Behringer RD-9 Review | Worth the wait? Everything you need to know

this is the beringer rd9 drum machine which is based on the classic roland tr-909 from 1983. the 909 was roland's successor to the 808 and became a massive influence in electronic music i bought this rd9 with my own money so here's my unbiased and honest review hello everyone this is the build quality in general is good the step keys are a bit of a disappointment though because they look like the keys of a mechanical keyboard but they have neither the satisfying click nor the right pressure point i would describe the feeling as spongy you get used to it after a while but the rd8 step buttons are much better in that regard what surprised me was that some knobs are easier to turn than others the bass drum attack for example is smooth running while the bass drum level is very tight the casing is the same as the rd8 so it's quite large which might be a downside for you if you don't have much room here's a digi tact a drum route impact and a pocket operator for scale master and headphone volume effect section edit commands mode selector sync settings the sequencer and finally the instruments and their parameters the rd9 is powered by an 18 volt dc power adapter which is included a full stereo headphone jack which has its own volume control the mono main output standard quarter inch mono jack unless noted otherwise we recorded the rd9 through this output straight into an audio interface with no post processing a return input which is a mono return after the fx bus a usb b type connector just for midi not for audio midi in midi out and midi through 10 full size quarter inch mono outputs one for each instrument if you plug something in there the respective instrument is taken away from the mix out the individual outs are not routed through the filter or the wave designer and they're not affected by the main volume knob and finally three full-size trigger outputs and the mini jack sync in and out the rd9 is a hybrid drum machine it uses samples for the crash ride and hi-hats all other sounds are generated by analog circuitry i'm going to quickly play through the sounds adjusting parameters where available so you can get a feeling for what's possible bass drum [Music] uh snare drum low mid and high tom [Music] hand clap rimshot open hat [Music] closed hat the open and closed hi-hat form a choke group one silences the other when it plays which imitates the behavior of a real hi-hat right symbol and finally the crash symbol the sounds can't be panned left or right this drum machine operates only in mono the rd9 has three instrument controls that weren't on the original 909 based on pitch depth bass drum pitch and hi-hat tune if you want the sounds to be as close as possible to the original you can completely deactivate these knobs by switching to authentic mode so much for theory but there is a small problem with that viewer of ours has made us aware of something interesting listen to these 909 hi-hat samples they were recorded from original roland tr-909s compare them to the rd9 in authentic mode notice the pitch difference so ironically in enhanced mode we can get much closer to the original pitch than in authentic mode there are no presets or kits on the rd9 what you see dialed in on the controls is exactly the sound you'll get you can send any of the sounds into the effects bus using the send button the selected instruments are collectively processed by the wave designer and then the filter the filter can be turned on or off and toggled between low pass and high pass using the cutoff and resonance controls we can do filter sweeps [Music] or emphasize certain frequencies of an instrument the bass drum for example the wave designer is a transient shaper it allows us to manipulate the attack and sustain portion of the incoming [Music] sound [Music] by the way the headphone output is completely dry you don't hear any of the effects on it and if you plug in individual outs they will still be audible on the headphones unlike the main out where they are removed [Music] hmm that doesn't seem right revolution 909 by daft punk [Music] from the fantastic fear vogue by madonna probably the biggest mainstream hit to ever feature the 909 it borrowed heavily from the 1980s house music scene every eurodance song ever [Music] silhouettes by floating points and finally here's take me home by phil collins listen if you play one more phil collins song i'm out and i'm taking beatbunny with me oh oh okay so instead here's exhibitionist mix 3 by jeff mills well alright then [Music] welcome to a popular game of analog versus digital today's contenders are the analog bearinger rd9 and roland's newest drum machine the tr-6s which features a fully digital acb recreation of the 909 by the way we have a review coming up of this one real soon so be sure to subscribe and ring the bell one is analog one is digital but can you hear the difference and does it really matter you will now hear five patterns and you will have to decide for each one which is analog and which is digital post your guesses in the comments i bet they're all digital oh you let's go [Music] [Music] we will post the correct answers right here in the comment section next week the rd9 has 16 pattern banks they're a bit misnamed as songs here with 16 patterns each so 256 patterns in total which is plenty each pattern can have a length of up to 64 steps playing and editing patterns is pretty self-explanatory at first it can be a bit confusing that your changes are undone by the running light of the sequencer but that's actually quite useful for one-off changes during live performances so be sure to turn record on if you want your changes to be permanent and if you want to brush up on how to program patterns take a look at the