Boss DR-770

This review is an update of my earlier one. Some drum boxes have inexcusable omissions. The Alesis SR16 had no hihat foot closing (their D4 had a soft and hard closing and one with reverb). The Boss DR770 has no finger snap! (the Alesis D4 I think had 3) Tuning the handclap at almost max withsome nuance (tinmbre) tweaking can suffice for those classic Motown hits. The wide tuning range enables one to "stretch" or "deflate" a sample to check if there might be a useful morphed mutation. It is also intriguing to reach a point in editing where the sample has morphed into a creative dead end.

The unit does heat up. Since my warranty was up I felt I might experiment but drilling some holes in the plastic case where I felt some "ventilation" might help. One risks creating an portal for contamiants, water, dust, microscopic gremlins etc. I suggest you put a tight weave "grill" over any vents.

It depends. If you are using the internal sequencer, it's somewhat of a pain compared to most sequencers (mainly because of the smallish display). Instead, I use the pads to program beats into Cubase via MIDI. Editing sounds is cake. Assigning drums to different keys is also cake. Saving=cake.

Polyphony won't be a problem for you. Effects are useful, especially the delay. Reverb is the next most useful, if you don't have outboard reverb. Strangely, the "Lo-fi" and "Dark" effects have a flanging quality to them, which sucks. Also, the Lo-fi doesn't sound lo-fi at all. Oh yeah, e.q. is global, which sucks. There is a bass boost effect which is very nice. But you can only use one effect at a time.

Killer samples! Electronic drums rule and are right in your face. The acoustic drums rule, with many different snares and bass drums closed mic'd perfectly. Toms explode. Needs more of a wide assortment of ethnic percussion, though. Some tablas and congas are authentic and cool, but do we really need another friggin' shaker sound? Cymbals are decent; I especially like the rivet ride and some closed hi-hats, but this is the machine's weakest point. They don't suck (well some open hats do), but they don't impress like the snares and toms. Some of the cock-rocky snares will bug some users--that is, until they realize that those sounds can be made useful and interesting if you edit them.

Get's hot but hasn't been a real problem as my studio is freezing most of the time. Never crashed. Pads will succumb to entropy sooner than expected, I'm sure. I plan on getting a multipad controller like the new Akai thingee (it's basically an MPC-2000, minus the sampler and sequencer). That would work perfectly with this unit.

n/a

This is a great machine that has so much potential. With all the sounds onboard and an external sequencer and audio program (like Cubase) you can use this for your rhythm parts for the rest of your life! It's that good. Drum machines like these ain't just for demos anymore. Buy it fast.

The sounds on this unit are great. The manual is not terribly clear, but then
that's probably because the interface on this unit sucks.

The features are outweighed by the lack of features, specifically
APPEND

Sounds good, but the 200 presets is misleading. Each particular style consists of 5
patterns, so in reality, you only get 40 preset styles. Growing your own is a pain. The Alesis
I used to have would let you program in a measure or two, and then you
could append these measures to get the desired length. Same thing with songs,
you could program the first 32 measures for example, and then just copy the song
to itself as many times as you wanted. Not so with the DR770, you have to program every
measure .. Another irritating thing about the interface is that it doesn't
start at the last pattern you were using, so you have to constantly seek out your
start point.

Seems kinda cheesy to me.

Basically, I hate this unit. I virtually never use it because the
interface is so non-intuitive, and programming it is tedious as hell.
There's a lot easier to use drum machines that sound just as good,
pass on this one.

I've had it now for over a year. Contrary to previous complaints 1) teh individual outs work and are really great. The manual does tell you how to do this, and it is possible to send more than one instrument to the individual out. 2) overheating...yes it gets hot, but I have not had malfunctioning and have had it on solid for hours at a time with no problem. In winter it saves heating costs :-)

BUT...it is not easy to program. There are a lot of concepts that I think they should have given some thought. The main one, there is NO undo button. Given the ease with which you can accidentally erase, or make a mistake this is ridiculous. If you edit a pattern and play it and find out you placed the beat wrong there should be an easy way to undo the edit. Simple as that. At least to undo the last step done. Some times I have thought I was in song edit and tried to delete a pattern only to delete the song instead. Other than the leds there is no indication which is which, and it is easy to do.

