Roland R8m

Ok 1st this is a drum module. no sequencer. If thats what your wanting get the r-8 mkII not the r-8. the mkII has most of the cards already built in. I had no interest in the mkii because i wanted a rack module specifically. So before buying this i had found after a deep research of drum rack modules that there were 3 other competitors for this one. The emu procussion and the Yamaha rm-50 and the kawai xd-5. Im gonna list why i chose this one. I used to own two yamaha rx-5's Yamaha has a habbit of Missing The round feel on there drums. To my ears the rm50 sounded very flat. You can edit just about everything but you also could on the rx-5 and the problem there was your original sound was so harsh that whats the point really? now the rx-5 came out in the eighties so there is a difference in quality. But its not much. after listening to the rm50's engine i was still left with that so so feeling about the drums. The original unaltered waveform still sounded flat to me. Then theres the emu procussion. Now this one is the least favorite. great editing but im gonna cut to the point and say that if you want to go that route just get a kawai xd-5. alot of issues with the procussion even starting with it physically. the case feels quite cheap. well i take that back. check it out for yourself. you might find that its what your wanting. but for me i found there drums to be the worst of the bunch. now the kawai xd-5. this is in its own right better in some ways then my choice. first because you have filters for the drums along with decent editing. but the big gripe here is that the hi-hats dont cut eachother out. which is a serious flaw. however the editing is the best of the bunch and it has capabilities of being much more useful to some musicians. check it out.
Now i chose the r-8m because of one reason. The drums are good. Full and well sampled. there is alot of gripes. my biggest one is the lack of onboard sounds. theres not alot to choose from. you have one set of hihat samples. and only four editing parameters. but all are greatly usefull no waste of use. the sounds are small in numbers but almost all are useful. which is the only one in the bunch where thats the case. they all sell for around 100 to 150 right now. and are pretty regularly available via ebay. I dont have the cards but im going to purchace some in time. im an electronic musician. i could see this one being an easy first for a drummer. the sound need no editing really and there all great. but an electronic musician might want to check out the xd-5 also. i havent ruled out an xd-5 purchace in the future. (i love drums) i already own the novation drum station. so im a little pissed that ill have to purchace the two most popular cards just to get cr78 and simmons sounds. cause i want those. i have no real use for 808/909 sounds cause of the drumstation but im sure i can always find some use. editing is annoying unless you use soundiver. but i use sounddiver so im fine. get a manual youll need it without soundiver. the construction is nice too. you can tell they did everything they could to keep this unit a single rackmount. the back end is monsterous. the individual outs are good. but im spoiled, if it didnt have them it wouldnt even have been a consideration. I got this because i have no interest in using only 909/808 sounds all the time. Ive been playing for 11 yrs. i recently cleared out all my gear to start fresh and this was one of the choices. so far im completely satisfied with it. i got sick and tired of a room full of units that wernt needed. if its not rack then im not getting it. right now i currently have a jv-1080. a m-vs1, and a drumstation and the r-8m. i do elkectro stuff and spacerock. Noticed i didnt even list a alesis unit.theres a reason. unless your lazy you have no excuse to check those out. easily the worst in the bunch in everyway. if you want good drums that arnt going to require hourse of editing then go for r-8m. also if your a drummer.

I have the latest version, or last version if you like.
I bought this second hand without the manual. It was virtually impossible to programme. I hunted high and low and finally got hold of a manual from the depths of the abyss. If you need a copy let me know and i'll copy mine for you.

nce i got the manual i was away. It is really very simple after that. there is not a lot too it really but what is there is very usefull.

I love the differnt nuance settings. You can adgust things like decay and mix up the timing ever so slightly so that it sounds a bit more like a real drummer.

Not a lot of polyphony but you dont really need it. I'm a drummer first and foremost so i dont like programmed patterns to be any busier than i would be if i was playing.

as i said earlier the ability to adjust feel and timing is great. it is very subtle but works really well.

plenty of outs for recording and mixing.

Well to me this is a bit of a let down. The sounds were very good in their day im sure but sound a bit 80's now. Think Miami Vice and youve got the right idea.

Saying that I use the cymbals a lot. I have several drum machines and the cymbals on the R8m are the best.

Some of the drum sounds are usable, like the kicks. i just dont like the snares. they are good quality but just not to my taste.

basically the way i use the r8m is to first programme the sequencer and run it through the r8m. i do this for the nuances i mentioned.

from there i choose the sounds i want on any number of drum machines.

i have a few of the cards. i particularly like the jazz brush card. nice.

no probs yet and its ancient. so id say its damn reliable.

cant comment

if it was stolen id be upset. would probably look for another one at a keen price purely for the realistic grooves it produces.

