The drum is not so great for like hip hop its a great tool for noise music where you can do things that might have required a whole euro-rack in the past from a small noise machine that costs less than $200. The sample has the perfect simplicity but it is better suited to one shot samples than loops. Its hard to think of any hardware that can do better than software like ableton live with loops.
@@LoVeAmBiEnT I have the volca drum. With modern hip hop actually the volca drum could be more relevant because its a very modern sound while sampling goes back to the 80s, the volca sample 2 has a great sequencer but ultimately as a sound engine sampling isn't that modern compared to the physical model + fm combination on the volca drum.
Drum is synth, Sample is sample player. What i love in Drum: polyrythmic sequencer, synthesis engine, probabilities, with latest updates it can be used to play chords, pitch quantization has been added. Volca sample become fully powered by Pajen's firmware. The only thing it lacks now is polyrythmic sequencer, it cannot be implemented without affecting other features. But if we add midi out to volca Drum, it can sequence 6 parts on Sample, so.. It's good to have both, they are for different purposes
thanks so much! i was agonizing over the decision of which one of these volcas to make my first… imma gonna go with the sample. appreciated the direct A/B comparison of the features ❤️🤓 subscribing
Recently ordered the volca drum. Found out about the volca sample the next day and I would love to have it but I have so many ways to play with my samples in my daw (not to mention FL studio has that drum sequencer) I think I made the right choice. I think the sample would be the most useful to me in combination with my tascam recorder when I’m on the go. Maybe I’ll get it next. Thanks for the quality content and in depth review of these awesome sequencers!
love your approach to comparing...i wanted the volca drum and it wasn't available, so i got the volca modular, which i love...volca sample is still the first love though....i have two
That's funny, I always heard people say the opposite about the sample, that it's "ugly" or "looks like it belongs at a hospital". I always thought it looked cool as-is, but I did put a custom skin on mine. Maybe you wouldn't like it since you're a designer lol. I have to say though, that I think you're being a little unfair to the sample in regards to sample limits. Honestly the sample size is less of a restriction than the sample time (slightly over 1 min total for all samples). In both cases though, the most useful things you can do to cut down the impact of a given sample is to reduce the sample rate, convert stereo samples to mono, trim silent or very quiet heads/tails, and speed them up (both tempo and pitch). You can later pitch it down on the volca itself to get back to the normal speed with a little loss of fidelity. Using a bunch of these tricks, you can get easily get what was originally waaaay more than 4mb of samples to load just fine in your volca. I think that's what the other user was talking about. Also, one thing you didn't mention in regards to the volca sample's versatility is Single Cycle Waveforms (www.adventurekid.se/akrt/waveforms/). These files are super tiny because they are samples of a single wave. After I put in a bunch of "traditional" drums and samples into my volca, I fill up the rest of the sample slots with these. They are fractions of a second long and file size is in bytes. If you play them on your volca as-is, they just sound like clicks and pops because the sample length is just that short. When you turn on looping though.... the loop repeats super fast. Voila: you have DIY rompler-style virtual oscillators!
Great video, ive been using the Sample for ages now and just got myself a Drum too. One thing i would like to add is that the Drum has indeed more effects than just the Wave thingy, it also has overdrive, you can pan sounds and a couple more like that. Oh and i love its visual design, but oh well to its his own i guess xD Great video again!
I was classifying drive, pan, gain, fold and bit as parameters. They change the sound, not effect it. It's a thin distinction, but that's how I saw it. left side / right side.
The volca drum is just awesome! I. currently swinging my soldering iron to add midi output, if it would transmit clock through midi, have an option to display currently set valued without moving a knob, a backup function like the FM and/or single outputs for the six parts, or like two routable extra outs it would be just badass! Time division is not really necessary on it imo, the sequencer has a far more precise sequencer (Abtasrate/ PPQN resolution like the FM so everything recorded stays in time. A Flux mode like in the monotribe could drastically empower the last mentioned; but who knows, perhabs payen is already working on that just atm.
