One of the issues with the Ketron is that the factory styles use audio drum tracks. This means that translations from other brands’ styles will always compare poorly to the wonderful audio track factory styles of the Ketron, because they will have to use the built-in midi drum kits, not recordings of real drummers!

It is a double edged sword, if you want consistency through your show you either have to use all audio drum track styles, or all midi drum track styles, or you end up with some of your songs sounding amazing, and others well, not so amazing!

Personally, I think audio track drum tracks (and guitar tracks, bass tracks etc.) is a dead end because of the content issue. Nowadays, some of the larger VST drum library’s are capable of making well recorded midi drum tracks sound like they were audio. Even some of the better Midi drum kits in Roland and the new Yamaha Revo kits can get very close to fooling you it is a real drummer, especially if a real drummer plays a midi drum kit to create the drumming in the first place.

This naturally means it is a piece of cake to translate a style from another manufacturer to those drum kits… Well, not EXACTLY a piece of cake! LOL, but definitely easier than creating an audio track with your drummer, drum kit, microphones and studio of choice!

Audio drums is a shortcut, but a shortcut with limitations. Stick a couple of GB of well recorded drum samples being triggered by an electronic drum kit, and you end up with something almost indistinguishable, but without the limitations. Want a different snare? Done. Want to move a kick pattern so it matches a syncopated bass line? Done. Want to add a subtle amount of swing to a straight beat (or vice versa)? Done.

I love Ketron’s audio drums. But not at the price of losing all editing ability or having my third party content fare poorly against them…