Alesis DM5

Software version 1.00

I just want to comment on this one factor, as it seems there is a wide range of opinions. My unit is totally solid, and has not locked up at all in normal use. This is a recently made unit so it may have had some bug fixes, even though the software revision says 1.00 However, those that do have random troubles might suspect the power supply. Inside the DM5 the power supply filter caps are, in my opinion too small and leave it susceptable to line glitches. I have found that a AC line glitch will cause the DM5 to reset easily than my other gear. A possible way around this is to change the wall wart to a slightly higher voltage, like 10% or so. This might provide more headroom for line fluctuations.

very easy to use you have to be dumb not to understand the manual

it has no built in effects and no expantion capabilities
but its easy to use

it has some bad ass sounds you can use all the kits for any type of music some of the sounds sound the same but most drum modules have that

i dont do gigs but i use it for my studio
so far i can depend on it

never dealt with them

i would buy it again i use it for hip hop music and its got the 808 and the 909 im using it on most of my album i like this unit better than the d4

The DM5 is extrememly easy to use. After working with a Roland TDK7 for over a year, it was great to get the DM5. I only use it for percussion effects and ethnic instruments as I have incorporated the unit with my acoustic kit.

This is the second DM5 that I have purchased. Initially, I bought the unit in an attempt to build an electronic drum kit to replace my acoustic kit. Very dumb thing to do...I ultimately returned the unit as it constantly locked up when playing fast fills or crescendos on multiple pads. I was very disappointed and ultimately bought a Roland TDK7 kit. It was great, but still not adequate to replace my acoustic kit. The second time around, I bought to unit just as an add-on to my acoustic kit and in this arena, it has responded wonderfully. Since there are no effects, I have added a Yamaha reverb unit to make the sounds a little more realistic. Mixed with my acoustic drums, no one else in the band can tell that my timbales, cross sticks, cowbells, and tambourine are electronic. Audience and other musicians constantly ask about the DM5 and comment on how "real" the percussion sounds from are.

Electronic drums and cymbals do not have the dynamic range, nuance capability, or expressiveness necessary to play all styles of music. The DM5 as well as any other electronic drum kit seems to lend itself almost exclusively to contemporary rock or dance music. I have tried everything electronic drum module produced since the early 80's and one just has to get used to the fact that an electronic drum set is a different instrument from an acoustic kit. Just as with guitars, one must use the right tool for the job. I would probably never use any of the so-called real drum sounds in this unit or any other. Give me my Fibes, my Sennheisers, and my Sabians any day; however, the percussion and ethnic instrument choices are very good to great. I have saved a small fortune in outboard percussion as well as not having to carry two-hundred additional instruments besides my kit. With just three ACUPADs, one dual zone and two single zones, I can use the DM5 with my acoustic kit to get the sounds necessary for almost any style, quickly and efficiently.

As I said earlier, the DM5 does not do everything perfectly; however, it performs great for the particular applications that I am currently using the unit for. I am using it on the gig without a backup, but it is not the center of my universer and I can get through most gigs without it.

I have never had to deal with the company. I always buy electronics from retailers that have a liberal return (refund) policy in order to make sure that I don't have to box up an item and ship to "God knows where".

I would definitely buy one to replace this one if lost or stolen.
Additionally, I use the DM5 patched to a Yamaha REV100 reverb, off to a Mackie, then to my QSC USA 900 amp, and finally to my JBL MR905 monitor. This particular combination sounds great. As far as general likes and dislikes, I particularly like the ease of editing and set up, and the cost is very reasonable. The sounds that I use are extremely musical and blend very nicely with my acoustic kit.

sounds are great for it's time. a breaze to use and workes equaly good with mesh pads, acoustic triggers and homeade practice pad ones too!! no auto-train for beginners either.

polyphony SUCKS! i get cutoffs all the time even with high decay rates and the PRESETS! that seems really cheep to me. (good thing i've got a nice e-mu sampler to controll with it:) i also wish you could send different notes/triggers do different MIDI channels instead of the way it's got a global MIDI channel. NO HI-HAT NUANCE, how un-pro!

feel of all types of pads is great. sounds are decent but not too real. good hip-hop/dance type stuff. again, POLYPHONY SUCKS, OK trigger to MIDI converter though.

actually it has crashed on me a few times, did Microsuck help Alesis with the software? only when editing parameters though. if i don't touch it after it's set it's cool.

still havn't found out how to see the OS version.

wish i had an overpriced TD-10 instead, but still pretty happy.

