There's tons of sounds on this, and easy to operate, didn't need the directions. Easy to figure out. The three top pads you have to hit them harder in order for them to sound, which I use them for cymbals or loops, overall this muilti pad is amazing, thank you tiberius

I bought this in 2021 because the functionality was far superior to anything else on the market. The sampler works like an MPC. It's very intuitive. You can plug an instrument or mixer directly into the stereo input and sample directly to the unit and then it shows your sample in wave form visually and you can easily trim it via the encoder dials. I made a whole album with this functioning as my sampler.

But, right now the device is an oversized paperweight. When you flip it on it is stuck on the start screen. And apparently the only fix is to take it apart down to the motherboard and remove the internal SD card and replace it. I will probably eventually do this being that I spent $ dollars on this thing but there's no way I can recommend it to anyone.

Also, Alesis support is useless. There is no one to contact. Emails or phone calls are never returned. So, I can't really recommend Alesis as a company to deal with in general.

All this is very unfortunate because they built a product that on the surface is quite innovative. But, the quality control is very poor.

But a Roland instead.

Took me a while to be ready to write this review. This multipad has a lot of potential. It doesn't respond like any real percussion instrument but it can imitate so many. It has become a regular part of my kit mostly because it is easier to haul around. I still prefer the analog world, but day to day, a hybrid set works pretty well. I rarely use the cymbal voices, but frequently use it for hand percussion that I can play with sticks and big drums that are tough to haul around or fit into available space.

But there were too many issues. The interface is extremely clunky. There is no cabled usb transfer from a PC (you need a usb Flash Drive! it needs to be formatted just so. It still doesn't recognize your files half the time...)

Renaming files is a chore. Attempting to record samples via audio in resulted in a completely unusable, distorted mess.

Turning the metronome to "phones only" still sends the click through the mains. I don't know if it's a software issue or if it's the electronics themselves. I tried to change the click subdivision to 1/8 but it completely ignored me.

Selecting the start / end of the samples should be easier (let me zoom in one level closer!)

Steer clear of this!

I bought this to have the ability to continue to play drums after some health issues that stopped me from playing a acoustic kit. and this multi-pad has everything I had in my acoustic kit and much more. nice having a machine that will do all the basic kits plus other non conventional kits and samples. after some menu diving I can set it up for my needs that work well. the only down side is it takes a few seconds to change kits when live on the fly playing other wise it perfect for my needs

Disclaimer, I'm not a very good drummer. In fact, I'm primarily a keys/bass player, but I wanted some way to get drums into my home recordings without having to draw it in with a mouse or tap a tiny percussion pad. For a while I used a full size Roland TD25 electronic kit, but owing to lack of space and skill, I've moved on to this multipad.

The initial presets do a good job of showing off the instrument's capabilities, but I'd recommend moving directly into making your own. Personally, I'm using it primarily as a MIDI trigger into Logic, but I was also able to get a few kits dialed in for stripped-down live sets.

I purchased the Alesis Strike MultiPad (ASMP) two years ago. I am a jobbing musician and only took it for big/important jobs. I take very good care of all my equipment. I have cases for all my drums and bought a case with cushioning to carry the ASMP. At the two year mark, I started having problems with the unit. It would freeze on the logo when turning it on and stay that way for over an hour. I left it on to see if the programs would come on (they often would not). Occasionally the unit's programs would come up, but no sound would play. When I tried a different program, the screen froze up again and got stuck on 'Loading.' I reached out to both Alesis and InMusic Technical support. Their voice mail is always full. Their chat application is extremely poor (stalling after three messages) and their response to emails is terrible (took 10 days for them to respond and I have not heard from them again. I took the ASMP to a specialty electronic center in the Chicago land area. The main board on the unit is bad and they also, can not get in touch with Alesis/InMusic for parts. As I stated earlier, I am a working musician. Imaging your drums, keyboard or guitar not working and the manufacturer won't even return your calls. If this is how you make a living, you are not making a living. This was not a cheap investment. It cost nearly $. It should work longer than two years (especially if it is well taken care for), and the manufacture should be responsive to it's customers. Let me save you time, money, and aggravation. DO NOT BUY AN ALESIS STRIKE MULTIPAD!

I bought this pad a year ago use it twice play by hand no sticks I plug it in a regular outlet it turn on and off and it die. I took it in for repair guy said it's cheaper to buy a new one would never buy Alesis brands ever keep Roland brand in your practice sessions.

I purchased the Strike Multipad to add to my Alesis drumset but found that when paired with a bass trigger and hi hat pedal…this is a standalone instrument.

I love the variety of drum samples to create your own kits and loops which makes it a versatile instrument.

I had a previous version of this product that was not nearly as sophisticated.

