Behringer today shared this in-depth video demo for their new LmDrum drum machine.
While the LmDrum case, name and styling position it as a knockoff of the classic Linn Electronics LinnDrum, it’s actually a very different design, supporting sampling and on-board sample editing.
In the video, Patrick (aka PatchDog) offers a deep dive into the LmDrum:
The Behringer LmDrum has been one of the company’s more controversial introductions, because of its unauthorized copying of the LinnDrum.
LinnDrum creator Roger Linn shared his take on the LmDrum over the weekend, noting “It is clearly intended to evoke my 1982 LinnDrum drum machine, borrowing its visual style, control layout, colors and logo style, as well as copying its sounds and those of my LM-1 and Linn9000 drum machines.”
Pricing and Availability:
The Behringer LMDrum is now shipping from their factory, priced at $399 USD. It typically takes several months from when they start shipping for new introductions to be available at retailers.
Check out the video, and then share your thoughts on the Behringer LmDrum in the comments!
It’s probably worth mentioning in your articles here, as context, that companies have been stealing those Roger Linn copywritten samples in sample packs since the collapse of the company and ever since the invention of sample packs. Makes me think of Cubase. Uli has to own the visual copying even if only to assess it as another Behringer playbook move. But the copyright thing is a bit funny from this point of view.
What Spotify does to the published music landscape of WAY more offensive that what Uli does to 40 year old gear inventors. Neither is right to me personally but saying it out loud, these guys could have brought back their instruments directly or via licensing or collaboration officially on their own but mostly did not. I dunno. From a journalistic perspective here on Synthtopia where is the same lens and disparity for DinSync and their Roland clones? On this topic I sort of agree with Uli that a market will arise when there is a need. Imagine how many of us would line up to buy a recreated Roland 808 FROM ROLAND. Seriously. Somebody had to finally make these old guys weep with access to holy grail instruments, even as miniature and derivative versions.
Bring open about it, I do have some, “means to an end gear” from Behringer in my studio, but as I gain better financial stability it gets replaced with bougie boutique modules that do the same thing BUT just don’t feel as icky. WASP and Moog Sequencer stuff from System-15 or whatever. They look like mini versions of the instruments my heroes used. That’s the answer to why the clone market for old gear that also clones the limitations and poor decisions even exists. Hero played it when I was a kid? Ok. Now I can get a mini version to make me feel that kid feeling again? Done and done. Take my money. I’m just a hobbiest anyway. Pros can go buy a pro version from those guys who still sell incredibly expensive gear (rhymes with Goog and ends with Heim, among others) who price their gear at legacy prices $4-$5k synths. Nothing is hand wired anymore. We can probably agree that we’d like to see some leeway with pricing considering the shift in production costs coming down due to automation and modern circuit board creation by let’s face it, underpaid robots.
The side benefit is the younger kids who are not familiar with or offended by any if this clone business typically have access to an incredibly rich and expansive wide world of monophonic, polyphonic, paraphonic, algorithmic, software-based or whatever cost-effective gear their hearts desire. When I was younger that meant Realistic (Radio Shack), Peavey and so on. My how times have changed. You can get a synth, a legit synth for guitar pedal money now. Bananas.
Nice try, Uli.
This got me! 😀
korg 1b
I fully agree with your post 🙂 And I don’t agree with the replies to your post 😉
So much push back for your voice. I will stand with you on some things that you mentioned.
Best summary of the situation I’ve read here.
They should have put this demo out at launch, but then again I guess they want to do repeated publicity bursts to build interest cumulatively. Anyway, it’s a good demo and it’s nice to get an extended preview of the sound engine and editing parameters. Not a big rock/pop fan so I’ve never dreamt of having a Linn Drum, but the ability to both import and capture samples (making resampling pretty easy using an external mixer send) really opens up the potential.
It’s really a lot of drum machine for $399. Touch sensitive pads, sampling, moderate editing capability, individual outs for every voice (& individual DACs per voice), and physical mixing controls really add up, and are specs you’d normally expect to see on >$1000 units. I’m sure Behringer priced it to kill the competitors in the mid-price range like Korg’s Drumlogue or Arturia’s Drumbrute and Roland’s various offerings in this area. (In fact I think Roland is potentially the biggest loser because they really target the first-time buyer market who prioritize ease of use and instant gratification.) It’s less competitive against Elektron gear because the sequencer looks basic and the synthesis/modulation options are likewise very conventional, once you Elektron you don’t want to go back XD
But the simplicity and lack of menu-diving will be better for many people, and the beat/note repeat/pattern fill look very fun and immediate for jamming/performance. It would be a great first piece of gear for many people, and will take them a long time to outgrow, if ever.
