[Solved]
Hello everyone! A long time ago I bought a DrumBrute Impact because I really fell in love with its sound in demo materials. The kick drum sound especially stuck with me, to the point where I probably wanted this drum machine just for that one sound alone.
But after buying it, strangely enough, the love didn’t happen. Even though I tried using processing (as many recommended), compression and other techniques. In the end, over time I just accepted that my spontaneous excitement for this device had faded. Although it definitely has many great qualities that I still admire.
Recently I started thinking about getting something new and wondered whether I should sell the DrumBrute or keep it. With that in mind, I spent yesterday and today playing around with it. And suddenly, while rewatching videos about the device on YouTube, I noticed that my favorite kick hadn’t gone anywhere, it’s still there in the demo videos that originally sold me on this machine. And interestingly, looking at the spectrogram, I noticed that the shape of the kick is drastically different from what my DrumBrute produces.
In the official video, as well as in the video by Rick Feds, it’s clearly noticeable that the kick has a smooth, banana-shaped decay. On my unit, however, it’s a sharp and rough boomerang shape. I’ve attached an image to demonstrate this.
I don’t want to go as far as claiming that Arturia is swapping samples in their demos (that would be a bit too much, right?). But all my attempts to achieve a similar result through processing the output signal (compression, saturation, EQ) haven’t led me there.
In reviews by loopop and AudioPilz, the kick sounds the same as on my unit, which likely rules out the possibility that mine is defective.
Also, if you pay attention to the video by Rick Feds, it’s noticeable that he’s routing the sound through the main output. That would mean any heavy processing applied to the signal should noticeably affect all the other elements as well, but they still sound close to their original character. This leads me to a somewhat unsettling thought that the demo unit of the Arturia DrumBrute Impact might differ from the production models. But I’d really like to be wrong about that.
I’d love to hear opinions from other DrumBrute Impact owners. Have you experienced the same thing? Maybe you know ways to achieve that kind of sound like in the demos. Perhaps even non-owners who are experienced with drum machine processing could share some insight. And if someone from Arturia could comment and clarify the situation, that would be perfect.
If the solution to my problem is simple and obvious to everyone except me, and I’ve blown this post out of proportion out of my own ignorance, I apologize in advance. I genuinely just want to figure this out.
Thanks everyone for your attention.
P.S. Alright, it seems this turned out to be just a low-end filter 😐