This is possibly the drum machine that we’ve been waiting for Roland to build for quite some time. The Boutique recreations of the TR-808 and TR-909 have been pretty awesome but have felt more like an homage than an innovative move forward in beat making. The TR-8 Rhythm Performer introduced in 2014 was a bit more like it but we’ve had to wait until 2018 for something really special.

The Roland TR-8S Rhythm Performer takes everything that was great about the TR-8 and refines it, evolves it and opens the whole thing up to new possibilities. Along with the 808 and 909 sounds it brings in all the other drum machines too — 606, 707 and 727. These are all “ACB” (Analog Circuit Behavior) models of analog circuitry, replicating their exact behavior for the most authentically Roland groove making experience.

You’d think that was plenty to play with, but Roland has also incorporated a comprehensive sampling section. It ships with a large collection of presets but you can start crafting your own signature beats with your own samples fed in via SD card. You can build an entire kit from samples or mix and match from the classic ACB modeled drum machines. Feed them into the 11 instrument parts ready for sequencing.

The classic 16-step button sequencer is just as intuitive and easy to use as it has always been. But now you can record in velocity changes, accents, sub-steps, rolls and ratchets for each step. Drop in effects like Reverb and Delay or insert drive and crushing onto the track of your choice.

You can create fill patterns to trigger manually or let the TR-8S drop them in at a predefined measure, keeping your hands free for tweaking or waving at the crowd. You can automate everything and save up to 128 patterns in the internal memory.

This is really Roland at the top of their beat-making game. It has the sounds everyone wants, with the interface that everyone knows, with the versatility that everyone needs to make it their own.

Street Price: $699
roland.com

Novation has honed the Circuit experience into something effortlessly rhythmic. The Circuit Rhythm is a versatile sampler that can trick out beats and loops, slice and sculpt, resample and regroove with a workflow that keeps you in the moment. Whether you are making beats for production or performing live this little machine has a lot to give.

Inside the box you’ll find some top-class content for instant playability. Or, via the recording inputs, you can sample from your turntable, your phone, your computer and drop them directly into Circuit Rhythm. Once on board, you can process, slice, re-edit and resample them into exactly what you need for your track.

Talking of tracks you have 8 sample tracks with 32-step patterns chainable up to 256 steps. You can go off-grid with wild quantisation options, probability and mutations. You can plunge everything into a lush effects engine and side-chain the compressor to keep things pumping. You can excite the crowd with the Grid FX in live performance with beat repeats, stutter and vinyl effects.

The Circuit Rhythm is a great box and inspirational tool that you can take anywhere and use anytime with its rechargeable battery and headphone output. And once in the studio, you can integrate it seamlessly into your DAW and other MIDI gear. Great interface, great sounds, great beats.

Street Price: $399
Novationmusic.com

The Akai MPC is the original beat-making machine. It was the first to move beyond programming beats and into performing beats. The 16-pad format has been around for decades and it continues to thrive in music production. The MPC Live II is the current sweet spot between features, portability and ease of use, and it just feels right.

The MPC Live II is a standalone box with a full sample-based sound engine, multi-track sequencing and rechargeable battery for taking it anywhere. It has full-sized MPC pads with all the touch and feel of the classic pads we’ve come to know. And for the first time, it has studio class speakers built-in with some serious low-end thump so you don’t have to lose yourself in headphones.

You won’t believe the connectivity. It has two separate MIDI ports, 3 stereo outputs, Wifi and Bluetooth for a completely wireless workflow and USB. It has line-level inputs, microphone inputs and a phono in direct from your turntable. It even has CV/Gate connections for getting into modular synthesis and a USB hub for MIDI controllers. It can be the centre of an entire studio and take control of everything.

The system is run by a 7″ touch screen surrounded by knobs and function buttons. You can create all in the box with MIDI and audio tracks. Slice up samples, built kits, drop-in effects, mix and produce without having to touch a computer. Although if you want, you can move to the desktop via the MPC2 DAW and pull in virtual instruments and other plugins.

There’s 16GB of internal storage, and it comes with 10GB of premium beat-making content that will get your juices going from the moment you boot it up. The MPC Live II is ready whenever inspiration strikes.

Street Price: $1,299
Akaipro.com

The Deluge is far more than a beat machine. It’s a powerful and robust synthesizer, sampler and sequencer in a very finger friendly package. Beatmakers also like a bit of melody and Deluge gives you the power to build entire tracks in the one box. It’s not all about the rhythm but the possibilities in this machine are enough to make any beat monster smile.

The internal synthesizer engine features FM, analog modeling and subtractive synthesis with a load of modulation, filters, and effects to get you designing your own sounds. You can even load your own waveforms and make that the basis of your synthesizer. The sampler engine lets you stream samples off an SD card. You can resample, slice and time-stretch before running them through the modulation and filtering engine of the synthesizer.

