Alesis HR-16 Drum Machine: Review

The Alesis HR-16 drum machine is a useful for practice, recording, and gigging years after being discontinued. Its velocity-sensitive pads, versatile tone options and low price (around $50) make it a great deal, even after more recent Alesis drum machines have come and gone.

Features

Sixteen velocity-sensitive pads are the basis for the HR-16. Each one is labeled with its default tone: Kick, Snare, Ride, Closed Hat, Mid Hat, Open Hat, Crash, Clap, Tom 1-4 and Percussion 1-4. Each pad has eight different levels of velocity response, and volume for each pad can be set at a level of 0-99. Polyphony is 16 notes.

Volume is set with a somewhat old-school slider. An additional Selection slider is the backbone of menu scrolling, tone selection, and most other tweaking.

Features that use this Selection slider include Tempo, which ranges from 20-255 BPM, Mix, which handles volume and panning, Tune, which alters the pitch of the drums, and Voice, which sets tones for each drum pad.

The HR-16 features four 1/4" outputs -- two left and two right -- plus tape and MIDI in/out ports as well. When running only a single output, the machine plays in center-panned mono, meaning drums panned too far left or right will not be audible.

Drum patterns can be from one to 682 beats long -- though most of us will only use eight, 16 or 32 -- and up to 100 patterns can be stored. Patterns are created either in real-time mode, playing the pads like drums, or in step-edit mode, which stops at each fraction of a beat and lets the user input drums individually and exert more control over the sound and volume. I find it easiest to create a pattern in real time, then add in more subtlety through step-edit mode.

Song creation is simple. After creating patterns, the user simply inserts them into a song file. Each song can contain up to 255 patterns, so anything from a three-chord rock tune to an hours-long house epic can be played back through the HR-16.

The two-line LCD has an orange backlight that makes the display easy to read. I think it looks pretty cool, too.

One handy inclusion is a flip-up lid that contains a cheat sheet showing how to complete nearly any task with the HR-16. It almost renders the paper manual useless.

Sound

The 16-bit samples are workable, but lack tonal interest. The kick has little actual bass to it, the electronic snare effect sounds more like a dirty tom, and the claps lack that 909 charm. There are some redeeming features, though -- the crash consists of two different, overlapping sounds, and the various hi-hats cut each other off, so an open hat will not ring out after a mid or closed hat is played.

Though the default sounds are not spectacular, the tuning feature opens up many possibilities. Snares can be made quick and snappy or heavy, echoing cracks. The kick drums can be made fuller with deeper tunings, and the percussion effects can sound like breathing, marching soldiers or a steel barrel hit with a two-by-four. The HR-16 rewards creativity.

Final Verdict

Alesis has released a few drum machines since this one went out of production -- the HR-16B, the SR-16 -- and professionals should look to those drum machines for greater realism and variety.

Musicians on a budget, or those who want a simple machine to jam with, can hardly do better for the low prices HR-16s sell at on eBay. In fact, the next-cheapest option is a plain old beepy metronome.