Revolution 909?

[Sounds-Outside]

Hey guys, my name is Matt Fudge, I'm from Canada and I produced the Revolution-909 instrument. I decided to check my analytics this morning and was really entertained by this thread. I've always thought that you weren't doing something right unless half of your audience absolutely loved what you're doing and the other hated it. So thank-you for helping me find the other half of the room

DO NOT TRUST THESE MEN!!!! !!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

from their site:

"Unless you have $20,000 worth of preamps, transformer balanced DIs and mastering grade converters you simply can’t get a punchier or fatter electronic drum sound"

fcking cunts!

Hi nice to meet you too just to clarify the entire quote is "Unless you have $20,000 worth of preamps, transformer balanced DIs and mastering grade converters you simply can’t get a punchier or fatter electronic drum sound, happening at once, all playable inside your computer" which I stand by. I'm not trying to scam anybody and I do stand by the fact that using high quality cables into a Neve 1073 and mastering grade converters with a passive transformer balanced DI produces the best 909 drum sound, hence one the reason why I made this instrument. There are many audio chains you could pick with a 909, or any source, and because this was captured clean you can still use those chains after the fact although I do understand that doesn't work for everybody.

I don't want to seem like I'm being negative for no reason. But this whole product just makes me feel sick.

To say that you can't get deep sounding drums without 20K studios ... those guys should be put in the stocks and be forced to listen to moldy commercial preset music for 10 years until they are so disgusted that they decide to make a product with geniune musical value, or get corperate jobs and stop selling dreams to people who don't know any better.

The reason why people dream after those Roland drum machines is becuase they were used well by fantastic musicians in famous pieces of music, and so subsequently the macines have a high value, which makes them inaffordable. But they are not the only good electronic machines that will ever be made.

If you want the fattest kick drum sound ever you can get it for $350. It makes the 808 kick drum cry. Metasonix r54. Yes, it is not a kick drum or drum machine but you can easily use it like one.

Yeah I should chill out but those guys are twats.

The sequencer is cool but not when you're trying to sequence to other elements that don't play well with the 909's DIN SYNC. Hence the reason for putting it all inside of Kontakt with Round Robin sampling and the ability to adjust the parameters with the ability for recall.

haha i agree with mark.

quotes like this
' We love the 909 but we don’t love the instability or limitations of dealing with vintage hardware in a modern studio'

bullshit, there's nothing instable about the TR909,
i just keeps on rocking away. never misses a beat
non of the vintage hardware i have has any limitations that are going to make me want to put them on ebay and use software instead,

and how about 'better than the real thing' !!!

yes mark mate you lost it there - fair play

Perhaps your 909 is not the same as mine because on mine the pitch of the kick drum easily changes by a semitone over the period of an hour and half that it takes to warm up. Not exactly friendly when you're trying to overdub a part or lay in a few more hits from the machine, or having to wait for the kick to sound just right.

i think this is really funny..
check out it out, these guys are so enthusiastic, somehow cant imagine anyone being so enthusiastic in 25 years time about the revolution909 software, if you can find a pentium in your attic to play it on that is.

Revolution-909 is a model of the original that is made from and matches the behaviour of the original. I think people will still be interested in accurate models of classic gear in 25 years, but not everybody - some people don't care right now

I'm more than happy to answer any questions you all might have and I would even be willing to send a NFR copy to a veteran forum member here who uses Kontakt 4 and wants to prepare a comparison between the real unit and Revolution-909.

Cheers,
Matt

[steevio]

Perhaps your 909 is not the same as mine because on mine the pitch of the kick drum easily changes by a semitone over the period of an hour and half that it takes to warm up. Not exactly friendly when you're trying to overdub a part or lay in a few more hits from the machine, or having to wait for the kick to sound just right.

that means you are judging the TR909 on your obviously faulty one. (i hope you didnt use that one as your model)
i have been using a TR909 as have many of my producer friends since the early 1990s and no-one that i know of has had the issue you mention. my TR909 warms up in a few minutes.
can you not understand why your advertising will only inflame passions when there are so many out there who are passionate about that machine?.
i'm sorry but 'better than the real thing' swung it for me, i would have a serious rethink about how you market your product. at present i'd say its having the opposite effect of what was intended.

[Sounds-Outside]

Perhaps your 909 is not the same as mine because on mine the pitch of the kick drum easily changes by a semitone over the period of an hour and half that it takes to warm up. Not exactly friendly when you're trying to overdub a part or lay in a few more hits from the machine, or having to wait for the kick to sound just right.

that means you are judging the TR909 on your obviously faulty one. (i hope you didnt use that one as your model)
i have been using a TR909 as have many of my producer friends since the early 1990s and no-one that i know of has had the issue you mention. my TR909 warms up in a few minutes.
can you not understand why your advertising will only inflame passions when there are so many out there who are passionate about that machine?.
i'm sorry but 'better than the real thing' swung it for me, i would have a serious rethink about how you market your product. at present i'd say its having the opposite effect of what was intended.

Hi Steevio, I do understand your reaction. The advertising can be seen as abrasive, although I'm not the first person to make that claim as others have stateted their products "may be better than the real thing", I am probably the first person to advertise it so definitively. Really, it's only better than the real thing if you don't want to use the sequencer. It's useful for performing live and it can be creative in the studio but I find more modern modern approaches more effective for arranging drums. If you are hooking up your 909 via MIDI and using it as a sound module, it's better for me, and I assume others, but it's not my intention to offend people who could find this useful and I'm not unmovable. I'll consider revising this statement, and apologize that this has caused so much resentment with this community. I love the 909, I spent the good part of year developing this product and it really is designed to be a perfect reflection of the original not something new which takes away from what was already great.