Dude! So stoked you got a Volca Drum! Play around with the tune on the waveguide. At zero it becomes a multi tap type delay. I did some research on it to get it to sync to tempo. I can post the link to the Reddit post if you are interested. It’s doable to have it sync to tempo with a little math. Also this thing has per step probability and you can change nearly all parameters per step. As far as playability goes, you nailed it, it’s playable! It encourages playing. Like tweaking the release of a sound or send and Especially the waveguide itself. Oscillator Sink created an app to create sounds and kits so you can recall them (if you created them off box) no way other than writing down the settings. One huge downside is that the knobs latch. So if you have something at 50 and your knob is up at 255, you just gotta wing it by ear to get the sound back to where it was. It’s a minor complaint that I can live with though just because everything else about it is so cool. I’ve really not been this stoked on a piece of gear since the Digitakt. One really fun thing is to use the waveguide with decay at 255 and just rubber band it all around and get some crazy stuff going and then quickly put it back to zero. Then it just loops the glitchy goodness for forever if you want. And if you don’t sync it to tempo and continue to have sounds go into the waveguide they will start to “stack” not on top of each other but next to each other. First go will have one repeat, second will have two, and so on... so biiiiig washes of sounds can be had. So definitely have fun with that part.
Little Music Boxes, easy peas. www.reddit.com/r/volcas/comments/bttjv6/korg_volca_drum_wave_guide_testing_tempo_matching/ This man really broke it down.
One thing to mention on the Sample: Quiet some of its limitations can be worked around (as you imply with compressing samples). One that comes to my mind comparing it to the new Volca Drum (which seems nice) is a workaround I found for the lack of a "Slice" feature using motion sequencing. However, it doesnt work for samples that are super short and - beeing a workaround - it takes a couple of steps more. VOLCA SAMPLE WORKAROUND FOR SLICES goes like this: 1. Make sure Motion Sequence is ON 2. Activate the respective part 3. Set the part to LOOP 4. Enter STEP MODE 5. Hit PLAY 6. Hold down the step (pad) you want to have a slice on 7. While holding down the step, set the SAMPLE LENGTH fairly SHORT (this puts the Length value as automation data on that step). You should hear the sample retriggering quickly, as it´s looping and the loop lenght is set short. 8. Adjust the sample Lenght to your liking, you should be able to get quiet straight notes 9. Release the Step 10. Set the SAMPLE LENGTH back to MAXIMUM (this sets maximum sample Length to every step without automation data, avoiding those steps to retrigger - if not followed by too long a pause) Hope that´s of help for someone, nice thing to experiment with anyways :) Cheers.
@@LittleMusicBoxes Glad it´s been of help :) This trick can also be used to have parts play 32-step patterns (kinda). For instance, setting a hihat sample on every of the 16 steps, you can then loop that sample and set the sample length so that the sample is retriggerd once in between two steps - thus, playing a 32 step hihat pattern. Now, setting the Volca Sample to 60 BPM, you could run 120 BPM sequences with 32 steps. Yaas.
You need to check out the Pajen custom firmware for the sample and make an update video. The pajen software add so many features, but mainly it adds things like probability, bar filter, polyphony, better midi control, and tons of others. I use the bar filter in order to create a pseudo 4 bar loop instead of the typical 16 step limit
@@ATJ-sTAt dude I made this comment before the sample 2 was even released. I know the sample 2 can’t use the pajen firmware, that’s one of the reasons to still own a sample 1
I own both of these; they're both great, just different flavors. I know what sounds I'm gonna get when I pick one up, so it just depends on how I'm feeling.
Just got my Sample, love it. Although I believe song mode doesn't exist now and instead has chain mode for chaining sequences together as a range, eg. Plays sequence 2 through 4 on a loop not like song mode as shown in various other vids. thanks @Little Music Boxes for the vids, inspiring 🤘
Thank you so much for this very helpful video! I never owned any device like this and don't know much about music creation, I'm just searching which one to get as a surprise gift my son who started electronic music creation. I'll got with the sampler for its versatility (may get the Drum later though haha!).
Really great comparison man thank you! I am considering buying both volca drum, sample 2 also but I am worried I will be disappointed in the sound quality of 16bit samples on my monitors compared to using a daw with better samples what do they sound like to you on a proper speaker system??
