I forgot to mention, this machine is analog.

I've owned two of them and still own my mint one and I've compared their sound to the sample sets I've come across on the net . . . and, the samples don't really capture this unit at all (perhaps due to the person who sampled them or perhaps its just that elusive analog sound).

The DR55 looks rather like a guitar effects pedal and was obviously aimed at this market. It is very basic (limited features and sounds).

It has Bass Drum, Snare Drum, Rim Shot, Accent, HiHats. The Bass Drum is has a lot of bass in it (duh) and will shake your walls when put through a stereo system. It's not punchy, but it's a lot bigger than the little blip on the TR606. There's a mod for adjusting the decay as well (which I haven't tried) but I assume it would sound very similar to an 808 once the decay was extended. The Snare drum is pretty good (if you like cheesey acid sounds) but sounds nothing like a 606 or 808. The Rim shot is a joke, though it might be usable as a "strange noise." It's a little spacy sounding "blip." The hats are quite nice and it's a shame they aren't programable, they sound similar to the 606/808 hats.

You can program your own beats and it's a kind of hassel to do, you have to step through each beat to record each drum sound and it's not hard to forget where you are in the pattern. The Hats are not programble, they are either "off" or set to 8, 16, or 12. You can program variations A and B in 8 locations (which adds up to 16 patterns).

You also have "tone" control (controls amount of treble or bass) and accent level knobs on the front, in addition to the volume and tempo knobs.

There is no trigger in, no sync in and I understand it's very difficult to mod this to accept any kind of external control (The DR110 is relatively easy to mod). There is a trick for allowing it to accept "trigger in" by putting it in "record mode" but this is very unreliable and doesn't work more than about 80% of the time.

The unit runs on 4 AA batteries which are stored in a plastic holder which then snaps into a 9volt batery plug. I've heard of people getting these units without the plastic holder and frying their DR55 by plugging a 9volt batery into the slot.

All in all, this machine has limited use in a modern set up since it has not preexisting sync features and is difficult to retrofit. But that's really a damn shame because despite all it's drawbacks, once you get a nice little pattern rolling on this tiny little beatbox it doesn't sound half bad. In fact, it sounds quite unique, not like a TR606 at all (which I own) or any x0x for that matter.

If anyone out there knows how to do an easy mod for this I'd love to hear it. Mine is collecting dust until I can figure out a way to synch it.

PS: Don't pay more than $75 unless you really really dig the sounds.