In his latest video, synthesist Starsky Carr shares a head-to-head comparison between the classic Roland TR-909 and the new TR-1000 drum machine.
“I put the Roland TR-1000 head-to-head with my original Roland TR-909 to see how close we can actually get”, notes Carr, “and more importantly, where the differences really matter.”
Topics covered:
Kick, snare, clap, rim & tom comparisons
Analogue voices vs ACB models (and why that’s ironic…)
The real difference between main outputs and individual outs
Why the 909 sounds more “band-limited” and less hi-fi
Frequency analysis & Match EQ deep dive in Logic
The exact EQ curve to give your 909 samples that crusty main-out character
Why obsessing over 1:1 matching might be missing the point
Carr argues that the key to recreating the classic 909 sound isn’t tweaking the TR-1000, but band-limiting the output. He demonstrates to how to recreate this, using Logic’s Match EQ.
Is the Roland TR-1000 close enough to replace the TR-909? Check out the comparison and share your thoughts in the comments!
I had the 808 and 909. The 909 was my all-time favorite drum machine for many years. I also had lots of other drum machines, from Elektron and many other, both all-analog and digital. I also used the Microtoniq and other soft synths/drums a lot.
The TR-1000 is the mother of all drum machines, the greatest ever, in my view, after using it a month.
Now, if they could just make it with a real analog 303 built in…
And also, please make a firmware update that will allow the machine to stay in exact same mode when turned on as it was when turned off. Other manufacturers do that nicely, so why do tr-1000 jump to initial pattern when turned on, forgetting everything that was going on before last shutdown? That seem a bit corny in 2026.
People are always asking for Behringer to knock of this and to knock off that….
But what I think would be cool is if they would make a hardware version of Propellerhead ReBirth.
Two 303’s and an 808 in a single box. Based on the prices of their 303 and 808 knockoffs, it seems like they could do it for around $600, and it would be a hit at that price.
just buy them and connect them yourself whats the problem there?
You’d get closer to the Rebirth sound with individual instruments and a small mixer
Rebirth had delay send fx and that cool PCF pattern filter thing. You could easily put together a small eurorack case that does this
Would make a cool side project
Microtoniq is excellent. I can vouch for that. So versatile.