Not sure if you’ve mentioned it, but on the sample you can make long, dronish sounds with the loop function, and you can pitch the notes, mess with the envelope and whatnot. It’s basically a very minimal wave table synth
Example: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-q3t-427nD88.html ...I think all samples on this are less than 0.5 seconds long, and weren’t sped up for loading
thanx for the video. i'm totally agree on the ugliness of the design) i also can't stand the thing that they put 5 or 6 important parameters on one handle and the screen shows which parameter you are tweaking now for a second and than disappears so it is hard to tell where are you right now. Also the way you chose the waveform by scrolling through all the parameters (the same knob btw) makes mostly impossible the precise tuning for me, so i use randomise button until i get something not ear piercing. They should have dome 3 different knobs for SRC, MOD and EG. so it is sad for me how such a great sound capabilities of volca DRUM combines with a step-back interface from all the previous volcas.
I hear ya. The details are deep in there. I like physical music boxes because the controls should all be there. But this is the trade off. Overall its a beast.
It’s certainly a matter of opinion but I personally think that most of the modern drum machines nowadays have sounds that are so tinker-toyish sounding... nothing beats real drum and percussion sounds and honestly sometimes the music needs space to breathe and stuff like handclaps and cardboard bassdrums will take away from the musical atmosphere... chk out “Aux Out” on YT...for a perfect example of what Im talking about.
Ha ha That's a great an honest review without to much its all about me and how good i am vipe .. nice one!! Does the volca sample come with more drum samples installed? Like a 909?? Cheers
You missed loads off the Volca Drum. There's three effects in the parameters menu, plus the pitch quantisation, which allows you to more easily play notes on the thing. I also don't think your assessment of the faceplate as bad design was fair - it's got a different look to the Sample, granted, but it works well as a kind of simple flowchart to make sense of how the different sections work. Really, the biggest limitation I've found to the Drum is its total lack of ability to produce a decent cymbal sound. Given some time and patience, you can get some really cool stuff out of the Drum, even on its own. There's some really cool minimal techno stuff that people here on RU-vid have done with it.
I am a newby, and find the tutorials seem to be aimed at the learner is at your level of understanding. In other words having an understanding of techniques and progressions and even mode understanding. Why Korg has not done this is beyond me. So many more users could be drawn to their product. For me, listening to this was a study of esoteric tutorials where a body of knowledge is required. I am guilty of the same thing when teaching Photoshop. Please try doing a Korg volca 101 as l am 'do' type learner. Thanx
I get that, I didn't really think of this so much as a tutorial as more of a gear comparison... There are other tutorial videos for the volca sample on this channel, I hope you find them more educational. :)
The thing I can only agree on is that the volcas need a way to expand their memory. Specially for the sample so can be stored larger files and samples on it and faster.
Well the new Volca Sample 2 with USB solves the transfer problem, but the small low-fi files and short sample time remains even if samples are doubled to 200.
I am just curious. Why would you need a sample based external equipment, if the samples already can be played with the Live11 of any DAW. But yes, if you live loop Dawless, make sense.
Korg, Volca Sample 2, is out now, and has some nice improvements, like: USB connectivity, for transferring data in/out. Twice the memory. Pattern chain in real time. New samples. In their own words..... Although the new Volca Sample isn’t a total revamp of the original, some of the features of this second iteration will be welcomed by producers. This includes a microUSB connection for swift sample management via a computer, plus the ability to now control, sync and play it from any DAW. There are also newly added individual MIDI channels which will make it simpler to perform the Sample with an external keyboard or sequencer. Korg’s proprietary Librarian software for Mac and PC allows you to manage and transfer your samples with ease. There is also compatibility with the dedicated app, AudioPocket manager for iOS, which lets you record new samples on-the-fly and instantly fire them over to the Volca Sample. Volca sample Two other features have been implemented to get more creative in your music making. The new Pattern Chain mode gives you two different Step Jump modes, while a Start Delay function lets you take your beats off-the-grid and apply an essence of swing. Volca Sample’s memory has been expanded to 200 slots, which is double that of the original, and you can load in your own libraries or pre-made ones with 50 empty slots available. Korg says the new sound library comprising 150 sounds will “take your production to the next level, making it possible to make tracks on-the-fly that will fit every genre, including recent ones such as future bass, trap, lo-fi hip hop, and many others”. Pattern locations have been increased from 10 to 16, too.
More func on V Sample with Pajen Firmware. Probability or pitch on samples with midi keyboard. I recomend LaunchKey MK3 when u can have 16 samples on the pads when playing one chromaticly... and velocity sensitive. Just wow!