It's very easy to use, you just play the drum you'd like to change
and the unit focuses on that particular note. I borrowed this thing
for a weekend to record some midi drums, imitating a real kit.
I would've liked it to be possible to build a kit just containing the drums actually used. It's hard to remember the notes when you are
trying out different sounds while playing the song. The presets are
really worthless. None of them are usable. Who's decided a jazz kit is
supposed to sound lifeless? The presets seem to be designed for demo
purposes. I don't like that the sounds and presets
are similiar to General Midi. The reason I want a drum module is to
get something more professional than my sound canvas. The drums are
set to really strange volumes, I mean, the drum maps in cubase has
already taken care of volume balances so you have to reset the volumes for all the voices you use.

I like the note chase feature as I mentioned. It makes it easy to
edit the patches. There are two aux outputs, thats nice for effects,
compression or emulating a real drum mix on the console. I guess
the dmpro is even better at that. I would've liked more panning steps,
at -2 the cymbal is almost fully panned left.
The preview button is nice, it's made of rubber like a drum pad,
but the velocity is too low, you have to hit it real hard to hear
something.

I got this thing to try to emulate Carter Beauford's kit, a Yamaha
Recording Custom. That means I had absolutely no use for those analog
sounds. At first I thought sounded bad but it's because the sounds
has some personality, they don't sound clinical, like many cheaper
modules. It often sounds very alive.
There's all the kick drums you need, plenty of snares and
lots of toms. Most of the voices sound realistic but I'm still dissapointed in Alesis. Their modules are supposed to be high-end.
Is the people who sample the drum kit musicians or technicians?
I can't really complain about the snares or the kick drums, but why
are all tom combinations completely different? The first cathegory, called hero, has four pitches, the next has only three, of which the two lowest sound almost the same. I needed six toms, so I had to
put them togeather from various tom cathegories.
The hi-hats sound okay for a start, there are many variations, closed,
half-closed, open. That's good. The open hats don't sound natural if
you play like a 8th beat. A closed hat in a cathegory might sound good
while the open is not usable. Then we get to the cymbals. There are 96
kick drums, more than a hundred snares but only sixteen cymbals!?
I would've excepted a lot of differently pitched crashes, splashes, chinas, even stacked china configurations. Theres two really nice
sounding ride cymbals with accompanying bells. Then there's a dark
crash and a thin crash. Then theres exactly the same cymbals sampled in stereo. Why?!?!?! A kit is most often recorded with two overhead
mics, why bother using two mics for a single cymbal? Then there's
the same cymbals with flanger added. If I needed flanger, I'd add
that with external fx. Fx cymbals are just a waste of sample space.
The only splash sounds really good. The chinas sound similiar to
each other, they don't sound really natural, not metallic at all.
There isn't any internal effects, but many of the samples include
reverb or even flanger! I really would've liked all the samples to
be dry, or at least to reverb could've been optional.
Finally, why do they give their presets and voices such wierd names?
Why can't they just give the sample the same name as the drum they're
sampling, for example 14" Crash.
Apart from that, it sounds really alive compared to multitimbral modules. I just thought it would be more professional.

I only used it for a weekend so I can't really tell. It seemed to
be well built, I don't think I'd need a backup since I would have
it installed in a rack and run it from a lap-top.

