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Sample CD-ROM library in Roland S-770 and compatible format
Drumscapes Volume 1 is a collection of drum samples, including single hits and full grooves, formatted on CD-ROM for the Roland S-770 and compatible samplers and sample players.
From the CD-ROM’s booklet: “Drumscapes are direct to digital, live recordings of fully produced studio drum tracks. In addition, each song track includes every individual drum and cymbal hit for digital sampling.”
The recording quality is extremely good: the sounds are very punchy, full-bodied, and the drum patterns are tight and perfectly looped. The single hits also are recorded very well, so it’s easy to create your own drum kits, picking and choosing from the different volumes.
The vibe here is for the most part on the acoustic side of rock/pop, with the occasional venture into hip-hop or Motown – These samples are really good and if you play any of the styles listed here below, you will not be disappointed.
The styles included are: Rhythm & Blues Hip Hop/Rap Adult Contemporary/Light Jazz Ballad Medium Rock Fast Heavy Rock Power Ballad Fast Shuffle Slow Shuffle Pop/Country Ballad Fast Techno Rock Medium Techno Rock Uptempo Funk Slow Motown and as a bonus there’s also a full set of percussion samples. In order to use these CD-ROM you will need a SCSI CD-ROM drive connected to your S-series sampler or XV-5080. Keep in mind that certain sound data will need 32MB of memory, supported only by the S-760. The S-770 and 750 have less.
The DR-550 MkII is the upgraded version of the venerable, original DR-550. A big difference from the original model is the fact that the base ROM has been almost doubled and now features 91 drum sounds. The machine works at 16-bit and is fairly clean and punchy. Many of its sounds remind of its bigger sister, the Roland R-8.
Useful features include “tone color”, that allows you to modify the basic filter frequencies of each sample, and “decay”, that obviously lengthens or shortens the sample.
There are 64 preset patterns on board, and 64 more slots for your own creations. Also, as in other drum machines in the DR-series, you can chain patterns to forms songs – In the DR-550 MkII, up to 8 songs consisting of up to 160 measures each.
A big improvement from the previous 220-series is the inclusion of a basic MIDI IN port, which allows the unit to be synchronized to a sequencer, or another drum machine. There’s no MIDI OUT though, so in order to save your created patterns, you have to resort to the old-fashioned way of storing to cassette tape, using the tape interface.
BOSS DR-550 MkII audio demos
There are seven factory demo songs programmed in ROM, that show off the capabilities of this machine:
Boss DR-550 MkII Drum Samples (44.1MHz, stereo .wav)
The third chapter in the Datafile series. This one definitely has a more modern look and feel, and orbits toward the very “British” side of dance music. Again, like with its predecessors, many high quality loops, synthesizer sequences, percussion, fx samples etc.