Another thing is, when you are not hooked up to the MIDI port, in a song there is no way to go to patter X directly. YOu have to hit the forward key X number of times to get there..this is just thoughtless. In other menus, like choosing a pattern you just key in the number if you know it, but for some reason you can't do that in the song.

Another problem is organizing your library. A song is linked patterns (which for some reason they also dropped the possibility, or I haven't yet found it, to loop the song!!) BUT you have no way short of going through every pattern in every song to find out if a pattern is referenced anywhere. If you have a lot of songs, you don't dare erase a pattern because it might be in the song.

Most of the above complaints could easily be non-problems if they just had decided to sell us a software insterface to the unit. I cannot fathom why they don't, as I would bet they could sell them to 85% of all DR770 owners. Something tailor made for the DR-770, allowing you to easily save all patches, edit them, assign and make up drum pads, etc. NOt just a vanilla MIDI sequencer but tailor made.

The manual is not particularly easy (like ROland, this is japanese translated badly to english. There are too many examples of the same process, usually for something intuitive, and maybe one cryptic sentence for complex concepts and operations.. )

It is hard to get around with this unit. On the other hand is has helped me a lot to think in drum tab. Previously I had a DR101 (I think it was) and it was easier to program, but just had 12 or 16 places where you had hits or not. This uses note values (time values) and is numbered such that you could actually enter drum tabs into the thing from manuscripts.

This has been gone over by other folks here in their reviews. I hook up the MIDI out from my Roland VS880EX to the MIDI in of the DR-770 and with the help of markers I can easily jump to a section of a song I want to use. NO problems with the MIDI.

Still if anyone here hears of a software interface for the dr770 please let me know at jacker@online.no because I will buy it in a second!
The pads are expressive, somewhat hard to play "live" though...

The effects are allright, even has some EQ and reverb, flanging, they aren't great but usable. One thing...I still haven't found out how to set a default for effects and especially overall sound (I forget what it is called but you can patch it so it has "lo-boost", "hi-fi", flanging, etc. It defaults though to my least favorite "lo-boost".

It seems to hav no timing issues when used with MIDI!

There are some really nice features too, like "swing" that will swingify your pattern...make it groove more.

Ecellent sounds I think. There are many paramters, even down to where on the drum the sticks hit...this is excellent! The main reason to get this unit and the reason that despite the difficulty of use this is still the best drum machine I have heard.

The only gripe here is I wish they had had more samples of the basics and less "goofy" sounds. More cymbals definitely would have been nice, and more different snares.

But the basic ones they have ARE great!

I do depend on it. WOuld buy it again if I lost this one. Seems to hold up well. People complain about the wall wart but at least it is not the kind that the box has a plulg on it, the box has a cord going to a plug so it is like any other plugged unit.

Heard they are terrible to deal with or impossible to contact. Haven't had any reason to though so they must be doing somethign right. But in case they monitor this....PLEASE WRITE A SOFTWARE INTERFACE...WE'LL BUY IT OUT!!

I love the sounds in it. I get frustrated though with programming it. SOme of the presets are really nice, some of them are good bases to work from. You can copy the presets to the "user presets" space and edit them. The drum machine editing also is difficult but worth doing. I like my drum kits better than any of the preset ones. I love that you can layer (but watch out for phase shifts) the pads.

So long as you know what you want to do, doing it is easy. DPP is great.

Loads of sounds, loads of polyphony, decent pad quality. Useful individual output (but should've kept the two outs provided by the 660)

The sounds are brilliant. Using pad layers I hav spent a a few nights building kits to mimic everyone from the drummer in my band to Stephen Perkins and other luminaries. The selection may be a bit conservative by some standards, but the quality is unimpeachable.

RIGHT, DOWN TO BUSINESS. THIS IS WHY I HAVE SUBMITTED THIS REVIEW. MY UNIT STARTED TO GET HOT AND MALFUNCTION. I SPENT #100 GETTING IN LOOKED AT BY A PROFESSIONAL REPAIR SHOP. NOW I FIND THAT MANY OTHER DR770 OWNERS EXPERIENCE THE SAME PROBLEMS.
IT IS HEARTBREAKING THAT A UNIT OF THE DR770'S QUALITY HAS BEEN UNDERMINED BY A DESIGN MISTAKE OR POOR COMPONENT CHOICE. THIS UNIT SHOULD BE AN INDUSTRY STANDARD, BUT - AND I CANNOT REPEAT THIS ENOUGH - I FEEL LIKE DR770 OWNERS AROUND THE WORLD HAVE BEEN HUNG OUT TO DRY BY A COMPANY WHICH MAY WELL HAVE RUSHED THIS MODEL ONTO THE MARKET. THIS IS A RARE SHADOW ON THE HOUSE OF BOSS.