One of the things I love best about this device is the ability to just plug in a guitar, or an analog signal from any source, to create a sound file to attach to a pad.

One annoying feature is that you have to push the on/off switch in and reboot the machine to save changes!

I will be uploading some videos of how are use the device to my YouTube channel for users who want to learn more.

Right now my channel just has three private videos where I made quick mash ups of songs for my band members reference.

I may try to add an additional comment to this Sweetwater portal later with a video.

One thing I wish they could figure out on the pad is how to use the inputs for drum foot pedals so that one could use activation foot switches for everyone of the nine channels.

I devised a work around which I will show on my YouTube channel … that allowed me to play the pad with my feet by using foot switches, while I played the bass guitar… to access sounds kind of like Geddy Lee does with his foot pedals.

I started out using the pad as a drummer, and I've gone back to using the pad as a drummer. So I create sounds and access the sounds using the pads with my sticks , to create keyboard washes and other effects to play in songs.

I probably won't get these videos posted until the winter of 2022, but I have a little time off work.

In summary, is the pad worth it? It is for me, is expanded my creativity and people who see the way I use it, are kind of blown away.

I think Sweetwater is great, my personal engineer Nich Mangiani is fantastic. My brother also is a Sweetwater customer and has great things to say about his engineer Tyler.

Never owned or used a multipad in my small recording studio. Ones I had in my hands I thought it was going to be hard to set up since I never owned or used one but ones I turned it on and saw it in person I felt like ive owned it before and it was so easy to set up and start to record with it!!!!!!!!!

I find this easier and more intuitive than the competitor's offering of which I'm a former owner. And most importantly I've been having fun with it!

Regardless of if I use this Alesis Strike in a live environment OR I'm using it to find the concept of rhythm in a studio song I'm working on in any genre, this beast shows up and demands I beat the hell out of it. Great gear 100%. HOWEVER, you have to have flaws and I'll tell you the instant upfront flaw I found with the product. The factory sounds are annoying. Some of the included sounds, Sure I'll use them, but the other handful are pretty much store demo quality and more than likely won't be used in any situation other than my kids venturing into the studio to mess around. Usually, the preloads on this type of gear will get you a copy strike if you use the included loops and patterns in any song. (As some clown has already done that and then uploaded the track and claim everyone's track involving same pattern) Easy to fix though with all the options available to build your own kits. Overall, I'd recommend this gear to anyone not wanting to be stuck to a midi player tethered to a laptop during a live show.

Was going to get the roland spd sx but they were out of stock. Actually glad how it worked out cause this is a beast!

Over the years, I have owned the Roland Spd, the Octapad and the Yamaha DTX. I ended up selling them all on Ebay. I wanted to like the Octapad but frankly, I found that I had no use for it. I found the Roland Spd and the Yamaha cumbersome to work with. Then along came the Alesis Strike Multipad.

The Alesis Strike is a fun, easy to use, workhorse of a machine. My band mates love what I have been doing with it. Making samples is so easy. I have a zoom H6. All I have to do is record samples on the H6 then plug it in to the Alesis Strike. Assign a pad and off I go. It's fantastic. Of course I can edit my samples on the Strike as well. I make backing tracks for the band and can edit them on the Alesis too.

If you are in a band, you will love this thing. At this point, I do not have any negatives. Well there is one. If you plan to gig with this you will need a case. Spend the cash and get the hard case. The bag is ok, but it's awkward to carry and tips over when the Alesis Strike is in side. The protection is good, but the hard case is better. Yea, I went cheap and bought the bag first and I regretted it. I ended up getting the hard case.

I would chose the Alesis Strike over the Roland and all the others.

I was floored when I opened the box and saw this machine for the 1st time in person. The level of design and craftsmanship was amazing.
The playability is great and you can tell they did a lot of work on the samples to get them correct. Alesis is known worldwide for their percussion samples. The user interface is really good with a lot of information. A lot of work went into this device.

One small con is I wish they would've put an optical or SPDIF output to "upconvert" the output to a DAC. But that's kind of esoteric for most people.

I can't wait to utilize the looping and sampling functions as well as dip my toes into percussion. It's fun.

Was a great unit that I enjoyed using until it completely stopped powering up on me and got stuck on the home screen. I was past warranty so customer service basically suggested I pay for repairs and given the cost it would require you might as well buy a whole new pad. Really great piece of gear that offers some advantages over the Roland, when it works that is. Stock sounds are okay nothing too special either.

This machine is so versatile. We use it for adding percussion loops. Use it as a full drum kit for small spaces by adding 2 external triggers. Use it in a hybrid set up. We also use it in conjunction with triggers for recording. It's great with samples and great on its own. Has the most external trigger inputs of any Multipad out there. He will not be sorry if you get one. Well worth every cent.