Oh interesting! That makes so much sense. I really enjoy learning about where these ideas come from. To me, the Drum kit/pattern paradigm is a bit unwieldy. I just haven't put enough time into it, I'm sure.
I post this BEFORE watching your clip. I have both Drum and Sample2. I make annoying industrial EBM, so it didn't take me long to realise that Sample2 and Keys were the only Volcas I needed. Grant you - the amazing sounds you get from the Drum is in a league for itself, but I have no need for it. My 2 bars.. ;)
I just got the drums and after about 4 days I can say I really do not like it. I just wanted something to play drums over some synth stuff that I've recorded and it sounds absolutely awful no matter what I do. Any help with how to make this sound like an actual drum would be appreciated but I can now see why the previous owner was so happy to get rid of it.
If you want it to sound like "a drum" it sounds like you would prefer an Akai mpc live or something from "Native instruments Maschine" line ? Check them out, if you are looking for something more vanilla
Enjoyed this one. I kind of disagree on the aesthetics. I like the Volca Drum. Lovely classic colour combination and the orange OLED sets it off nicely. The Sample looks like the piece of equipment my dential hygenist uses. Functional but dull ;-)
Get both. They're for different purposes and they're both great. The sample is more hip-hoppy, is the most straightforward and easy to sequence. The drum is much, much deeper so needs some patience, the bass you can get out of it is insane and you actually learn about sound design.
That really surprises me that you like the design of the Sample better. I'm a developer and I'm always frustrated by how bad people are at UX. You can prioritize simplicity and functionality while still making something beautiful. The Sample comes from the Windows 3.11 school of design. The display should obviously have been in the big empty space at the top, but it's a repurposed design. It's got the crowded throw-all-the-tiny-knobs-you-can-in-a-grid layout of the Keys with a color scheme like an Akai. Akais are themselves an homage to ugly beige 1980s PC aesthetics. The only interesting part of the Sample design is the isolator section. That's really nice and functional, but it's unfortunate that they were lazy and left the sad little 4-character display in the same place as other Volcas. It's literally the worst place they could have put the isolator. If you use the isolator during a performance, your thumbs are covering the display and the lights for which parts are firing - which is basically all the meaningful visual feedback from the device. The Drum design is interesting and creative and beautifully simple. They weren't just seeing how many knobs they could fit. They actually had enough room to put that Wankel rotary engine etching on the face of it. The display on the Drum really blows me away. That alone makes it stand out as the most interesting-looking Volca. It's an homage to 1980s Tiger handheld games (they probably got the idea from the Pocket Operator displays). The layers and the interaction with the wave guide is clever in a way that makes it fun to noodle around with. I don't just feel like I'm going through pages of settings on an Elektron box. But if you're not super-excited about the display on the Drum the black and gold sorta-blingy aesthetic is a bit silly. The Volca Bass is blingy and charming. I think the Drum should've done something more subtle and maybe leaned into the amber/orange of the knobs/display. The gold with the big arrow pointing at the Wave Guide isn't awesome. Kinda makes me wanna disassemble it and paint the right half.
Really nice working tour of both, lots of little usability gems :) The whole 'chain' vs 'song' is annoying, some of the volca features should just have parity (and why not both)! LFO sync is another that is different across them :/
@@LittleMusicBoxes In this case, its 'retrigger LFO on new note'. But LFO tempo division matching is another! I was mostly ramble ranting about the Keys/Bass having lots of disparity around LFO features.
Ok that's much better than the demo by a Korg rep. It's like he hated his job or something. Still, that modulation is not that special. Could have used basic fx or something. The drum design seems to be inspired by 50's sci-fi, NASA and that sort of stuff. Looks fine to me.
I like how Tatsuya not only was the engineer but also showed the capabilities by turning one sound into several others on the sample. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-THImd641WXk.html
Hi there. I purchased a volca bass and a volca FM. Now I would like to buy a Volca to create full-bodied drum rhythms, also R&B and Hip-Hop. Can you recommend the Volca Sample or the Volca Drum? Let me know. Thank you!
I use the volca sample about 5X as much as all the other put together. so FOR ME, it's by far the most used. But I know other performers who barely use it, and that's okay too. It depends on your approach. I love sampling a bit more than synthesis, although I find sound design soooooo interesting. But yea, for me, sample is the first and most loved volca I have.
