Behringer founder Uli Behringer shared this holiday greeting – and teasers of a couple of Roland drum machine clones.



Dear all,

first of all I like to wish you a Merry Xmas and a Happy New Year.

Sometime in July this year I announced we are looking into developing analog as well digital drum machines. I thought I would now share with you aspects of the development process.

At this stage our main focus is on sound creation and for this purpose we resurrected the highly regarded 808 and 909 analog drum machines from the ’80’s.

Attached are the pics of the first evaluation boards that allow us to study and compare the sound of analog drum instruments. However, our intention is not to clone these products but to evaluate analog sound generation and add a great user interface and sequencer.

I can tell you that the team is having lots of fun listening to these drum sounds that greatly contributed to amazing music in the past. It is actually not surprising that people gravitate to analog sounds as it is the imperfection that evokes emotions. Perhaps it is the fact that we humans are analog, too:-)

While we are far away from releasing a finished product, we thought we would get you involved in this enjoyable design process.

As always we love to hear your opinions.

Uli

Behringer’s message makes clear that – while his company has cloned Roland’s classic TR-808 and TR-909 – his goal is not to create a clone. Instead, they want to get a better understanding of what made the originals great, with the goal of creating a new drum machine that goes beyond the originals:

Based on what we’ve seen with the evolution of the Deepmind 12, it will probably be a year before Behringer previews a prototype of their planned drum machine. In the meantime, though, let us know what you think of Uli Behringer’s message – and what features you’d hope to see in a Behringer drum machine!