As our Brit friends might say, "a nice piece of kit". Tons of fun with lots of ways to make sounds. This is my first multipad so its hard to compare with others. Maybe not as tough as Roland (if you plan to bang it around on gigs) but seems like a solid build quality. With the most features and on-board samples, I think its the best bang-for-the-buck in value.
My main complaint is the learning curve...its a steep one, more than I realized! Many of the controls don't feel intuitive to me. The owners manual (not included, you'll have to download it) gives you an overview, but not much detail for actual use. Be prepared to spend a lot of time with on-line video tutorials. And even so, you'll be doing a lot of trial-by-error/experimentation to figure things out.

Had mine for about a week and am already disappointed by a few important things (to me)

1. No quantize/snap function for loop recording either during recording or playback
2. When you start recording a loop, you have to wait for a 1 bar count-in. I much prefer the Roland SPD-s process which arms record and gives a click, but doesn't start recording until you actually strike a pad.
3. Would love to have a "live record" loop function (similar to Wavedrum Mini or the latest Roland Handsonic) where you are able simply and quickly record a phrase without having to set up tempo or bar length etc.. Great for capturing "on the fly" loops in real time.
4. Cannot match sampled loops to clock/tempo sync (like in Ableton). Loops only play back at tempo recorded
5. No ability to have sampled loop phrases start playback on the nearest beat/bar etc… If you don't hit the pad exactly in time you loops will be out of sync.
6. No way to sync FX such as delay to clock/tempo

Why can't someone just come out with a drum pad hardware version of Ableton Live that can really work as a live performance instrument?

I'm a lifelong guitar player who usually plays for my own enjoyment which means no band mates. I am regularly frustrated with getting beats behind my guitar playing because I lack either the patience or creativity to use software based drums to do anything other than basic rhythms with repetitive fills.

I ordered this thinking I would use it strictly as a drum kit with more of a live feel. I can use it for that and it feels great but it really Just sparked my interest in getting a real set of drums for the first time so I did just that. I was sure I would return the multipad but after getting the real drums I started to see more usefulness it in the ways it was designed to be used.

I love being able to create my own samples from favorite movies or speeches and edit them and trigger them at will. I've also put triggers on my drum heads and use the multipad as the source for some of the drum sounds. I think this is called a hybrid kit.

This thing has a massive number of samples built in along with an equally massive amount of memory on board. For audio, this unit should have more than enough memory for most people I would think.

I wish they had spent time creating more pre-set kits because they usually spark my interest in creating similar ones but the handful of ones in there show off the features pretty well.

I wouldn't say the interface is easy to navigate but it's not overly hard either. It just takes patience and some muscle memory to become effortless.

The number of ins and outs is impressive. If you want to take full advantage of them, be sure to have at least a couple TRS quarter inch to stereo out adapters available. Some of the triggers ins are meant to be used with TRS cable and dual zone triggers but they can be split to use two different triggers using the Y adapter I mentioned. I'm triggering from a snare, three toms and 1 bass drum and using two of these Y cables to do it.

This unit is a lot of fun. Learning to play drums on top of making the multipad a part of my rig has given me quite a bit of inspiration and should keep me in the creative zone for the foreseeable future.

I'm going to be very brief and to the point with the review. I've owned a couple of instrument pads, mainly for performances. Some pads were great, others not so great due to limitations. This drum pad It's very good, but has limitations when it comes to editing, and performance features. One feature that's missing is pad muting of other pads (which if you're running long samples, it's not going to stop by hitting another pad)
Other flaw is no real time tuning of any samples that you may have put in.

The best multi pad in the market

This is my third Alesis Strike MultiPad. First one right out the box had a bad audio card. Returned it, second one was brand new and was great untill it died 3 months later out the blue. No Drops or bumps, was just sitting in my room and wouldn't start up again. Luckily I had bought a warranty so I got it replaced with a 3rd brand new one, right out of the box was also broken. No sounds being generated. The product is amazing when it works but its so unreliable, it literally useless for musicians doing consistent work. The nice people at my local music store also said there was a huge batch of these pads that were not working. Do yourself a favor and get a Roland SPD or OctoPad. I lost over $300 dollars just trying to get a working Alesis Pad. Great idea for a Pad but absolutely zero quality checks.

