When Tadao Kikumoto where designing the TR-909 for Roland, he could never had imagined that his skills in engineering would be standard and after 30 years after it's release, still rule the dance floors. It's quite amazing actually.

While the TR-808 and TR-606 also have their product ids burned down in history books, compared with the TR-909 they are stuff for the gourmet, while the TR-909 is for the masses.

Even if you are massively bored with the sound of the 909 there is no escape from that the kick, snare and hats together with modern processing create new variations, bringing the sound from 1983 way to the current sound of the dance floors.

As some Know-It-All-Person told me 6+ years ago: trance, my friend, is going to die out. We all know what happened with trance. It fused with pop and is now ruling the charts harder than ever.

I think we safely can predict that the 909 will be at the centre of dance music for a long long time.

With that said, there is no shortage of sampled libraries of the TR-909. The amount of kicks, replications in hardware or software are staggering. If I were to check out how many 909-esque kicks I have in my Roland and E-mu hardware synthesizers, software synthesizers/romplers and sample libraries - I'm sure we would be counting thousands if not tens of thousands.

The purpose of this review is to take two highly regarded software emulators and one exceptionally detailed sample library to find out two things: a) which product gives the best 909 drum sounds, and b) are samples better than software emulation?

But before we let the shooting begin - let's meet our combatants.

Audiorealism ADM is a combined drum synthesizer and sample player. It contains 25 drum sound generators, each modeled after not just the TR-909, but also the TR-808 and TR-606. Although the aim for the emulation have been to get as close as possible for the original sounds, Audiorealism have at times added extra parameters that didn't exist with the original hardware.
There is a built-in sequencer in ADM and it's possible to automate any of the parameters directly within the plug itself. The sequencer has a swing knob and you can import original TR-909 patterns via Sysex as well as patterns from Propellerhead Rebirth.

As with ADM, the D16 Drumazon also builds its sounds from the ground up using synthesis. But instead of emulating several drum machines, the Drumazon only focuses on capturing the behavior of the TR-909. To capture all the nuances of the original sounds, all sounds have been synthesized in exactly the same way as the originals. And as with the ADM, D16 have expanded the Drumazon with more parameters that weren't available in the original. Drumazon also have a built-in sequencer and the sounds can be automated via the host.

Revolution-909 takes on the TR-909 from a different angle. Instead of replicating the synthesis methods used and building the drum sounds from the ground up, Revolution-909 is based on samples. While there are approximately two hundred million sampled versions of the TR-909 available in both commercial and free form, the maker of Revolution-909 have taken the latest techniques in Kontakt and EXS24 and created a exceptionally detailed recording of the 909. Where other sample libraries offer a few hundred or thousand variations of the original hardware, Revolution-909 offers over twenty thousand of them. Each sample is done in 24 bit and there are seven layers of Round Robin sampling to capture even the tiniest variation in the synthesis engine. All the sounds have been assembled in a practical interface (we were testing out the Kontakt 4-version).

INTERFACE ADM

The hardware-esque interface of the Audiorealism ADM doesn't reassemble any of the drum machines it emulates (although there are a couple of highly unofficial skins of the TR-909 and TR-808 as well as the TR-727 you can download from the internet). On the absolute top you find a number of output connectors - where you can conveniently route the signal to separate outputs or predefined busses. In the middle there are the parameters for all the drum sounds in use and at the bottom there is the sequencer.
While the interface itself isn't problematic to use - it's not entirely clear either and sometimes you are left with no option to read the manual (the horror!). It's very easy to switch between the different drum machine modes and is equally simple to create a drumset with mixed drums from the TR-909, 808, 606 and/or samples.
On the far right there is a small effect section where you can apply a resonant filter (bandpass or lowpass) on any selected drum channels.

INTERFACE Drumazon

With Sztuczny Perkusista (meaning artificial drummer according to Google) written under the logo, Drumazon looks way more hardware than ADM and although the Drumazon isn't a exact replica of the looks of the real 909 it's clear where the inspiration comes from. The virtual buttons and knobs are very well designed and you almost expect to hear that clicking sound whenever you press a drum trigger. The layout is by large the same as with ADM - output destinations are done at the top, under follows the drum generators with their dedicated parameters and at the bottom there is the sequencer. At the moment the interface of Drumazon cannot be changed, but D16 Group are said to provide such functionality in the future.
The interface is clear and you rarely need to peek inside the manual to understand how to operate Drumazon. After ten minutes of clicking around you've got the gist of it.