first episode of drum machine 101 the current instrument can be live recorded by tapping the trigger button quickly chaining patterns together is not possible you'll have to resort to song mode for that there's also a polymeter mode this allows each instrument to have a different pattern length this is a simplified excerpt of rosetta stoned by tool we closed hat patterns just four steps long on top of that plays a snare that repeats every 12 steps the rimshot pattern is 24 steps long and finally here's the kick with 48 steps now here's a specialty the 909 is famous for press a blinking active step again and it becomes a solid red accented step that's how you place individual accents if you want to place global accents you just hold tap hold and press a step which then lights up white the accent knob controls the intensity of the total accent what's special about this is that the individual and global accents add up and you achieve maximum oomph only when the two are combined [Music] under settings repeat we can select a step to split into sub steps in this mode you can't see where your active underlying steps are you'll have to memorize them beforehand or listen for them while the sequence is playing [Music] after selecting a step you can activate note repeat and choose a division the rd9 supports two four and eight sub steps but luckily there's a faster way of placing sub steps and this can be done from the normal sequencer view make sure note repeat is on hold any step and as soon as you press the trigger button the current repeat setting will be applied to that step you don't even have to be in record mode for that if you deactivate and activate a step it resets it sub steps can also be live recorded with a node repeat performance feature in addition to sub steps we also have a flam option per step let's place flams on some of these snare hits [Music] the flam has no effect if the flam width is at zero but as soon as you increase it you can hear that it sounds as if the drum is hit with two sticks almost at the same time with just the tiniest bit of delay [Music] in addition to the usual swing ranges from 50 to 75 percent you can also have negative swing from 25 to 49 [Music] no micro timing all steps are quantized to the grid [Music] nope the instrument sound parameters can't be automated but you can automate the filter cut off the movement of the filter cutoff knob can be live recorded or you can just manually enter values per step [Music] the transition between the values is smoothed out so you don't have any sudden jumps filter automation is stored with each pattern [Music] the bpm ranges from 20 to 240 no decimals by default the tempo setting is safe with each pattern but you also have the option to save the tempo per song or even globally there's no metronome but you can tap the tempo by tapping tap hold three times the sequencer can be set to five different tempo multipliers which are saved with each pattern half speed for eighth notes three quarter speed for eighth note triplets normal speed for sixteenth notes one and a half time speed for 16th triplets and double speed for 30 second notes the sync options can be changed here the default is the own internal sequencer clock then there's midi midi over usb and the sync input for the latter you have a few clock rates to choose from 1 2 4 24 and 48 pulses per quarter and one pulse per step as you saw earlier the rd9 has three trigger outputs for triggering external gear trigger out one and two are permanently tied to the rim shot and hand clap respectively while trigger out 3 is freely assignable to any of the analog instruments there's a pretty good offering of convenience features when selecting patterns you can see which patterns are used or empty unfortunately this guide disappears when copying saving or erasing patterns it would also have been really helpful there you can also erase single instruments sweep erase single instruments and clear hole banks for copying patterns there's a complicated route but fortunately also this lovely shortcut where you just hold copy and press the destination you can't copy and paste single instrument tracks but you can copy and paste whole pages but only inside of the current pattern if you want to backup your machine or import and export patterns you can do this via usb using the behringer synth tribe tool there are plenty of performance features roll or note repeat step repeat which loops 1 2 four or eight steps we can mute and solo instruments and also instantly clear these mutes and solos you don't lose any steps when shortening the pattern so this could be used as a performance tool as well as mentioned before we can turn record off and now any steps we place are one-offs that are undone by the running light of the sequencer [Music] autosave is turned on by default so every change you make to a pattern is immediately saved but if you turn auto save off you can mess with the pattern and when you're done you can simply revert it to its last saved state a feature that i always find useful is seamless pattern copy this means you can create a copy of the current pattern and switch to that copy without interrupting playback there's also a pattern on roll function this extends the length of the pattern and clones its existing content into the newly added steps this way you can seamlessly add another bar to your pattern and already have something to work with instead of silence triggering the instruments or finger drumming is only possible if the sequencer is not running this means you can't record multiple instruments at the same time as you already saw during the jeff mills pattern you have to switch instruments with the select buttons and then tap them in separately the pads are not pressure sensitive but you can hold tap