center.
The Roland TD series are better in this respect in that they have 15 positions.
Where the D4 is a lot better though is the tuning and volume resolution. The D4 volumes go from 0 to 99, and the tuning goes from about plus four semitones to minus five semitones, and then you can edit the pitch to 1/100 of a semitone (that's right, you can do a pitch like +2.69).
The Roland TD-5/7/7 Turbo series in contrast only have a volume range of 0 to 15 and a pitch range of 0 to 15, which corresponds to about the same overall range as the D4, but you can't fine tune the drums. Imagine tuning a drum kit where you can only tune in half steps, yechhh!
The big thing about the D-4 and it's successors are trigger inputs.
There are 12 trigger ins on this unit (12 on the DM-5, 16 on the DM-Pro). I've not used them much but what little I have they have worked excellent. I used a D4 at a studio I worked at (which led me to buying my own D4 later on) with pads, AND to replace drums recorded on a 24 track. The live drum replacement took a little work, but in the end it worked well. Most external pads work great, there are 5 main parameters to tweak, but it's easy to understand. There's a "gain level" meter in the LCD to facilitate setting up the triggers. Works like a charm.
Now here's the cool part - when I first heard about the D4, I thought it was just a midi module. Then I found out it had triggers on it. I figured ok, you can trigger it by pads, but how do you record that into a sequencer?
I assumed that at that price point ($240 is what I paid for mine) you were not going to get trigger to midi conversion. Well it turns out this little box will turn your triggers into midi, and do a damn fine job of it!
Amazing - at the time the only competing box (the EMU Procussion) didn't even have trigger ins, much less trigger to midi conversion, and it cost 3 times as much.
Most trigger to midi converters back then cost about $500 - $1000.
If you check out the web sites

The instrument sounds (except for the cymbals) are very realistic. In fact one criticism of the D4 is that it was a little too clean, that the drums did not have attitude. I wished there were more cymbals, and hi hats, and some more exotic percussion (I really miss tympani drums and gongs in particular) but for regular sorts of rock music, this module has it covered.
Works great for rock, especially if you are trying to emulate a drum set. Not enough old beat box samples to satisfy the dance/techno hip hop crowd though, which reflects the time (1991) this was released.
Not enough orchestral percussion for classical.
Not enough weirdness or programmability for Dance/Techno.
Like I said, great for rock, go imitate a drum set, leave the weird stuff to all those new "groove boxes" made by Roland...
No onboard effects. The built in ambiences are nice, in that they are good enough to get by without effects, but subtle enough to not be overbearing. I find I only really need to add a reverb to the snare drum, and this is more for programmability reasons, not because the snares with reverb on the D4 don't sound good.
Very responsive to a good midi controller, the sounds change character a bit with velocity, just like real drums. Alesis's marketing hype term for this is "dynamic articulation", but it really does work. Again it's like the effects, it's good enough to hear, but subtle enough to not get too old.
No response to aftertouch that I'm aware of.
It can respond to pitch bend, but in a very strange way. You can't bend a drum in pitch after you strike it (to get a talking drum effect) but you can bend the pitch BEFORE you strike the drum, and the module will play the drum back at the higher pitch.
One quirk (or Alesis might call it a feature) is that you can get more pitch range by using pitch bend than you can program into a kit by using the pitch parameter.
Not something that gets used a lot, but it's there if you need it.
One final bit. This module responds to midi volume (controller 7) messages, which was kind of novel in 1991 (the HR-16 did not). This is nice as you can use a midi controller to change the volume of the entire kit, which saves you having to set up the drums on a submaster on your board.
This feature (midi volume control) works great, I use it all the time.
I'm taking off two points for the quaility of the cymbals. I'm sure this was a sample ROM issue, to include cymbals with a full length ring would have required a lot of sample ROM and raised the price of the unit.
Also Alesis may have assumed that higher end users would use a pad setup, but with real cymbals.
In any event, the cymbal sounds, like that of most drum machines and competing modules are the weak point of the Alesis D4.

Very reliable, with one major exception.
The volume pot, which I almost never touch (I use midi volume control instead) got REAL Scratchy after a few years.
I don't know what the FRIGGIN DEAL is with Alesis, but every time they put a ROTARY volume pot on one of their products, it gets scratchy over time. Ever seen an SR-16 that did't go SCLKFKKSCKRWWEE when you turned the volume pot - same applies to the old version of the Quadrasynth. They must have gotten a gross of crappy pots, and took until 1995 to use them up.
Interesting that they went to a volume SLIDER when the came out with the QS-6/7/8 synths. The quality of the volume pot was a big bitch from users of the original Quadrasynth.
I would gig without backup, althought the external power supply would make me real nervous (nothing like having your drums just stop in the middle of a tune while the drummer frantically tries to plug that little cable into the back of the module after it fell out...
I'm taking off three points for the scratchy volume pot, and the damn wall wart. I would have paid another $50 for an internal power supply but Alesis seems to be in love with wall warts.