INTERFACE Revolution-909

Since the Revolution-909 is "just" a sample library it loads into either Kontakt or EXS24. For this test I used Kontakt 4 which is more or less the standard of software samplers these days. While I personally I'm not too fond of Kontakt - mainly because it's clunky and navigating and finding sounds is a damn pain - I do understand why so many developers are spending time to create libraries for it. It gives a certain degree of freedom when designing the interface and with the scripting engine, you can do some quite amazing things. Apart from my personal feelings towards Kontakt I personally know people who are just fine with it - so my thoughts gets filed under the ever-growing tab of Personal Disorders.
The layout of Revolution-909 is logical but not very practical. Since every drum sound is arranged vertically unfortunately you cannot view all the sounds at a time, not even with the largest monitor you can find. The parameters of each drum sound also have three tabs - 'Analog tune & decay', 'Noise gate' and 'Tone shaping', so in order to use the library quite a lot of scrolling and clicking in tabs are required. It's not a deal-breaker but compared with the simplicity of both ADM and Drumazon, the interface of Revolution-909 is definitely less user friendly.

SEQUENCER ADM
ADM can either be used as a drum module for triggering sounds from another device, or you use the built-in sequencer.  The pattern length can be set from 1(!) to 32 steps. For more complex drum parts you can trigger patterns from your sequencer. Although this sequencer is inspired by functionality from the real drum-boxes, I cannot say I'm entirely comfortable programming my beats with the ADM sequencer. I prefer seeing all my triggers collected in one screen and not as with ADM, having to select the drum sound to be able to edit it. The good thing about this way is that you get less visual and focus more on the sound, which always is a good thing.
Among the features of the sequencer are variable shuffle, possibility not just to shift the pattern left or right but also individual parts. Another very useful feature is the expand/shrink functions that doubles the length of the current pattern respectively shrinks it down to half the length. The sequencer have support for flam hits.
The built-in randomizer work either on a whole pattern or just for a selected part and does exactly what you expect it to: create a random mess of drum hits.

SEQUENCER Drumazon
As with ADM the sequencer can either be used with its built-in sequencer, or you can trigger it from another midi controller. From a feature point of view, the sequencer in Drumazon is very similar to the ADM sequencer. If you understand one, you understand both. Feature wise you can shift individual parts left and right, there is shuffle as is support for flam hits. The randomizer is surprisingly useful - apart from you can decide which instruments randomize, you can also set how hard the randomizer will work, and you can have different settings for different channels. Usually I'm very suspicious about randomizers - they are cool in theory, but useless in practice - but the randomizer in Drumazon is nothing short of brilliant. Very inspirational stuff especially when trying to find interesting grooves with tom toms.

SEQUENCER Revolution-909
There is no sequencer in the Revolution-909. Just a lot of samples.

FEATURES ADM

As I already mentioned the sequencer in ADM is equipped with a randomizer. Personally I don't fancy the randomizer that much, I think it's too basic for my personal taste. One very interesting feature is the possibility to set the sound of the main output. The user can switch between Clean, Old, Older and Low Boost. Old is a more colored output. Older is even more colored with emphasis on middle frequencies and Low Boost, well... boosts the lower frequencies. There is also a built-in limiter that can be set to soft or hard - or set to off.
The effect processor is a quite simple one, but with some clever automation you can create some quite cool effects with it. There is a resonant filter that can be set to lowpass or bandpass and a function called Mangler which, eh - mangles the sound. ADM is equipped with midi learn so it's very easy to set up a controller controlling the parameters in real time.
But the most interesting feature is a well hidden one. When you turn the tuning knobs of the drum sections they often inform you about which pitch the tone will be in. The function is not perfect - it doesn't always land entirely on the spot, but at least it does land in the right neighborhood. A very useful feature when trying to make sure the kick and the bass are working in the same tone/scale.