I'M GETTING ANGRY NOW. WHY AM I HAVING TO TAKE A BRAND NEW UNIT TO A REPAIRERS. WHY ARE SO MANY OTHER REVIEWERS OF THIS UNIT ALSO COMPLAINING ABOUT OVERHEATING. IF ROLAND/BOSS BOTHER TO READ HARMONY CENTRAL REVIEWS THEN PAY ATTENTION TO THE COMMENTS MADE BY MYSELF AND OTHERS. BRILLIANT SOUNDS ARE USELESS SITTING A HEAP OF MELTED PLASTIC.

Having got that off my chest, I now feel serene and calm. I am now in the habit of restricting my work on the DR770 to 30 minute segments before the worst effects of overheating kick in - there, a Roland product which limits your art. Oh no, I'm starting to get angry again...

For me it was very frustrating at first. I had the disadvantage of being a devoted DR-550 user for the last 6 years and retraining my fingers to push the CORRECT buttons was a real pain. I'll give it a 7. Some type of GUI would be nice like on the 550 - when writing in step mode (or real time for that matter), it's nice to see where you're at in the pattern. You have to know your math with the 770!

I love the DPP and the loads memory. The touch sensitive pads are really nice, too. It does get very hot, but I would think they were aware of that and wouldn't distribute it if it was a fire hazzard. I'd like to see portable/battery operability on this unit.

This is what sold me on the 770. I heard the demo and was blown away (the composer should pat himself on the back for doing his job). It is a quite tedious and overwhelming to dial through dozens of kicks and snares to find THE one, but but if you're patient enough to tweak things like pitch and reverb, there is very little margin for complaint. Soundwise, there simply is nothing comparable for the price range. No matter how much hell you go through trying to learn how to use it, the sounds will keep you going.

So far so good. My one gripe is the << and >> keys like to jump beats a lot when writing in STEP mode which makes you lose your place if you aren't paying attention.

I've had a DR550, DR550mkII, and various pedals, none of which I've ever had repair/usability issues with - yet another reason to keep on keepin' on with Roland/BOSS' great stuff.

If it were stolen, I'd definitely "need" another. My only huge complaint is this: I write in a lot of very odd meters and tempo changes - it seems a quite limited at times in that aspect. It would be nice to be able to zap a pattern with whacked out meter to cut-time without assigning it to a new song/initial tempo. Unless I'm overlooking something, patterns can only interpreted by the machine in quarter note increments, when I sometimes need a 7/8 after a 4/4. No can do - it will only give 7/4, 9/4, 11/4, etc. Please email me if you have any tips regarding this! PLEASE!!! If not for that, I'd give it a 10+ overall. Go for it!

don't listen to the crusty old coot in the review below. All of his complaints could have been solved by reading the manual. You CAN have different samples play back at different velocity levels - you CAN modify a kit and have it saved when you turn the unit off (you just copy the kit the HUGE custom-kit portion of the memory, and anything you do to it will be saved - the presets are only there for example, and will not save changes) pretty much every complaint he had was do to his inexperience - it's the best drum machine of it's kind for a nice mix of expressive natural and not-so-natural sounds. I've tried every other machine out there in detail since buying my dr-770 2 years ago, and nothing even comes close to the versatility and expressiveness this machin provides - if you want a dedicated drum machine with the sounds built in - there is no better choice. The learning curve is just a bit steep in some cases.

The patches are a pain to re-program. I haven't found a patch/pattern editor yet! The manual does not tell you that the samples are just played back at different volumes rather than different samples for different volume levels... a soft snare tap sounds just like a hard snare slam.. only at a lower volume. If you turn it off, come back later and turn it on again(cause it gets hot) it resets back to square one. If you are saving a drum set.. lets say you modified set 20, you can't save it. You have to copy set 20 to set 400 or higher and then edit it and save it. This is not a very will thought out product for the end user.