Two words - TOTAL SHIT
Don't ever buy an Alesis product that you might think you need to contact the company about.
IF you can get through on the phone, don't count on talking to someone that knows what they are talking about. I've described problems with my Alesis effect units that the techs just couldn't even understand.
I've emailed them numerous times and NEVER got a response. Either they just blew me off, or figured my questions (about my effects, NOT my D4) were too hard to bother answering.
I've had to buy replacement rack ears for a MidiVerb IV and a 3630 compressor, and since they don't list the number or email on their web site for getting parts, they just tell you to contact tech support
After waiting for half an hour to get through on the phone, the tech support people give me another number to call. Thank god that # was easy to reach.
Hey Alesis, just print the damn number for parts so people can call it directly!
I realize that everybody, including a lot of clueless people own some Alesis gear, and that's why their phone and email is jammed, but it would seem to me that a company that sells more product than just about any company out there OWES their customers better service than they are giving. It's not like they aren't making enough money from all of us to afford it.
Alesis should take a look at Mackie's tech support and try to emulate it. Right now Alesis makes Microsoft look pretty good.
I wouldn't be so pissed about this if they had answered one of the four emails I sent...

As you can tell I really like the D4. I can't think of any other piece of gear I've bought for under $300 that has gotten as much use as this little puppy.
If it were lost or stolen, I'd probably get another one, mainly because I've recorded a lot of sequences with it, and used ones are around for $125 - $150. At that price point it's a fantastic value.
I've got my eye on a DM-Pro though, as I want to got to a pad type setup and I need more than 12 trigger ins. Also the built in effects, larger sample ROM (16 meg vs. 3 meg) for better cymbals, and positional sensing hi hat switch are very enticing.
Still I'll probably keep my D4, just because it's worth more to me than I could sell it for.
I've been playing for way too long, but I've been heavily into midi and synths, AND electronic drums for about 12 years.
I have a bunch of midi synths and other gear, but I've always loved electronic drums (must have been a Bill Bruford thing) even though I'm a bass player not a drummer.
I started out with an Octapad (original version, not the II), and a Roland TR-505 (still in use, I use it to generate click tracks), but then got some more Roland pads and the HR-16.
Then in 1993, the Octapad's triggering flakyness started to piss me off and I decided to get a Drum Kat.
I wanted to get a new module, and at the time other than overpriced Roland Drum machines (I think their R-8 module was $900, with NO trigger ins) and modules, and the Procussion, the Alesis D-4 was the only box on the market. Between the sounds, user interface, trigger to midi conversion, etc. it was no contest. I've never regretted buying it, and in fact that one D4 is still in use at the studio I worked at.
The only wish list itemsI have (all of which have been addressed by the DM Pro)are:
1. Longer decay on the cymbals 2. More interesting percussion, especially gongs, tympani, etc. 3. 6 audio outs instead of four (to separate kick/Snare, toms, cymbals) 4. Built in effects
Obivously, with the exception of maybe #1 or #2, I wouldn't have gotten these features in 1993 for $240 out the door.
It's helped me make a lot of music, and people still comment on how good it sounds.
The final thing I would like to pass along is my impression of some competing modules. Roland has been very successful with their TD series but mainly on the basis of offering an integrated system, with all the pads and cables, connectors, clamps, etc. With the Alesis, you have to buy a kit from somewhere, hook it up, make it work, program it etc.
Now the V-Drums are great, but in a whole different price universe (I think the V-Drum module alone sells for about $1200 - $1400), but frankly I don't think much of the TD series modules.
I have two friends with TD-7 kits, and I've played and programmed them extensively and frankly I was not impressed. The tuning and volume resolution of the programming interface is way too coarse, and the drums all have a DDDDOOOMMMMMM kind of "simmons" quality to them.
The TD sounds don't "lay" in a recorded track as well as the Alesis and overall I find the sounds to be kind of soft and mushy. They sound big and fat, but to me they don't sound real. With the D-4 you can hear the stick hit the drum and the decay of the drum is pretty fast, like a real drum sounds.
The TD modules sound kind of muffs at the beginning, then kind of blooms and goes booohhhh.
The midi response of the TD series to playback via midi is not as good as the Alesis, and frankly I don't think the Trigger interace is as good.
The effects are ok, but here's a big one that roland doesn't tell you.
If you want to use the aux outs (to get four outputs) you have to bypass the effects, which means if you want to pull that kick or snare out of the overall mix, you better have an extra effect unit laying around.
Also - the ONE BIG THING THAT ROLAND DOESN'T TELL YOU AND IS NOT DOCUMENTED IN THE MANUAL.
There's not edit buffer!!! That's right sherlock, as soon as you edit a kit on the TD series, you've just overwrit