FEATURES Drumazon
As I mentioned before, the randomizer in Drumazon is nothing short of brilliant and is a useful tool whenever you need inspiration.
Other interesting features include the possibility to trigger sounds outside Drumazon via its midi output function. A quite useful function that let's you export your nifty drum programming to others, and in conjunction with the programmable drum maps it becomes quite easy to use Drumazon to control other plugins.
There is a midi learn function and a quite interesting preset manager. In contrast to ADM, the drum pattern and drum engine have their separate presets which make it very easy to change patterns without messing up the settings for the drum sounds.

FEATURES Revolution-909

The features of Revolution-909 is much different than ADM and Drumazon, mainly because it uses the Kontakt engine. As with everything Kontakt, the parameters are midi learnable and as a bonus (a quite cool bonus actually) there are also six groove templates in midi format that captures the real clock deviations of the TR-909.
Among the tabs in each sound module of Revolution-909 there is a panel where you can add effects to the signal. These effects come from the Kontakt engine, and although I personally have my opinion about them (surprise) - I feel they work well with the TR-909 sounds. You probably know the effects sonic attributes since they are in almost every Kontakt library, but here I think they work very well. The available effects are saturation, bitcrush, distortion and two separate filters.

ABOUT THE SOUNDS
Before I begin dissecting the sounds I want to point out a few things in my methodology. I have not analyzed the sounds in any spectrum analyzers or with any other tools than a pair of cheap Alesis M1 Active 620 active monitors and my ears. Since the Revolution-909 library is actual samples I started with them as general guiding point, comparing both Drumazon and ADM. One thing I often hear about the 909 is that no 909 sounds the same, which kind of make the usage of the Revolution-909 as some kind of reference point partly invalid.
But I don't agree with that. When comparing the sounds I have listened to the sounds composition and range. A kick that might not be a 100 percent replica of the 909 sound will in all probability be a good kick for most electronic styles.

A final note about the sound examples. They are what they are. I haven't tried to recreate exactly the same sounds with all three products. The aim for the examples is to give you a picture of the sonic span and capabilities.

SOUND - THE KICK
One of the reasons for this test was partly to satisfy my own curiosity when it comes to how well software instruments can emulate old analog hardware, especially the king of kicks. After playing around with all three of them for the better part of an hour I was quite surprised. First of all, no matter how hard I tried to set the parameters of Drumazon and ADM, I couldn't replicate the sound of the Revolution-909 kick. I came quite close with Drumazon, but after all it has five parameters, compared with three of ADM (and the original TR-909 as well) and two with Revolution-909. After being an die-hard user of ADM for many years, I found myself to be quite surprised to hear that the kick was quite different than the original 909. They do play in the same arena, but the ADM kick has way more attitude and oumpf than the Drumazon and Revolution-909. In all honesty I found the ADM kick to be a bit unruly as well. A bit all over the place, so to speak. My favorites became Revolution-909 and Drumazon. The Drumazon has more parameters and have greater possibilities to shape the sound. The parameter span is way greater than the original 909. But that is not necessarily a good thing. I actually found Drumazon a bit difficult to set up - but that was during when I was trying to replicate a sampled 909. When just looking to find a good sound the extra controls can be handy. Personally, I lean an inch closer to Revolution-909 here. It's dead easy to set up - you get a well composed, well articulated kick sound that is just begging to be processed with compressors and other nasty stuff.

SOUND - THE SNARE
After playing around with  the snares, it's clear that emulating the classic 909 snare (everything from the muted thump to the big whack-splashes of the 80s) is much easier than he kick. All three products are playing convincingly in the same division. There are differences, but they are very small and will guaranteed not be detectable in a mix. Sound wise they are all up to the task, the only thing that differs is the amount of parameters available and in extension the possibility to form the sound. From that perspective Drumazon wins with Revolution-909 and ADM come as close seconds.

SOUND - THE CLAP
Although that the clap is one of the simplest sounds in the 909 - the only parameter in the original hardware, ADM and Revolution-909 is the volume knob. But not so for Drumazon - they have added two more parameters: tune and reverb, greatly expanding the possibilities on the sound. My biggest surprise here was - again - the difference between the Revolution-909 samples and ADM. While Drumazon and Revolution-909 sound very similar, the ADM is definitely the odd one out. The tuning and the decay feels a bit off. The difference is not huge, but the claps from Drumazon and Revolution-909 sounds tighter and better composed.

