Synth Site |  Yamaha |  RM-1X

midi control is excellent. you can edit, do cc's, save patterns as smf, explode drum tracks, append patterns, etc. its not as malleable and expressive as logic but its not supposed to be. its awesome for hooking up to other gear. i've got my midi linked to my emu sampler and its the friggin bomb!

read the manual. study this machine. its gonna take a couple of months to really learn it. some of these reviewers play with it for a week and then say its shit because they couldn't master it. again, the rm1x is for programmers. people who are willing to work for their results.

drum sounds are good but anyone serious about drums needs a sampler. unless you're comfortable with the same ol' 909 and 808' sounds over and over and over and over and over...

synth sounds are good and can be tweaked quite expressively. a good intro to synthesis. some very useable sounds definitely. you'll want another tone generator though. you can get a hardware synth or a virtual synth that you can sample. I do the latter.

excellent construction. made out of steel. solid knobs.

smart unit. i thought the manual was well written.

groove features, you can highlight sections of the pattern and tweak velocity, note #, gate, and offset forward or backward. drum uses are obvious but check this out. set up an arpeggio with a saw lead or the like and start tweaking. all realtime. way cool.

event editor. kick ass. gives you a list of note events, cc events, pb event, location in time, gate and velocity. you can edit, insert and delete.

low boost moves up and down low frequency spectrum. you can boost just the thump or you can also boost some of the stuff getting closer to your mid level eq's.

step recorder rules. show you where everything is on time line. you can add, delete, modify, etc. a hint, if you can play something realtime by tapping pads but have a hard time getting it to fit into the pattern then tap it out and record it real time. then switch to step editor and see what you did and then fit it into your pattern so the timing is right.

pads are not velocity sensitive. i midi'ed my sr-16 to rmix for this purpose. takes wear and tear off the rmix too.

by the way, all sections in a pattern will be tweaked if you mess with the voice settings(say you switch the HH hat drum kit for the Percussion Kit) for one of those sections. go to another pattern if you're assinging new voices. i totally fucked up some drum n bass i was working on because of this.

I cannot say enough about this box. the price is great too. i got mine for 650.

Good luck jg