[oblioblioblio]

Hi Matt, I had a sneaking suspicion after I wrote my words on this that google may lead one of the creators here. I'm a nice guy in the flesh (I hope), but I didnt like the way you marketed this product at all. Analogue is not a mythical innaccessible untamable beast. Most analogue devices output at line level... they do not require preamps, or expensive anything... you can plug them into anything and get instant raw electronic music... whther you plug into a soundcard or a mixer... I also feel the joy from working with an instrument with real time potentiometers and electrons whizzing around under the hood, and I didn't like the way you presented your alternative to this. Especially when there is a wealth of good alternatives to the 909/808 such as Jomox, Vermona, Metasonix. And software which tries to capture the spirit of the machanics of the boxes, such as Audiorealism.

It's good that you came here and explained yourself and responded openly to the criticisms against your work, but I think the tone that you have used to advertise it is misleading.

[Sounds-Outside]

Hi Matt, I had a sneaking suspicion after I wrote my words on this that google may lead one of the creators here. I'm a nice guy in the flesh (I hope),

Hi oblioblioblio, I believe you are a nice guy in the flesh and hopefully I am as well. I'm sorry that you felt earlier I couldn't be trusted...

but I didnt like the way you marketed this product at all. Analogue is not a mythical innaccessible untamable beast. Most analogue devices output at line level... they do not require preamps, or expensive anything... you can plug them into anything and get instant raw electronic music... whther you plug into a soundcard or a mixer...

This is true you do not need to use a DI, or a preamp. You can just send line level from an instrument to the line level input on a sound card. But I am a believer that good analogue equipment that matches the impedance of the output of the TR909 and balances the signal with transformers such as a Radial JDI and Neve 1073 add a quality that the 909 doesn't have by itself. This is a very expensive signal chain, and I believe it adds a lot to the sound that can't be had without it.

I also feel the joy from working with an instrument with real time potentiometers and electrons whizzing around under the hood, and I didn't like the way you presented your alternative to this.

I agree with you that potentiometers and electrons make a difference to the sound and they are a beautiful thing. If I didn't agree with this I wouldn't have created this instrument. Keep in mind my Revolution-909 instrument is made from recordings of the actual 909 so all of those same characters are still in present in the sound that you are hearing played back. On top of that I've also sampled round robin cycles and offer the ability to cycle through tonal settings by matching the interface of the original hardware.

Especially when there is a wealth of good alternatives to the 909/808 such as Jomox, Vermona, Metasonix. And software which tries to capture the spirit of the machanics of the boxes, such as Audiorealism.

Analog workflow is different than software workflow, if you are happy using the 909 as it was originally created in 1984 that's absolutely respectable. It's a classic machine, I don't think I've done anything to take away from it's legacy but add to it. I'm curious about the comparison to audiorealism however. That is a DSP approach and it seems from what you wrote that you are ok with what they have done? Do you have an issue with software in general or just what I have done? I believe there is room for every product that currently exists for specific uses, but as far as the sound is concerned how can any of the alternatives you have listed come as close to the authentic sound of the TR909 than Revolution-909? I don't mean to sound proud but an approach based on DSP or an analog clone cannot match the authenticity of a well designed sample based instrument from the original hardware recorded with an ideal signal chain.

It's good that you came here and explained yourself and responded openly to the criticisms against your work, but I think the tone that you have used to advertise it is misleading.

I appreciate the criticisms, as I said it was never my intention to offend but can you clarify exactly on what has upset you specifically about the advertising? Was it simply the fact that I stated it was better than the real thing? Or something else? Again, thanks everyone here for the transparency of this forum and I'm hoping to gain the insight to represent in a more positive way through this dialogue.

[oblioblioblio]

Matt, please take my cynical tone with a bit of a pinch of salt...

I am still sceptical about DI and transformer balancing. Impedence matching is simply resistors on outputs and inputs, and as far as I'm aware, is mainly brought up to sell units and confuse people, rather then the true simplicity of the matter. Transformer balancing I'm less sure about, but I've never used anything like that and I regularly hear sounds coming from my synths that sound better than anything I've heard in the universe (no joke! I love analogue and there are some of the best machines ever designed currently in production right now)

You probably caught me on a bit of a bad day with my original criticisms.... there are a lot of DISGUSTING products being sold, that cater only to inexcusable laziness from "musicians". But from the way you talk about things it seems like you are motivated more deeply than just shifting units.

I always thought Mike @ AR was a genuine passionate professional, and even though I have moved away from almost all forms of software I have no reason to discredit his work. His efforts always seemed quite meticulous, even though there is a certain futility to modelling analogue circuits, which in some ways is a technique that is comparable to sampling.

For me, as a musician, the most important test of an instrument, is the paths that a musician can travel along from using it. Can the machine do completely different things in the hands of different users? Is there scope for use *beyond* what the designer felt was possible? For this reason, I find analogue to be head and shoulders above other things such as the machine which you have designed. And with all respect to your intelligence, I find your argument about 'authenticity' to be a little lacking.

I have much more respect for you product that you have come here are respectfully defended your views, even though the Revolution909 is not something that I would ever find use for. I should apologise for leaping to some conclusions and using the anonymity of the internet to attack something further than was really sensible, I think my sensationalist views very probably as unhelpful as some of the descriptions in your marketing.

regards

Mark

[s.k.]

Keep in mind my Revolution-909 instrument is made from recordings of the actual 909 so all of those same characters are still in present in the sound that you are hearing played back.

wait are you saying you actually sampled the nine to make your instrument? isa that even legal?

[ekwipt]

Think it's a good idea for a product, I have my own 909 but would still think about purchasing something like this when I don't want to turn on all the machines.