SOUND - THE CLOSED HIHATS
Creating a convincing closed hihat algorithm must be a tricky, since neither Drumazon or ADM gets it right. ADM comes closest, but the envelope feels slightly off, something that you notice when turning the decay to max. But still - it does the job quite well. Even though Drumazon has an extra parameter in form of tuning, I simply couldn't get it to sound the same as ADM or Revolution-909.

SOUND - THE OPEN HIHATS
With the open hihats Drumazon does a better job, but has has a feeling being slightly off in the tuning. But that is probably something very few people will notice and absolutely not in a mix. A very cool feature of the Drumazon is that when you turn up the decay knob to max, the envelope dampens in a very organic way. The envelope with the ADM open hihat sounds a bit exaggerated and too pushy to my ears. All in all I favor the sound of Revolution-909. Well composed.

SOUND - THE TOMS
Apart from the kick, the sound of the toms is the most delicious part of the 909, so here I invested some extra attention. While all three products share the same spirit in toms, there are clear differences. As with other sounds from the ADM, the envelope of the sound is a bit aggressive. The span of the tuning is very big and can be used to create a large variety of percussive sounds. Drumazon bring out a few extra parameters that weren't with the original which really make it possible to sculpt the tom sounds into detail. The winner here is Drumazon which can create all the original toms with enough convincing quality - and offers the possibility to create new ones that captures the spirit of the 909.

SOUND - CRASH / RIDE
As for the hihats, the original sound of the crash and ride cymbals were samples - not created by synthesis - which makes the sound different from the other sound sources. All three does the job well, there are small differences but they are in my opinion neglectable. The sound from the ADM is a bit aggressive though. It almost sounds like a compressor is involved at some stage (I double checked the limiter inside ADM was inactivated). Selecting a winner here feels pointless. They do a good enough job all of them.

CONCLUSION
Among the articles I've published for music magazines and this blog, this was one of the most interesting. Not only did I find out the best products for accurate Roland TR-909 sounds but I learned quite a bit about the complexity of the 909 sounds themselves. The further on I went with my testing, I realized that the Audiorealism ADM - that have been my steady workhorse of TR-esque drum sounds for years, actually isn't the best 909 emulator on the market. It does the job good and also provides convincing drum sounds from the 808 and the 606 - but if you are picky about accuracy in sound, ADM is not the ideal choice.
For that Drumazon and Revolution-909 are better choices. The difference between Revolution-909 and Drumazon is a fundamental one. One is a sample library. The other creates its sound from scratch. Revolution-909 does only sounds that a real 909 can do. Drumazon are capable of creating 909-esque sounds that the original cannot create. Not only that, Drumazon features a sequencer with a truly brilliant randomizer. Revolution-909 requires you to have Kontakt or EXS24 and you don't get a built-in sequencer.

From this perspective Drumazon should be the given winner, right?

I am torn. Seriously torn. And the reason for this lies in simplicity. Although I do appreciate the extra level of parameters Drumazon provides, they also complicate and slow down my flow. Revolution-909 gives me authentic 909 sounds right away and the real question is: is the additional parameters of Drumazon really needed? For some, yes. For others, no.

With up to two sound shaping knobs, adjusting a sound in Revolution-909 takes almost no time at all. After fiddling around with the knobs in Drumazon I lost my way more than a couple of times, ending up with a sound worse than the original. So there you have it. Drumazon give you more flexibility. Revolution-909 give you the right sounds right away.

Audiorealism ADM
Web: www.audiorealism.se
Price: 95 Euros + VAT.
Good: Gives you sounds from the 909, 808 and 606. Handles samples. Possible to tune kicks to key.
Bad: The character is a bit aggressive.
Review copy: personal purchase.

D16 Group Drumazon
Web: www.d16.pl
Price: 99 Euros including VAT.
Good: Very flexible sound. Emulates the 909 closely. Fantastic randomizer.
Bad: Sometimes the additional parameters slows down the work flow.
Review copy: NFR from D16.

Sounds Outside The Lines Revolution-909
Web: soundsoutsidethelines.com
Price: 110 dollar.
Good: Solid 909 sounds with minimum of tweaking.
Bad: Uses Kontakt (or EXS24).
Review copy: NFR from Sounds Outside The Lines.

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