But where this all gets interesting is in the power of the sequencing matrix. There are 128 light-up RGB pads to play with, arranged in 8 rows of 16. This is great for seeing what’s going on with multiple tracks all at once, but it also morphs into a playable keyboard, or more importantly, it becomes a drum pattern editor. With an 8-instrument drum kit loaded, each row can control a separate drum sound. It’s just like a drum grid in a DAW but in hardware.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen this before in a hardware device. You usually have to select the sound and then do the sequence on the single row of buttons — like the TR-8S. That functionality alone makes this an awesome beat making box.

The interface controls take it even further. You can zoom out to view multiple bars and then zoom back in to edit the detail. You can scroll from side to side and up and down to reveal more tracks or more steps. It even has a function where if you edit one bar it will mirror the edit in the other bars.

Arrangement and Song modes let you build tracks, chain up patterns and fire loops, patterns and samples on the fly. You can sample directly in from a microphone or line level source. Along with the usual MIDI and USB connections, there are also two CV outputs and 4 gate outputs to offer some integration with modular and Eurorack.

The front end adapts brilliantly to every sequencing situation, moving from overviews to individual tracks, notes, and automation with speed and fluidity. It’s remarkably compact, has an internal speaker and can run on batteries, making it ideal for people on the move, or jamming in the park.

Deluge is a versatile and complex machine that offers a huge amount of depth and playability for the ambitious beat producer.

Street Price: $899
synthstrom.com

The Digitakt is not messing about. It’s an eight-track digital drum computer and sampler that will bend beats, capture tunes and destroy in live performance. I’ve seen performances with a pair of these completely dominate on stage. It’s monstrous and totally fabulous.

It comes with over 400 samples including 23 drum kits, 42 one-shot synths, 44 stabs and pads, and 83 waveforms to loop into music. The tracks you can build are enormous, the sound engine pumps like nothing you’ve heard, and the interface gets you where you need to go in super-fast time. The step-sequencer is the tightest you’ll find and lets you control the structure and the sound with every parameter tweakable per step. Real-time controls let you jump into the groove and push things about with every beat.

You can meddle with dozens of patterns, reinvent your direction and stream them into songs that can run your whole show. With the eight sample tracks you’ve also got eight MIDI tracks to sequencer your other gear and bring it all together.

Digitakt is a powerhouse of sequencing, a huge source of electrifying sounds and a place where you can explode your ideas and feel total sonic satisfaction.

Street Price: $799
elektron.se

Sonicware has a whole range of groovebox machines based on different sorts of sound generation and genre intention. One of the latest and grooviest is the LoFi-12 XT. It’s an updated version of the original Lo-Fi 12 expanded into the SmplTrek format and is all about that low resolution 12-bit sampling that was made famous by the original Akai S-series samplers from the 1980s.

The Lo-Fi 12 XT is a sampler and sequencer that you can hold with two hands a bit like a console controller. It’s easy to navigate with the D-Pad buttons, has a built-in microphone for instant sound capture and a built-in speaker for playback. You can record something, loop it, create kits from it and bash out beats in no more than a jiffy.

It has eight tracks for samples, audio, beat generation and MIDI, You can throw on filters, modulation, overdrive and other effects. Samples can be up to 300 seconds in length and you can load up to 64MB in a single project. It’s intuitive, easy to loop and jam with while you stack tracks into patterns and patterns into songs.

The Lo-Fi 12 XT is a lot of fun with an easy workflow and the ability to capture everything into a single performance.

Street Price: $429
Sonicware.jp

The original SP404 is a classic sampling groove machine. The beats that have been raised on these pads are legendary. It has a vibe, a lilt that no other machine has matched, until the version 2 came along.

The MKII came about through customer feedback and an impressive amount of research. So often sequels to legendary gear acquire too many features and lose the thing they were loved for in the first place. This isn’t true with the SP-404 MKII. It still has that same instant quality, that vibe, that feel that makes it a fun place to play. While at the same time it’s come bang up to date and expands it in all the right directions.

There are 17 expressive pads and some seriously updated knobs for an exciting beat making and control experience. You feel instantly at home with the device but find it quicker, easier and completely intuitive. You now have 16GB of internal storage, you can stream direct to your phone and you can collaborate with the dual headphone port.

The screen is vivid and zoomable making sample chopping easy and fast. You can resample on the fly and pull patterns into samples and samples into patterns in a way that makes your head spin. Plugin a mic or guitar and swirl through those effects and motion recording as you lay tracks next to beats and jam all over yourself.

The SP-404 MKII is everything a sequel needed to be.

Street Price: $499
Roland.com

The PULSAR-23 is so incredible, so unusual that it’s likely to be the best beat-making thing to come out of the SOMA Laboratories.

It has just 4 channels of sound; kick, percussion, snare, and cymbals. The sounds are generated via 23 synthesis and effects modules. There’s no sequencer, instead there are 4 loop recorders for triggering events. There’s a lot of crazy going on, a huge amount of creative thinking and design and it’s probably the device that’s interested me the most in a long time.

If you are into clean, ordered, pristine percussion and tidy beats then you will not enjoy this at all. For the rest of us who like a bit of noise, glitch and grime in our beats then this thing is a blast.

Street Price:$1,999
somasynths.com