The biggest question is whether Behringer can back up the specs with the build quality/software reliability, which have been pain points for them in the past. But if they deliver on quality these will sell and sell.
I’d like to point out that this comment by realistic rubber seems like one of those posts made by perhaps an employee of the company mentioned above for the specific purpose of provoking more comments by saying incendiary things
Or they just get it.
Gear lovers, am I right? Seems like a knock-off, duh. Not the same, but gives access to a legendary drum machine.
However fair enough, everyone has their own perspective.
Outrage marketing! Weaponizing the inequality gap between societies!
we need more guns!
They have to pry the Heckler & Koch from my dead hands before they can put a Behringer in them!
With HK it will be hard for anyone to turn you dead. ;]
guns are stupid. the 2nd is a farce.
How is it incendiary? I fail to see it.
What in rr’s comment is incendiary?
How about you (and others, including Alexander Ewald) play the ball not the man?
Thinking about it a bit more I’m gonna contradict myself and say it probably does hurt sales of the Elektron Digitakt. Lots of Elektron fans end up buying 2, 3 or 4 units (guilty…), because they all do somewhat different things and don’t have the same features in common. But if you have a Syntakt (similar engine to the Rytm minus the pads, performance, and i/o) or the Digitone I/II (extremely juicy 4-op FM) then you already have the Elektron sequencer and external MIDI capability, so an additional 16 tracks of sampling drums with hands-on controls for $400 makes a lot of sense. Make all your basses, chords, and bleep-bloop noises on a Digitone, sample as many percussion sounds as you want (I believe there’s about 5 minutes’ worth of sampling memory at 12 bit), drive a couple of drum tracks with crazy Elektron sequences over MIDI, let the LM internal sequencer handle the simpler patterns.
There’s a lot of features for 399. A *lot* of the screen UI elements look like Elektron UI (not sure how much variance there is in UI when it comes to such a small screen but it’s enough for me to remark on it).
It sounds okay but I’m unsure about the workflow based on this video alone. Like a lot of their products I’m not sure who’s asking for this but I don’t think I’m their target market and wouldn’t pretend to know what they want.
I could get a used Digitakt MK I for 455 on Reverb right now, but how many of those units are lying around and maybe this is for someone who’s intimidated by Elektron’s
its nearly identical but thats the problem with having a super clean minimal UI … when someone else clones it, it just looks like a standard simplistic interface that anyone can say they invented themselves
Yeah def. Not a knock against B. That UI schema works very well for that small of a screen. Why reinvent the wheel there?
No midi out???
it’s on the back.
It has MIDI in/out/through/ sync in/out, and 3 trigger outs. I know this because I looked it up on their website.
War is fun and awesome and it looks really cool and you can make all kinds of movies about it… but is it ethical?
There would be no United States of America without a war.
War was also useful in ending slavery and stopping the Nazi regime.
Have you ever watched Wall Street?
There is one statement in that movie that hits the spot and is so true to life:
“Greed is good”…
There is no room in business for sentiments or ethics if you want to succeed otherwise your business is done and dusted.
Im trying to figure out how all you “consumers” were so thoroughly brainwashed into protecting and white knighting for these multi-billion dollar corporations like Korg and Roland and Moog and so on, to the point where you are demanding that you need to pay MORE money for these products because thats how you know its “good” or “real” or “fun” or whatever
The only person we see ‘white knighting’ for a corporation in this thread is you, Sabazios.
Why are you always making logical fallacies trying to defend Behringer’s behavior and products? It’s hard to imagine why anybody would do this, unless they’re on the Behringer payroll or just trolling.
Or if they are musicians who don’t care who makes the instruments/tools used to create music.
Agree with this (Sabacious’ comment).
Sabazios, you’ve got this totally backwards.
Beh is taking advantage of a loophole in the system that’s used by many Shenzhen copycat companies — those companies flood the market with imitation selfie sticks, USB hubs and iphone-lookalikes in a quest to grab market share through imitation and association. Beh has done exactly the same thing with mixers, speakers, headphones, microphones, guitar effects and now synths and drum machines.
