Yamaha Dd55 7 Pad General Midi Digital Drum System

Product Information

The color is just right and very pleasing to look at, its design is excellent, I prefer it to the DD-65. The hi-hat on the DM Lite is a freestanding pedal much like the bass drum pedal. Acousitc and some electronic hi-hats have cymbals, a stand and a pedal at the base on which to play with. But the DM Lite has no bulky stand, just the pedal and cymbal pad. The hi-hat controller is connected to the drum module by a cable and can be positioned wherever best fits your foot. Pedals like this won’t suit all experienced drummers because certain foot techniques are difficult, or even impossible, to fully pull off. That said, for beginner drummers and heel-down players, pedals like this are perfectly functional. Out of the box it performs like a nice attempt at making a digital toy into pro equipment. It has the same bugs in it, Yamaha can't think of a way of improving the play surface and that's the toy side and what makes these things end up as dust collectors. It is no fun

Another thing that might be a negative point is the size of the pads themselves, as they are a bit on the small side, which may be good for accuracy training, but does mean it feels a bit like you’re playing on a Drum Hero toy as opposed to a full instrument. Other Kits You Might Consider Instead Another thing to know - the pedals that come with this are little plastic things. I plan on buying some pedals designed for serious electronic drums eventually.Surprisingly, this unit blew away both the Roland SPD-6 and even the SPD-20. Pad response and feel was superior to Rolands. The round pads are more intuitive than Rolands. The sounds blew out the SPD-6, and were just as good as the SPD-20. Very high quality samples-fun and easy to use. If you want a pad setup no need to go with a Roland SPD. If you want the VDRUM sounds but dont want to buy the entire VDRUM kit, get the Yamaha DD55--has all those popular sounds in it. Also, fits on a snare stand! Stable, can take lots of punishment and manical drumming (Keith Moon style). Very compact I mean compact no kidding, my house is tiny and there's stil space for it. Quality is good, well built. The feel of the pads as well eg. the floor tom pad is bouncier than the snare. I butchered my dd55 for its pads - they are quite easy to remove.. (yank em). some are now having a new better life as 'cymbal pads' for my diy mesh head edrum setup...

The MIDI controller functionality is nearly nonfunctional: the pads are supposed to be independently programmable for MIDI note output, and to have a memory that saves the one allowed custom drum kit. Neither of these functions appears to work. The DD55's onboard interface is very poor, the onboard MIDI note programming info does not correspond to its output, the method for searching MIDI motes is poor and time-consuming, programming one pad alters the programming of other programmed pads for some reason, and the memory does not consistently maintain your settings. The DD55's MIDI wouldn't send or receive at all on a fully-functioning SBLive soundcard, even though both the SBLive and the DD55 worked with other MIDI instruments and modules, some of which worked with both the SBLive and the DD55. I was not able to find the source of this problem, but the DD55 does transmit and receive on an Audiophile 2496 card.The sample quality of the sounds on the DM Lite are pretty basic, limited dynamically, but better than most sounds that come with a kit of this price. You could spend twice the price on a ‘better’ kit and find the sounds are no better. The DD 55 has a ton of features. The unit holds many "standard" kit setups for use right out of the box. You can also design your own kit with the hundreds of voices.

The volume levels are about right, and they can be changed seperately if needed (according to the manual) The sensitivity of the hi-hat is basic and you can play pretty much in three positions – open, closed or semi-open. The hi-hat is not the strongest part of the DM Lite but it has the added benefit of functioning as a second bass drum pedal. You can assign the pedal to play a bass drum when you press down as opposed to a regular hi-hat. Sounds Designed to provide you with everything you need to get started. Includes a Yamaha Power Adaptor, 2-year extended warranty, Stereo Headphones, Yamaha Survival Kit CD-ROM.

Unfortunately the light-up feature of the DM Lite cannot be disabled so that might not be to every drummers preference. The light-up pads do resemble more of a childish feature and liken the kit to a musical toy. It’s perhaps an oversight on Alesis’ part to not allow the lights to be diabled. The DD55 works well as a stand-alone unit. The drum pad sensitivity is fairly expressive, perhaps a bit too much so. The pads are very sensitive to not only velocity, but also how centered your hits are. The small onboard speakers sound rather disappointing, but the unit sounds much better played through good headphones or an external amp and big speakers. The lightweight build of the DM Lite makes it ideally suited to kids. It can easily be folded away and moved which becomes a huge benefit when tidying rooms. Insensitive to strike VLOC low (<20/120 in the afternoon) because of its compact configuration: it should not be a strike on a pad dclenche another. But that's not the teachers and buzz rolls easily even when pass (although a bit on the end attenus) The new Yamaha DD55 marks a transition to a more professional and versatile digital-drumming instrument. New stereo-sampled voices, a bass boost system and digital stereo processing give the DD55 an irresistible, thundering beat. And with the addition of adjustable pad sensitivity, you can pound out a spicy Latin rhythm with your hands. With its powerful features, this is no mere toy, although anyone can enjoy it.