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Average rating:
4.1 out of 5
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This is a pretty old piece and it is missing some things. You will not want to use it without some external effects. Some of the realistic drum sounds are decent - but not great by today's standards. Everyone knows the cymbals blow.
This thing is EXTREMELY programmable. Everyone says you can make great hard techy-industrial sounds and it's true. You can also make astounding minimal/mellow alien-sounding otherworld beat type sounds as well. Velocity can control alot of parameters so if you have a drum controller of some kind, this unit shines. I'm an electronic drummer and I'm not satisfied with this unit as my only sound source but I have a couple of other units to carry the areas where the XD-5 is weak. If you're really into weird twisted drums - this unit is a 5 for sure. If you want 909 clones, then maybe a 3. Acoustic drum simulations - don't bother - maybe a 1 for the kicks. I'm gonna give it a 4 because I like the weird stuff.
I might sell mine someday if I ever get another sampler - but not before trying to approximate alot of the sounds I've programmed into it.
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Nice ethno sounds in it. Like all the others said, good for electronica-industrial music. I used it intensively at first, but when I bought a sampler this rompler hadn't any much reason to stay in my rack since I've sampled all of XD5 sounds. The only thing I could miss is the ring modulation, other that that, my sampler can generate the same programs (even those autobended electronic toms) with better panning and resonance settings and sound as good. I don't recommend the XD5 as a great buy, I would prefer the sampler option with some good drum sample CD in the actual time context. In 1990 the XD-5 could have been a good buy but rigth now with some rompler (albeit a little more expensive) boosting up to 128 meg of rom (not all dedicated to drums but still many possible percussion sounds) compared to the 256 internal sounds of the XD5. But if you are craving on its sounds and interface so much, please don't listen to me and go buy one (I've got one to sell by the way) ;)
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The XD-5 can be a little strange to figure out at first, but don't feel confined to use it only with MIDI. I like to sometimes, make a crazy kick and beepy snares with some spacy hats, put it all in acid then throw it in audiomulch and you've got one crazy industrial beat. The editing is fun, but because this is my first rack, it's harder to use in a playable sense. Can't be beat for the price (around 80 bucks if your lucky). great for electro indiustrial.
Henry www.mp3.com/coveted
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*** THE SAWBLADE'S EXPERIMENTS WITH THE KAWAI *** *** XD-5 DRUM SYNTHESIZER DRUM MODULE THINGEY *** Day Two
Ok, the cymbals aren't total crap. Just some of the preset kits, but most of them are okay. Actually managed to get some decent techno hihats out of it which required a lot of tweaking. I actually programmed a short little song using my new Q-80 sequencer to test some of the instrumental waves... So I'm having lots of fun with my fist drum synth or whatever... Never heard of Kawai before now... strange...
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I have had this box for less than 24 hours, and am still figuring everything out. It's incredibly fun to play with. I'm getting a lot of weird sounds. I can see the potential for making a lot of electro-sounding drum sounds. If you want realistic or acoustic sounds don't get this, but for electro, techno or industrial it's quite nice.
Most of the presets patches are a joke, and I don't know what kind of sounds make rap music in Japan (place of manufacture) but the preset "rap kit" is so shytty you might as well sample a Nintendo if possible. So it requires some tweaking but I'm down with that. The kicks are good but the cymbals are only vomit-quality. But this is before I've messed with the patches...
The 8 outputs are real nice. Now I need 8 amplifiers! (A big one, a very big one, and six gigantic ones, hee hee hee!)
Right now I'm controlling it with my only other piece of musical equipment, my itty-bitty Roland TR-505, am waiting for my Q-80 to come in so I can actually attempt to hand program some songs. (Step Time Programming Rules...)
I picked this up for $109 at a pawn shop, did I get a good deal or what?
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