I disagree with your comments about design. There is nothing beautiful about the volca sample, it looks like medical equipment you’d find in a hospital ER. Not only that, but the red LEDs are too bright, and it’s very uncomfortable to look at when most lights are flashing. Also, it has black text on a grey background, making reading difficult so that’s not a good design choice either. Perhaps if it had a lighter shade of grey it would look more refined, but all in all the red/white combo will never be as pleasing to the eye as black/gold. The volca drum is a classic black/gold colour combination. Black & gold is much more pleasing to eye than white / grey. I had the volca sample and sold it, it can do a lot but for me it lacks personality and it was tedious loading in samples and frustrating when samples couldn’t be loaded due to memory limitations. I have Native Instruments Maschine 2 on my iPhone and it’s so much more powerful than the sample. The volca drum has a unique top plate design but it compliments the sounds that it produces.
" ... all in all the red/white combo will never be as pleasing to the eye as black/gold." Well that's a matter of taste now, isn't it? If you think black / gold has better aesthetics and ergonomics than white / grey then there's not a lot to discuss. Similarly, if you think you can play your iPhone live then good luck to you.
I bought the drum ... Cool box but... I want to just make beats... I don't want to spend 20 minutes making a kick... Also the kick sound regardless of how I shaped it just didn't work for me ...i like techno/dub techno/house.. Heyyy ya know maybe I just havnt used it enough...... just my opinion
not trying to sound negative... It is a fun little box..... I was just looking for something I could throw some punchy drum sounds in and go at it..... This is more of a noise machine.. has its place for sure
People seem to approach the volca sample as a drummachine. I think you have to approach it as a sampler. And you can load a lot more than you might think. When I want to load a long sequence or sound I usually chop it up in smaller bits and load it that way. You can get a lot more in there that way. I can load anything between 15 to 20 mb of samples in the sample. The samples get smaller in size when you put them through vosyr or caustic. I've been making beats with the Zoom Sampletrak st224 for years wich also just had around 4 mb for samples. I was looking for something simular because it's not working anymore and I ended up with the volca sample. The Zoom has a lot more to offer though. But I like the limiting factors. It gets me very creative. The Zoom is 32 khz and the volca sample 31.25 so they sound very simular too. The sample is noisy which is my main complaint. At first the sample loading procedure was keeping me off from buying the volca sample for some time but then I remembered I usually did this with the Zoom too even thought you could sample directly into the machine. I did it because the sound quality increased. I really don't regret buying the volca sample. I love that little white box. I don't own other volca's though except for the mix. I just bought the monologue which plays nice with the volca sample. I have to say even though I don't need another drummachine I am thinking of buying the volca drum. I really like what I hear and I think it is a unique, creative drummachine.
@@LittleMusicBoxes oké, it seems I exaggerated the amount of mb's you can load. I deleted all samples from the volca sample and filled it up again with new ones. 36 kicks, snares, claps and hihats and 6 loops and vocal samples. When I check on my computer how much MB these samples are together it is 8,63 MB. I use caustic to load the samples. Caustic must downgrade the samples when it loads them to the volca sample.
@@tybowesformerlygoat-x7760 Ohhhh, I read it as his sample was holding 20mb worth of data. But no, that is pre-compressed size? Why think of it like that? Once the data is compressed form 20mb to 4mb, its no longer 24mb. It's 4. Am I understanding this correctly?
the Drum has a specific finger print? nope. nope. nope. imo, you just aren't using the full ability of the wave generators, 2 layers per drum sound, etc.
@@LittleMusicBoxes that's really just obtuse to say. Anyone and anything can play Aretha Franklin if recorded into a sampler. One creates sound and one plays sound. Probably the dumbest thing I have read today.
volca drum is a Drum machine and volca sample is a sampler that people Often use it as a Drum machine. But these volcas are very different machines, like comparing bananas and a hot chocolate lol... Own all volcas, the Drum is much more experimental you can really CREATE crazy sounds with this machine. The other you load what you want. They are machines with different purposes. you have to know what you want, simple.
@@vivianavilchis3186 A sample is basically a copy of a sound while you can "build" or synthesize a sound with various oscillators and voltage control using a synth, which the volca drum is. Check out some proper tutorials on how to use the volca drum and you Will probably notice why i dont think its comparable to a sampler, although they both can be used as drum machines