They sell t-shirts, such stuff should be given away!!!!! :)

No I wouldn't buy it again, in fact I wouldn't buy it at all, since I
have not yet bought it :) I use a sound canvas 55 and the dm5 is
superior to it. I'm happy with the recordings I made with it, it's just too limited for further use. I'll be getting drum mics instead since I can play all the drum stuff myself and I want live drum sound. I chose the alesis module because I thought it would be professional, something different from those general midi sounds i'd been using. I was wrong. I had expected dry samples too. I can't really decide who would buy this module. Home studio users don't really need 96 kick drums and a professional studio most definetly needs more than 16 cymbals.

Plug it in, turn it on. Huzzah! The manual is preeeety. Setting up the triggers was equally easy... The default settings actually wound up being the best in most cases, though tweaking the response curves is by no means a chore.

I think the other reviews summed up the features -- I havn't run out of polyphony, it can't accept new sounds, no effects, etc. Someone complained about the lack of ability to pan, etc -- but it DOES have a set of aux outs... So you can always pan by hand. Someone also whined about multitimbrality... You can make (nee, you really MUST make) your own drum kits. Which means you can assign any sample to any note. Generally most people arn't gonna be using more than sixty odd drum timbres in any given song, right? So just assign your alternate thumpy-thumpies to a different octave instead of a different channel. No biggie. And quite frankly I'm glad it doesn't have one of those crummy built in reverbs in it -- I'd just wind up turning it off anywho.

The triggers, of course, send out MIDI note / velocity info as well. This alone makes the box worth it.

I built trigger pads for it, and was really *quite* pleasantly suprised with how well they worked. Radio Shack piezos, a couple Remo practice pads for snare, two toms and hat, and 99c mouse pads for the rest. The practice pads work the best, of course. Absolutely NO false triggering or crosstalk -- even on fast snare rolls with viscious dynamics. V-Drums it ain't, but it was like $200 for the whole setup. Pretty keen!

I'm a real-drums purist. So I'm gonna be pretty touchy. And I think it sounds DAMN good, all things considered. Other reviewers bitched about the hats and cymbals, but I certainly can't. They sound far better than your average unit / sample CD, and considering the price, that's really all you can ask for. Sure, they don't sound real but the only way you could even begin to approach realism (and still fail, I might add) would be taking a couple dozen multisamples with full decay. And that's an unacceptable squandering of memory. So just rock out and smile, people.

Admittely, the main reason I got it was for the trigger ins. But I opted for this instead of a D4 'cos folks said it had the spiffy collection of electronic/industrial/techno drums. They lie! They lie! I mean sure, there's some thuds, bzzts, tchssts, and zwips, but people doing technoid music are gonna want a little more aural variation than the single 808 kick they provide, you know?

Seriously gang, if you're looking to do electromayheym and don't need the triggers, a shoddy ancient sampler would getcha better milage for the same price. I bought it for an industrial project, and it works pretty well for that. But you if you ran a woodchuck through enough distortion and effects it'd work well for industrial, so hey.

If you're looking for that real drum sound, I'd suggest making friends with people who play drums. They're really not that bad once you get to know them!

But like I said: overall, the sounds are quite good.

In the six months or so that I've had it the preview button has become somewhat tempremental, and the LCD flickers. It has yet to give me any REAL trouble, but I cast it furtive glances out of the corner of my eye... while whispering it sweet nothings in vain attempts to satiate its cranky disposition.

I fear it. Fearing your gear ain't good. It's like a car that makes strange noises, but runs fine and the mechanics all say it's fine.

I needed a power supply (wall wart! evil!). The manual doesn't give the power specs, so I sent them a few emails trying to find out how many mA it ran at. No response to any of them. I finally called them and they answered all my questions right off the bat. After not getting around to building a transformer myself (they used nonstandard parts), I wound up ordering one from Alesis... which cost $30! $30 for a wall wart! Aiee! (My email asking to buy a wall wart, however, was answered immediately... go figure, eh?)

For the price I paid, it was certainly worth it simply for entertainment value. I'm mostly a keys and gtr kinda guy -- I don't have a full acoustic drumset, so just being able to go hog wild, whack stuff and have sounds come out is it worth it. I've never wound up using it for a production track, but that has less to do with the unit itself and more to do with my method.