This is a great investment.

the bewt machine ever

I got this when it was pretty much brand new, so I waited some time to post a review to make sure I knew everything I needed to know about it first. My first impression was really really good. It's a pretty complicated machine, but after some time working with it you get used to navigating it. I probably wouldn't recommend it to someone just starting into multi pads just for the fact that it is pretty complex. If you are familiar with multi pads this is the one to get. There's endless possibilities for customization, it's honestly kind of insane everything it can do. The internal storage was a HUGE selling point for me. The pros for this piece of gear are definitely the internal storage, pad sensitivity and like I said the endless uses for this machine. The cons for me are the user manual and the trigger settings. The user manual doubles as the manual for the Strike Kit, and can get a little confusing when reading through it because some functions only relate to one of those products. It's really not all that clear either. The biggest problem with this product is without a doubt the trigger settings. I've been trying to work with it for quite some time now and I can't seem to get a perfect response (I'm using a Roland RT-30HR Dual Zone Trigger on my snare and a Roland RT-30K Kick Drum Trigger on my kick.) The system has three or four different parameters to control the triggers and they're kind of randomly spread out across the menu so they are difficult to find and VERY hard to get just right as they all have to essentially work together to effect the trigger. Even bigger issue than that is the serious lack of information on the internet to use these functions. All that to say overall the product is very good. Arguably the best. I would just really like to see an in depth youtube video for the trigger parameters.

I've tried a few drum pad devices in the past that were ok, but Alesis has really outdone themselves! This thing is a beast!! The internal sounds are amazing & plentiful. The storage capacity is huge! So, you wanna add a few hundred samples of your own? Go right ahead! Do that and still have plenty of room to spare! I can go on and on and on. Bottom line? If you're looking to dabble in hybrid kits, BUY THIS!!!
You will not be disappointed!

If your a first time buyer of a multi pad unit, get this!!!! I love the fact it comes with a Ton of drum and percussion sounds built in. The symphonic percussion is a bonus as well. The menus are easy to use and navigate and when I plugged in a kick trigger it found it immediately, within 3 minutes I had all the sounds available to set to that trigger. Within a few days added drum tracks to some Christmas song's with ease. I've only scratched the surface of the features it offers, but am extremely happy with the quality and ease of use. Thanks Brian at Sweetwater for the deal and support.

Such an awesome product..
Works great and easy to use..

As a long time user of the SPD-SX, I was a bit hesitant to change.
The Alesis has surpassed my expectations and is now my goto giging multipad.
Roland needed some real competition and the Strike Multipad is the perfect unit to light a fire under them.

The only 2 cons I can think of at the moment, are the lack of "setlists" and a Mac/Windows GUI.
Easy elements to fix with firmware updates.

There's really no reason to purchase the outdated SPD-SX at this point.

This thing es mind blowing!!!

I had held off on a sampler multipad for a while just because I was never happy with the Roland SPD line. The tiny screen, hard to remember where samples were located, lack of included samples, etc. When I found the Strike Multipad I was pretty excited to see the 32GB storage, the 6GB included samples, and the large color screen, not to mention the color labels of the pads. It sounds great. If feels great to play. And it has a ton of great features out of the box. I really like it. I've used it to record percussion tracks and loops and I also use it along with my acoustic kit on shows to play SFX, loops, and (when needed) tracks.
That said, there are some features that are lacking. These are the biggest things missing (IMHO) as of the 1.1 firmware update: 1) No set list feature. 2) No GUI for a computer or tablet. 3) Backup does not save user samples. Are here are some nitpicks: 1) It takes a few seconds in some cases for the kits to load. While a kit is loading, all controls are disabled. 2) It has a dedicated hi-hat pedal input, but it doesn't have a way to really use it properly. There's a hi-hat mode, but you have to use several pads to make it work, and that kind of defeats the purpose of having the built-in pads. 3) The metronome doesn't get as loud as I'd like out of the phones jack. For now, I'm giving it 4 stars because I'm confident Alesis will fix some of these things with upcoming firmware updates. It has the potential to be a total beast and an SPD-SX killer. Hopefully it gets there.

I just purchased this and took it out of the box and started playing. Didn't read the instructions yet, but it was easy to just plug it in and go. Connected it to a nice powered speaker, and wow. The sounds coming out of this thing is incredible! It didn't take me long to bang the glass on the front with a stick. It just bounced off. It's rugged and appears it will hold up well. I intend to use it alongside my acoustic kit in a church, where a normal snare drum is just way too loud. So I see me using this as a snare and toms where the audio guy can control the volume. it's a joy to play and my fingers are getting blisters because I can't leave it alone. Works great with sticks or just your hands. Now my head is spinning with all the things I will be able to do with this.

I can"t believe how great this instrument sounds and how extensive it really is! There is so much you can do with this. It can be incorporated into any kit and style of playing. The pads are top notch and and samples are amazing! Dig in deep and take the time to program to your liking. I love how external triggers can be added!!! This thing is a beast!!!!!!

It"s a great multipad everything I needed is in this alesis multipad