If you see one cheap go for it. and try to get as many cards as you can.

v1.04 which I hear is the latest and last.
Roland is a bit confusing to learn I think, but they make powerful systems. A patch editor would be great (naturally). The manual is as usual heavy-going as for much Roland stuff, but they seem to get better compared to earlier stuff. I read manuals twice first. Then when I want to know how to do something I look it up where I remember reading about it. Those who say they never read manuals for a machine this comprehensive are either geniuses or are missing out on a lot of capabilities of the unit. Anyway, there's not much recent gear that rates a 10 in this dept.

I won't repeat a lot of the other info here. The expansion capabilities are excellent. When I first tried this out I used just the internal sounds and was sold by the way the sound just cut right through everything. It's quite versatile, and unlike the Alesis DM5 the pitch can be continuously varied with a controller. I replaced the DM5 with this. The DM5 had lots of trigger inputs, but I decided a midi pad is better for me, as I am not a drummer. I sequence using a computer and the R8m seems to heed any commands well. Rate 8 for no triggers.

The sounds sold it. They are PUNCHY and very useable. The DM5 was very natural sounding but kind of dull in the mix. With the Electronic and Dance cards I recently purchased it became the best-sounding unit I've personally ever owned. The internal kits are small, ie there are not a ton of sounds but more than enough for me. I personally don't find the output noisy. I now hope to score a Drumtraks to compliment the R8m. By the way if you see one, try to get the killer demo song to play - it says it all! Also each expansion card has its own demo song which also rocks.

So far so good.

I've dealt with Roland a few times. Their service is great, but I've tried to get prices on manuals from the parts dept in Vancouver and so far have been ignored. So the 10 is for the service dudes - hey thanks Mississauga!

I'm sure there's something out there that sounds better with more features, but for the current price these are selling for, it can't really be beat. Who the hell wants to pay thousands of dollars for those old TRs and TBs anyway - that's nuts. maybe Moby and those guys can afford that plus the repairs that will be needed more and more.

Maybe because I've got so much Roland gear I find this very easy to use. Maybe I'm just used to their way of thinking. I have V1.04 (you can find this by holding cursor left & value down buttons whilst powering up) I think this was the last update (dated Jan 1990!)

No effects. No sequencer (hey it's a drum module, not machine). I have all the cards ever issued: Dry, Ethnic, Contemporary Perc (read Latin), Jazz, Jazz Brush, Sound Effects, Mallet, Rock Drums, Metallic Perc, Electronic (read 808) & Dance (read 909/CR78). Blimey. Of these the Dance card sits permanently in the R-8M and I interchange Rock, Metallic, Electronic and Jazz to suite the track. I have sampled the rest as unfortunately the R-8M cannot store sounds from the cards into memory, you have to have the card inserted to get the sounds of it. This means you can't take all your fave sounds and have them at once (unles you sample like me).

I think with the Dance card this is a great sounding machine. I also love using the human feel function on the hihats & ride cymbals (lots of extra ones on the metallic perc card and some good brush rides on the Jazz Brush card... nice). With the card options I have this is good for Rock, Dance & Jazzier styles.

Never needed any kind of service. Occasionally a sound card has not been read properly and the sounds have come out corrupted & distorted. A quick re-insertion of the card fixes it (though not before I've sampled the corrupted sounds!)

Never neede them.

I use this as the starting point of every track. Even if I end up using samples in the final mix this gives you enough drums to get you the feel for a track. Often I'll try replacing a sound I've used with a sample only to end up going back to the R-8M sound and sampling that with an effect. I would definitely get this again. Why haven't Roland come up with a new version of this?

A quick review of the Roland R8m Total Percussion Module.

I wouldn't know what the software version is - however, the unit
has been out of production for close to a decade, and whatever
version I'm using, it's totally stable.

The R8m is, of course, the module version of the classic R8 drum
machine. When this baby came out, much was made of its 16 bit/44100
samples. It still holds up well today - sure, there's a bit of
background hiss, but it still sounds nice, full and punchy.

There are a max of 60-so stock samples, which can be augmented with
up to three PCM sample cards. The stock samples are pretty good -
nice hats and toms, a couple of good acoustic snares, and some
big-hair rock snares, of course!

Editing patches is a breeze, mainly because there isn't much to edit.
No filters, envelopes, LFOs, effects. You can alter decay, pan velocity,
"nuance" (actually pretty cool), pitch and a few other things.

Manual is passable - although the copy function has been implemented
in a rather peculiar way.

Polyphony maxes out at 12 notes - doesn't sound like much, but it's
really quite okay. No effects, but it has eight (8) outputs - perfect
for individual processing with outboard.