I have been playing music for 40 years. so I guess i expect quality. I failed to check it out very closely before buying it. Yea I was in a hury and through it in with the other stuff i bought at the time. The DR-770 is not the right tool for producing music you want other people to hear.

Relatively easy to use. I felt that the first time I did anything significant, I needed to check the manual, but once I had been through the process a few times, it went pretty quickly and easily. The manual is pretty straightforward and easy to use for something coming from Roland/Boss. The only other drum machine I've spent a lot of time using is a Roland TR-707 from the late 80's.

Compared to my old drum machine, this unit has a TON of drum sounds...255 total. It ships with 128 drum kits, half of which are preset, the other half are empty for user-created kits. It has 400 preprogrammed patterns, although I prefer to create my own. The preprogrammed ones are good if you need to put down a quick backing track with some generic drum riffs. Some of them are interesting, though. There are 16 velocity sensitive pads on the front panel, each kit has an A and B bank, so the kits can have a combination of up to 32 of the drum sounds. Although the pads are small, they work fine for me. The unit will store up to 100 songs, although I plan to record the drums into the sequencer of my Korg Triton. The one major thing lacking is a backlit display. I work with this unit in a basement with no overhead lighting, so I actually have to set a small lamp on the stand just to be able to see the display.

The actual drum sounds are great...the variety is quite good. It is great to be able to create your own kits and have so many choices to work from, although it's a bit daunting at times trying to pick one or two kick drums from approximately 50. Also, as you're creating the kits, you can edit the individual parameters of each drum sound... so the variations are almost limitless. You can really create some wild drum sounds by modifying the pitch up or down by a large degree. The unit has some bass sounds, but I haven't used those for anything so far.

No problems so far. As others have commented, it does seem get kind of warm...almost hot when it's been on for awhile, but that seems to be a characteristic of all of them.

No need to use them so far.

Overall this is a good piece to own. I would definitely buy it again if I needed a drum machine. The main thing I use it for is to create my own patterns for unique electronic music. Of course it has the standard creation methods - realtime and step. In realtime, I've noticed that sometimes when you tap the pad, it kind of double clutches and gives a flammed sort of drum sound...the autoquantize fixes that on the spot. Maybe it's just me? Step mode works fine...sometimes I wish I had the old "grid" programming system from the TR-707, but I get by okay. The only other serious competitor when I was looking to buy was an Alesis (SR-16 I think)...but I wanted the DR-770 because it had a larger variety of sounds and could accommodate more styles of music as opposed to just straight ahead rock.

For a basic drum machine, don't know how it could get any easier. No xox-style step programming, that would be a nice feature. But almost every feature has a dedicated button and it's super fast to get around on. I'm mostly writing this review to let people know that in the current (12/00) production run, the LCD screen problem seems to have been fixed. I saw the awful screen on the older 770s, and this one is definitely a lot better. Not that it's great, but at least now it's as good as the 660's screen was.

For the money, features are great. I like a dedicated drum box instead of do-everything machines like the RM1x or QY70 or some such. Too confusing for my pea brain...I don't use computer sequencers because drums are the only thing I need to sequence, I like to play everything else live and fix stuff by editing digital audio. The 770s sequencer is perfectly adequate for this and if all you need to sequence is drums it makes a fine "brain" for a system expanded with an external drum module or sampler. Only 3 outputs? I don't care, in my home studio I don't have enough mixer channels to take advantage of a ton of outputs. What I end up doing is recording several passes of individual drums to hard disk one by one. It sucks, but in home studio we're trading sweat for hard earned cash, right?

The DR's sounds are fabulous, I've had DR-660, R8mkII, the DR-770's sounds are the best of a venerable line. The effects are hardly Lexicon quality but their great for wierding out sounds. Using the effects in combination with the on board sound editing allows you to get sounds out of the thing the designers probably never dreamed of. It's really quite a flexible box. 10 for the drum sounds, 5 for the effects = 9 (I weight the drums much higher!)

Mine too gets really hot but I haven't yet heard of anyone getting their house burnt down by one. All I know is I have had tons of Roland gear through the years and still waiting for reliability problem one. Reliability's the best thing about Roland, IMO.

Never had to deal with them.

Only the semi-useful effects section keeps this baby from getting a 10.(for the money) I'd love it if Roland would put out a truly pro drum machine, updating the R8 series with a cross between the V-drums and the MC-80 sequencer. Until then, the 770 does the job and is a damn good value.