You'll probably recall that the Machinedrum is a drum machine boasting a highly sophisticated synthesis engine, or rather, engines. Its strength lies in Elektron's concept of software 'machines', each specialised for a particular type of synthesis but with enough flexibility to deliver all manner of wild, crunchy and occasionally screaming percussive tones. Indeed, the term 'drum machine' is way too narrow to cover the wealth of electronic sounds on offer.

Previously, we saw that the MD employs a traditional grid style of programming with 16 steps comprising a typical pattern (32 steps being the maximum) and each drum kit assembled from up to 16 different voices, sourced from the various machines on offer. With a selection of basic effects, multiple LFOs, the dynamic tone-changes of 'parameter locks' and more, this was a box of tricks designed with sonic exploration in mind. Further plusses include its solid construction, the generous supply of individual outputs and the simple yet effective song mode implementation.

ROM Machines are basically the means to play back your own samples. Having imported your samples (see the 'Turbo MIDI' box for more about this), they are then are referred to internally as ROM 1 to ROM 32, rather than by their original names. As with most of the machines, there are eight tweakable parameters on the Synthesis page; you can modify sample start and end points, the number and spacing of sample repeats, decay and hold time and bit-rate reduction. This latter feature reduces the sample quality down as far as 2-bit if you really like your grooves grungy.

Memory locations ROM 25 to 32 are optimised for the playback of loops. For these samples, the start, hold and end parameters operate in a linear fashion, with every 16 numeric increments equivalent to a beat or quarter note within the loop. This is very useful to keep your loops sync'ed neatly, even when you chop them up, reorder them and so on.

There's no doubt that samples greatly increase the MD's arsenal: your songs can now include favourite kicks, loops and percussion not so easy to synthesize, as well as basses, vocals, sound effects and so on. Well, as much as you can cram into 2MB anyway.

RAM machines are a little more involved and are divided into two types: recording and playback. Although you can sample audio generated internally, their main aim is the live capture of loops. The manual deals with user sampling in a couple of pages, under the title 'Using the SPS1-UW in a DJ setup'. It guides you through the process in easy stages, starting with use of tap tempo to sync the MD to an incoming audio source, then assigning a RAM record machine to record it. Finally, a RAM playback machine is required to trigger your captured loop. From here on it is treated like other MD machines and modifiable by creative use of filters, effects and so on. Especially handy is the ability to retrigger and slice loops, reverse portions of them, remove sections and so on. Using the traditional MD tools on your own loops is mightily cool, and there are numerous ways to render source material completely unrecognisable. As with ROM locations 25-32, the parameters of RAM machines are scaled in a linear fashion, so you can work intuitively in beats or quarter notes.

To exploit RAM machines fully, you allocate one track for each record machine (up to two are available) and then have separate tracks play back the results. Using four of your 16 MD tracks, you can therefore record and playback two separate loops of up to two bars. As I mentioned, the ROM and RAM machines share the available memory, so if you have already stored lots of your own samples, less space remains for live sampling. Interestingly, recording quality is adjusted automatically according to the available space although there is a finite (but unspecified) amount of memory reserved, to ensure you are always able to sample something.

Included in the SPS1-UW package is a small, metal USB MIDI interface, the Turbo MIDI. For sample transfer to and from a computer, Elektron have opted for the rather slow MIDI Sample Dump protocol, sending and receiving all sample data across a MIDI cable, but they have devised this hardware to speed it up — purportedly by up to 10 times. There is no specific documentation included for this but fortunately, it didn't need any! I plugged it in and Windows XP recognised it right away. To transfer samples to and from the SPS1-UW, you must access its 'sample manager' menu in conjunction with a program capable of talking MIDI Sample Dump. Elektron supply a suitable utility for PC or Mac known simply as C6 and available as a free download from their web site. I duly grabbed it and can report that it is blessedly straightforward. An Explorer-style window is provided, into which you load samples, audition them, then transmit them to the SPS1-UW. You can even send a series of samples in order whilst you go and put the kettle on.

Samples from 4kHz upward can be accomodated and regardless of the source bit rate, the Machinedrum plays back all its samples as 12-bit. Since the SPS1-UW only handles mono samples, you are offered the option to merge stereo WAV (or AIFF) files or transfer only the left or right channel. You can permit the file's source looping information to be maintained or force looping on or off as required. Finally, the ubiquitous commands copy, paste and clear are found in the sample manager menu. With these you can permanently store samples recorded into the RAM machines in ROM locations. The RAM machines' contents are otherwise lost on power down.