Accepts a maximum of four cards - one program, three ROM.

Very MIDI-able. Accepts all the CCs you'd expect a drum module to.
Responds on up to 4 MIDI channels.

The PCM sample cards are, on the whole, excellent. I have the
Electronic (read 808), Dry, Jazz, Sound FX (okay, not so good!),
and World cards. The Dry card, in particular is great - consisting
of unprocessed snares, toms, kicks. World has some quality Eastern
percussion, finger cymbals (very good), gongs.

Solid, usable tones, which respond very well in a sequencing
environment. I've got excellent results routing sounds through
the auxiliary outputs for individual treatment - you can build
up very classy-sounding drum arrangments this way. A bit of
compression here, some room reverb there...

Probably not the unit of choice for the dance mavens out there - but
nice to have as a resource for more conventional stuff. Still
enough variety to get esoteric, and a good resource for breakbeats.
Lotsa fun creating custom loops with a sampler and rack effects!

Well, I bought mine used (for a song, I might add) and within a
couple of months I had a critical component failure. This cost
quite a lot to get replaced - but since, no problems. It's a
rather old unit anyway - so bad timing I guess, but Roland gear
of this vintage is pretty darn solid.

Very dependable, one of the pros of Roland gear. My XP-80 has been
operating 4 years now, without so much as a hiccup.

Roland New Zealand have always been prompt, polite and thorough in
my dealings with them. The component failure was repaired quickly
and without any nonsense. This is true for all my other gear they
have serviced. Well done!

If it were lost or stolen, I wouldn't go out of my way to find another
one, but if something came up for the price I paid for it, sure, I'd
snap it up! Certainly one of the best used drum units out there,
and I'm very happy with its sounds, (especially the "natural-sounding"
snares) reliability, ease of use and outputs(!). It's been in use for
two years now.

I don't miss onboard effects - for a 1989-vintage engine it was
probably a tall order, anyway. Multiple outputs make up for this!

Don't really hate anything about it...no annoying quirks, crashes.
The menu system, although slightly confusing at first, is fine once
you get used to it. Works like a charm driven from a sequencer.

If you're on a budget, and you need something good, you'd be hard
pressed to go better than one of these. Two words of advice, however -
don't expect to get variations on a 909 theme, and try to score one
with as many expansion cards as you can.

I'd certainly keep an eye out for the R8mkII drum machine - all the
features of the original and the R8m, plus many more sounds.

This thing is a royal pain at first to program....Presets are pretty standard and out dated but are good sound quality. Manual horrible.

Actually, I dont know how much polyphony it has, but ive used lots of sounds at once and never had problem yet. No built in effects. lots of features though...tuning,decay nuance human feel which can be cool if you want it to sound like someone playing live. Also, no sequencer...for guitarists or anyone looking for a backup behind you i dont recommend this. Id say the expansion is its best feature. 3 slots for PCM expansion and one RAM card for saving. The elctronic and dance card make this unit. Be sure to get them if you make house/techno or any electronic music...

I generally use the presets for percussion sounds..(congas,bongos,toms etc) but not for kicks since i do electronic stuff. But the expansion cards sound awesome in here. Its like having a real 808 with the electronic card and having a 909 with the dance card. you can tune the drums,decay nuance assign to the 8 different outs it has which i love. The sound quality is real nice to. Crystal clear. Ive never had a novation drumstation but this thing sounds like a real 808/909 with the expansion cards. I payed more for the cards than I did the module. If your looking for those sounds and dont want to spend a lot of money...get this...but make sure you get the expansion cards.

Havent had any problems with it yet

Overall, id say the 808/909 cards make this drum module otherwise I wouldnt have it...But I also have an Alesis DM-PRO and i think the sound quality of the R8 buries the DM-PRO, even the the presets on the R8. The programming though really sux...very long and tedious, but if you have patience then all will be good...

Show me a Roland instrument that is easy to use, they never are (compared to other brands).

16 voice polyphony, no built in effects, But 4 card slots ! and 8 individual outputs!, and 4 part multi timbral!

The sounds are great, especially if you mix them via the individual outputs and treat them like you would treat a drumkit on a multitrack. So use the Multi Out the way you would mice up a drumkit, and use compression on the 'overheads'. Sounds heavyer and less drumcomputer like than the Alesis D4.

You can always depend on Roland Gear, especially the 19inch equipment.

Never problems with, Roland Benelux (Belgium) sends me Rom updates and user manuals, and gives me online phone support.

I would defeniately buy it again if it was lost or stolen, though the Alesis DM5 is also great. The features are great, I wish the user interface was better, and that the sound cards where cheaper.