20 years later and still no Software Editor! 
by Garry Myers from Dallas, Oregon, May 2008
Music Background:  A little bit of everything!

The drums in 24-Bit sound great. The method in how you are required to build patterns and songs hasn't changed. One thing that I wish would have changed or that some programming guru would provide is a software editor/ patter/ song creator. Why not? Don't tell me "But it's so easy on the SR-18 / SR-16!" Software always makes things easier! You would think Alesis after waiting 20 years to follow up the SR-16 they would have gone just a little bit further and provided some PC/MAC editior...this is the 21st century right?

Don't get me wrong, the presets are great. But and editor would have made this piece of gear over the top!
Come on Alesis hire a software engineer and do us all a favor!

  Good Drum Machine 
by DJ R.T.L.™ from Rock Island, IL, May 2008
Music Background:  DJ, Musician, Songwriter, Recording Engineer, Live Sound Engineer

Within a few hours taking the SR-18 out of the box I had already programmed my own original song without even reading the users manual. The on board sounds are truly amazing and very high quality. The ease of use is great. You can go back and edit every step and beat of a pattern or song while it's stopped, or add/erase sounds in real time while looping. The Effects, EQ and Compression sound great. Tons of memory, great customization options for drum sets and tweaking and tuning individual sounds. Quantization and Swing settings for rolls are fantastic features.
I have thus far only found two sizable flaws with this machine. One, the velocity is useless! You have to practically hit one of the pads with a hammer to hear a noticeable difference in volume from slightly pressing it, no matter which setting you have the velocity on. You can go back and change the volumes of each step manually, but it'd be much nicer to be able to have a more capable velocity control for live use. The second problem is that the main and aux outputs leak into each other. So if you want to send the drum and percussion layers to the separate outputs for simultaneous recording purposes, you're going to get some low level spill that will muddy up your track. But this can be worked around by recording one layer at a time.
Overall I am impressed with this machine, you can't beat it for the price. I would definitely recommend this product. You just have to hear it for yourself!

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