These Chinese companies don’t innovate, they take successful ideas from others, cost reduce them and attempt to grab market share before the next big thing comes along.
It is quite literally endgame capitalism, because if the budget imitators put the actual innovators out of business the market becomes saturated with dodgy copies of great ideas from the past with nothing new. And, honestly, no sane individual needs a dozen $200 copies of dodgy monosynths from 1981.
I like it. Might get one at a $399 price point.
yeah, i was interested too. unfortunately, I already have one and hearing those sounds again was a huge yawn. sampling doesn’t interest me, and programming drum machines is a bore. i have an RD8 and RD9, they were fun for a while, but again my ears are done with all those old sounds. i like Prince and all… but i don’t want to ever play any of it. the UBXa was enough of that for me. i prefer the System 55 and 2500 modulars they produced. Rob Keebles’ stuff came out awesome. Hermann Seib also did a fantastic job. i just use an XV3080 and SQ64. plenty of tsst-thumpa-booms there. even a triangle!
There are three choices: build everything in a DAW sections, fiddle with a drum box or play parts into something with a pad doo-dad. I prefer to finger-drum, cut & paste and quantize my way along. World percussion sources are especially rewarding in their variety. These samples are for sure usable, especially if tweaked well. They’re just competing in a much larger world now.
If you’re a finger-drummer, you’ll end up damaging the box. Maybe not right away, but it’ll happen. At this price, it seems do-able to treat this as a sound module w/sequencer, but leave the percussive playing to a controller. It’ll last longer.
IMO, Roger deserves a taste of each unit over the sounds. It would feel a lot more acceptable. No one asked and my dog in the hunt is a chihuahua, anyway. Just saying.
Is there something you specifically recommend for finger drumming?
Fingers.
Definitely need at least 2 fingers.
Rick Allen can do it with a finger and a toe
What happened to Roger’s LinnDrum II?
I’m patiently waiting for Overbeheringer software to be able to let you interface with the synth and your computer.
This thing looks great! The only sequencer I’ve seen that looks easier/more fun to use is the perkons.. a lot of attention and talk is focused on the built in samples, but since when do people give a crap about that in any other modern sampler? I’ll be using all my own samples anyway and I assume most other people will be too.. I don’t know, this thing looks almost perfect.
In this day and age, why does anyone want a hardware drum machine.
I think it looks and sounds great.
Regarding the ethics, this is not the same as doing a clone of a machine currently in production.
As has been said by rr above, the original manufacturers of these now vintage machines have had decades to re-release them, and they have not. I think 40 years is long enough.
I’m not sure if I’m going to buy one, because I prefer the convenience of working itb, but I might.
Copynger feels like these weird „shops“ offering cheap pirated licenses for plugins
so you get the feeling and illusion of having paid for it 🙂
What a sewer company. Come buy some conscience painkiller for cheap
I think this is the best drum machine ever made, Good job Behringer
This is extremely limited compared to modern drum machines, like the Analog Rytm.
The only real notable features of this (beyond the fact that it copies the look of the LinnDrum) are the per-voice sliders and the individual outputs.
Both of these features have some significant downsides, though, which is why most modern drum machines use different solutions.
Let me put the ethics discussion aside for a moment and have a look at the proposition at hand. I have one in my possession, it was delivered to me last week. I am very happy with it. It is built very well. It is a fun machine to use, it works different than the RD-8 or RD-9. Sounds are great and I love the sliders mixer, so much better than rotary knobs in my opinion. And as you can upload your own samples you are not stuck or limited to the Linn sound. Apart from the Linn sound you have an affordable hardware sample playing sequencer. Great for if you want to go out of the box. There is not so much competition in that area, especially not in this price range. On its own I think this is a great machine and will bring a lot of fun to many and it does not cost you an arm and a leg.
I agree with the last comment (KING) and that has prompted me to purchase one, I Love some of the old stuff, but the prices are ridiculous, Nostalgia is great if you have a lot of money, I will add this to my collection, I have watched loads of reviews on YouTube ones where I know the youtuber has nothing to do with Behringer and gives an honest, review, good and bad I have weighed them all up, so thank-you KING and all of the other comments as reading carefully, not a lot of them actually own one but there thoughts have been taken onboard