For the price, it's unbeatable.

The alesis DM5 is easy to use. I found it very user friendly straight out of the box.I was up and running in a few short moments

The Alesis DM5 is very limited when you talk about features. although if you are looking for a steady workhorse this is a great module

The Alesis DM5 has very good drum sounds and certain effects. but, when it comes to cymbals that is a completly different story. The cymbals sound like very inexpensive entry level cymbals. Look! Lets face it, if a drummer is going to spend that kind of money on a module they are going to expect to have good all around sounds.

The Alesis DM5 is dependable although, I did have to reinitialize it 4 or 5 times in the few short weeks that I owned it. It would play fine for a good hour but then it would start double triggering really bad. to get it to stop you would have to reinitialize it. Which is really tragic when you lose all of the custom settings that you spent your very valuable time entering.

I did not deal with the co. I felt that if I was going to get the best out of my electronic set I was going to have to get a More professinal module

The Alesis DM5 is a good all around module for the drummer that needs a module to do simple things(and I stress simple) If a drummer is ever going to do any advanced projects with his module My opinion is to go ahead bite the bullet and put in the extra cash to get a professional module. And if you cant afford it now, save until you can. It is better to spend more now than to lose your initial investment later when you get frustrated and trade the DM5 in and lose money. AND YOU WILL!!!

Very easy to use. A trained monkey could use it.

16 voice polyphony I think. I use this in combination with 3 other drum machines, and I never run out of notes, ever. This box has basically no features: No effects, no editing of the synth parameters other than pan, pitch and volume.

The unit sounds plasticky and fake to me. That's not always a bad thing though, because I do industrial/electronica MIDI stuff. I process the F out of the output with an SE-70, and bury it in the mix. I definitely do NOT recommended the DM5 for acoustic rock use.

My first 3 were defective (patch corruptions, frequent lockups). Alesis support eventually figure out the problem, and sent me one that works. The new unit is rock solid.

Very professional tech support, not dorks asking if it's plugged in and turned on.

I'm happy having this as drum box number 3. I don't base tracks around it too often, but I do use it in some way on almost every song. I like it enough that I got the DMpro too, which is 3 times as good, at twice the cost. You decide which is right for you.

NOTE: I do electronica/industrial/dance. My rating is for this genre only. I would not recommend this for use in acoustic rock or any kind of acoustic setup.

Couldn't be easier, This is one of the easiest to use drum modules on the plannet. Far easier to use than the DM Pro, maybe too easy :-)

When hooked up to pads this module has excellent response. It picks up the lightest taps on my pad and responds to heavy hits as well, this module is very velocity sensitive. I have a Roland PD-5 hooked up to mine and I use it for the snare drum in a midi set up, I only have one pad though. It would be nice to have a full set to try out.

I've been using this module for a couple years in my midi rack and it is well suited for midi percussion tracks. It's got plenty of nice sounds that fit many types of music. (techno, rap, rock) The timing is very crisp and accurate compared to some of my other slower gear (Oberheim Matrix 1000, Roland Alpha Juno) Another nice bonus is that all the kits are laid out for general midi percussion, it takes a lot of guess work out of finding the right sound for the right job.

The only real complaints I have are that this module is not multi-timbral. I would like to have a few channels of drum channels please (Alesis are you listening?) Also it would be nice to be able to PAN the drums in realtime via midi, ANY sampler can do this why can't this module do it ugh! I get around this problem by using another module for high hats that can pan. (Emu Vintage Keys) Another way to get around this is to set the pan of the cymbles to be in different places in the mix.

Another complaint is the limited polyphony, when I start getting wild with the drums I start hearing sounds cut out. I think the DM Pro probabbly fixes this problem.

The sounds are where this module shines, when I first played one at my local music store I knew immediately that I had to have it. It's got a ton of kicks and snares that are all nice and crispy. Sometimes a little too crispy, but there are some nice PHAT analog sounding kick drums in there. The standards are all met, TR-808, TR-909, rock drums, pop drums, everythings there, world drums.