hold for an accent you can of course connect the midi device to the rd9 to trigger the sounds externally what's really nice is that you can set the midi note values for the drums directly in the rd9 you don't need a computer for that and in case you were wondering no sadly there aren't any midi cc's to control the sound parameters in the random steps menu you can select instruments and place steps one of these selected instruments will be randomly triggered wherever a random step is placed then we have probability steps under settings probability you can select which steps should be affected by probability either right here or back in the normal sequencer view we can set a probability value in percent currently the probability steps play every time now only 50 percent of the time and now never song mode is like a playlist for your patterns you have 16 slots to place your patterns in they have to be from the current bank though you can decide for each slot how often its pattern should repeat the maximum is 255 times then there's another mode in which you can chain hold songs together autofill is a very useful feature it allows you to piggyback a shorter pattern onto the end of your current pattern this is the main pattern and here we have a few different fills as you can see the fills are shorter than the main pattern while we're on the main pattern we can now cue any other pattern as an autofill the autofill is now played instead of the pattern's regular ending it's too bad that these autofills can't be used in song mode normally when selecting a pattern it's played after the current pattern has finished playing but if i hold the pattern button while selecting a pattern the sequencer now instantly jumps to that pattern we enter it at the current playback position so we can freely remix patterns you can also use the node repeat feature to make engine noises on the low tom [Music] when switching to enhanced mode the hi-hat pitch setting from the knob isn't applied [Music] only when you turn it the setting updates on the kick drum it works fine and it's no surprise that the rd9 has the same quirks as the rd8 the auto scroll setting is not saved and always off when loading a song you have to turn it on manually every time after loading a song or else your song will be stuck on the current pattern there's also some good news on the rd8 instrument mixing was designed in a way that the signal polarity of the individual instrument outputs is inverted in relation to the main out under certain circumstances on the rd9 that's no longer the case the polarity always stays the same and yes that irritating separator line between step 9 and 10 also made it to the rd9 there aren't any step colors to use for orientation this time but the lower overlay has been broken into separate segments which helps a lot this labeling doesn't make much sense now that you can autofill every pattern but to be fair the firmware change probably came after the hardware went into production if you're coming from other machines with a total accent the accent level knob behavior can be easily mistaken as buggy the rd9 can actually save the accent level per pattern so on a freshly programmed one you have to first change the accent level for it to take any effect according to the manual there's supposed to be a system setting that makes the accent level knob work globally or per song but i couldn't find it blinkiness and a good boot sequence the rd9 is currently on sale for about 350 euros or 350 us dollars let's be honest this is basically a light gray rd8 but with different instruments which is a good thing already at its release the rd9 benefits from all the firmware improvements the rd8 has gotten over the last two years it has the same good sequencer usability and performance features which i'm happy with the exception being the concept of live data and store data which i think could have been handled a bit better remember those little alien icons that we used on our rda cheat sheet to mark weird and inconsistent things our new rd9 cheat sheet has these as well yay check it out on our patreon every single thing from this review and more is explained in detail there i like the concept of authentic and enhanced mode where you can basically switch between an original 909 and a modded one with more controls but why only three enhanced controls there's lots of room here what about rim shot pitch clap pitch or clap reverb or maybe some parameters that make the toms more flexible oh well to be honest i'm more of an 808 person myself but in the last months as i transcribed more and more 909 songs it really grew on me and i must say they nailed the sound pretty well is there anything you'd like to know about the rd9 in detail let us know in the comments we decided to keep the channel ad free so please support us on patreon [Music] bring me you

Channel: Captain Pikant

Views: 108,521

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Id: 6cT3Rndndic

Length: 27min 44sec (1664 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 19 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/captainpikant]

Hello everyone! We spent a lot of time with the Behringer RD-9 and this is our thorough review. We included lots of diverse example patterns with different settings and a blind test comparing it to Roland's ACB emulation of the 909. Also, what's wrong with the Hi-Hat in Authentic Mode?

[u/[deleted]]

This is great. Also, thanks for actually telling your viewers everything they need to know. I was this close to getting the Behringer RD-6 until you pointed out that you can't change any of the sounds whatsoever. No decay or pitch controls on the kick?? LMAO. I love the sound of that drum machine (and the original of course) but what an incredibly ridiculous limitation.