D16 Drumazon 2 review

D16 Drumazon 2: What is it?

Some software updates are a surprisingly long time coming – we’re thinking NI’s Massive, for example. But D16’s latest Drumazon update is probably a record breaker in terms of the time it’s taken to leap to version 2 – a full 16 years! And it’s only another bloody 909 drum machine, right? So how can it possibly be worth that length of waiting time? 

Well, Drumazon 2 goes back to basics, updates the concept and comes up with a software instrument that doesn’t just leave the original hardware in its wake, but is totally the 909 for the 2020s and could well be the drum machine of this decade. 

D16 Drumazon 2: Performance and verdict

Yes it’s packed with huge amounts of sounds, patterns and drum kits, but it’s what you can do with them, and how simple it is to make a pattern totally unique to you, that are what sets Drumazon 2 apart and above other drum plugins. If you were to rate a product based on how quickly you are inspired by it, then Drumazon 2 scored a 10 within about 10 seconds of booting it up. But let’s not get too carried away, too quickly. Deep breath.   

Like the original – although it was such a long time ago, we had a hard time tracking down the review – you get both Sound Control and Sequencer sections of the UI, but updates within these are so many and varied and such a long time after the original, we might as well focus on 2 as a new instrument and run through its features, of which there are many. 

The Sound Control section firstly offers 11 drum sounds and main parameters on each one to tweak, including level, tuning and decay. 

Where it gets hugely interesting and completely flexible is in the Strips section. You start by selecting your drum sound from the 11 on offer, and can then tweak its decay, tuning, filter and compressor setting. Then (and this is the best bit) you get to direct any or all of these drum sounds into one or both of Drumazon 2’s effects engines. Each of these has five slots running in series from left to right but, importantly, these can be reordered, with any slot dragged into a new order, or even sent to the other engine. You can even drop a drum sound into a different slot – 3, for example – to bypass previous ones. And you have this flexibility on each drum sound. 

By this point we had already customised not only some of the amazing patterns on offer but customised the sounds with effects too. D16 might have done the hard work programming them, but a few tweaks in and these patterns felt totally unique to us, with pretty minimal effort. 

But that’s not everything. Once you are happy with your pattern, you can pass it through a master effect section (via Master) and set up different keys to trigger the sounds. There are random features and you can set velocities and different articulations. All of which ties up with the very able and intuitive sequencer which is just like any other click and play sequencer.

We’ll detail the sounds more next, but by now you should understand that this is no standard 909 emulation, more the peak of what the 909 has become in 2023.  

‘Just’ a 909?

So it’s a 909 for the 2020s, right? But is that enough for you? Certainly if you are a fan of the original 909 – the one used in every dance genre related to house and techno – then everything you need and a lot more is right here. The words ‘a lot more’ are key here though, because the level of effects at your disposal, tied to the other ways you can tweak sounds, take this way beyond the 909. 

You get hundreds of hits over the 11 909 kit sounds but the amount you can stretch them takes the overall sound out of the typical 909 territory and beyond. The two effects engines and their five components each offer the greatest number of possibilities, but just playing with the main Filter under this tab will have you creating sounds for more experimental genres. 

Add a bit of automation to your tweaking and you can go pretty much anywhere you please. Don’t expect acoustic drums, of course, but this is as broad an electronic palette as you can get from pretty much anywhere. 

Drumfounded?

You can probably tell already that we like Drumazon 2 a lot. Just the ability to focus on different drum sounds and stretch them massively in any direction will change the way you program your beats. The speed at which you can do it is almost terrifying and the ease at which you will create your own loops might well mean you turn to your sample libraries much less for those easy breaks and loops. 

Drumazon 2 is inspiring, simple, powerful and flexible. We can’t really ask for more in a drum machine. It’s back to basics in many ways, focussed purely on creating great beats and fast, but it does it so brilliantly that it feels like the 909 reborn.

MusicRadar verdict: Drumazon 2 has kicked out every other drum machine and 909 emulator we use, and cut down our reliance on sampled loops and breaks. It’s brilliant.

D16 Drumazon 2: The web says

"Drumazon 2 is a no-brainer if you have even a little thirst for some 909."
CDM

D16 Drumazon 2: Hands-on demos

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D16 Drumazon 2: Specifications

• Mac OS X 10.13 to macOS 14. Intel x86 / Apple Silicon. VST2 / VST3 / AU / AAX compatible host application (64-bit only).
• Windows 7 or newer. Intel x86 / AMD x86. VST2 / VST3 / AAX compatible host application (32-bit or 64-bit).
• CONTACT: D16 Drumazon 2