Some of the world instruments are very expressive and respond to velocity well. The high hats and cymbles are fairly expressive, but still don't come close to playing a real cymble.

It responds to midi velocity well and doesn't respond to aftertouch at all, (Why would it need to? Drums are too short to jam on with aftertouch.)

The sounds can be set to respond to the pitch wheel.

I would like to be able to assign a sound to a controller so I can pan it individually in the mix. It would also be nice to be able to have some sounds respond to pitch while others don't. I think I had it doing that before but I can't seem to figure out how to reproduce that.

This module lacks an effects unit but has 4 outputs that are easily plugged into an fx unit. The DM Pro has an FX unit.

The 18 bit converters on this unit make it very crisp and nice sounding, for sound I give it a 10, for expresiveness I give it a 7. Overall I would give it an 8 for this category.

One thing I just recently learned is that the DM5 allows one parameter to be controlled with a midi controller in realtime. Midi Controller 6 can control the data entry knob just like from the front panel. Hence, I CAN PAN THE SOUND NOW!! The midi CTRL must be set to on from the midi page.

The controller #6 is also very useful with note chase enabled. I can switch sounds and change parameters without being next to the module, niiiicee...

For these added bonuses I will pump up my rating to a 9. It still would be nice to have a permanent parameter to control things with though.

I've been using this for a couple years now with no problems what-so-ever. This unit is solid as a rock.

I haven't dealt with Alesis but when I email them they respond so I would give them a plus in that department, I don't feel I can rate them for customer support though, because I've never had to deal with them. I would give them a 10 because I haven't had to deal with them, but I will refrain because I haven't.

This little beasty is highly rated in my opinion. Many of the sounds are very effects-unit-friendly. This unit fits techno related music well, it's also nice for other non techno types, like pop for instance. The tom sounds on this unit sound almost exactly like a Phil Collins set. So this would fit 80's retro well. The Heavy metal types will love the drums on this machine as well. Rappers will love the 808 and 909 samples although there could have been a lot more of them, I would recommend the DM Pro.

Overall this unit is very nice and can be had for cheap. It is the cream of the crop for midi enthusiasts. The sounds are better than an Emu Procussion but it lacks many of the features the Procussion has, (sound layering, panning, multi-timbral)

For this quality at this price there is not much comparason I give the DM 5 a 9.

Super easy to use, as easy as any other drum brain I've used (Roland TD-5, Yamaha DTX). But I haven't done anything complex or changed any settings on it. It has an LCD panel tho, which like the DTX makes things easier than on the TD-5.

The one bad thing that I think is important for potential buyers to know, is the HighHat cannot make all those inbetween sounds from open to closed. This is a BIG flaw to me in this day and age of electronic stuff, especially considering it's price of around $350 new. NOTE: the Roland TD-5, TD-7, and Yamaha DTX all are capable of highhat inbetween sounds. A good feature it has is a lot of inputs on the back.

Sound quality is good, but some sounds do seem to rely on effects (flanging, etc.) to sound good. Note that I like all 3 brains (DM5, TD-5, DTX), but the DTX does the best job of sounding like true acoustic drums recorded in a studio. On that the DTX is amazing. The DM5 and TD-5 shine on having powerful sounds that are cool for hard rock and techno/dance stuff. I do think the TD-5 outdoes the DM5 on useable sounds tho.

Here is one area where I think the DM5 outshines the TD-5; it's built like a tank and has rubberish buttons instead of brittle plastic. I've rented this thing several times and the units have always worked fine, --and you know how rental stuff gets (mis)treated.

Overal it's a good box but is too expensive new at $350ish, and also sell for too much used, usually in the $300 range. Also since it's been around so long and they have the new DMPro I think the price oughtta go lower. The TD-5's sell for surprisingly low used (I got one for $200). These two are good competitors but I would give the nod to the TD-5 for a few reasons.