Listening to gated analog drum machine sounds is one great way to travel in time backwards and forwards as well. From the synth pop of the 80s to today's electronic dance and ambient music scene, the particular timbre of the analog drum machine has got that nostalgic magic that gives a particular kind of spark, no matter how dated the sound might be by today's technological standards. You probably are tired going through pawnshops, Craigslist, or eBay so you might have already considered digging up time capsules just to get your hands on a TR-808, a CR-8000, or any of those old 80s drum machines. A good thing though is one company has already done the digging for you as out of their vault springs forth a replication of the hardware Roland CR-8000 in the form of Precisionsound Real CR-8000 .

Precisionsound Real CR-8000 is a loop and sample set sampled from a real Roland CR-8000. Each sound has been sampled with up to 16 different single hits. Rolls have been captured as well during the sampling process to ensure that the sample set replicates the behavior of the real CR-8000 when a sound is rapidly repeated. All hits and rolls have been sampled in both normal and accented versions.

As with arranger keyboards and other drum machines, the hardware CR-8000 has its own preset rhythms. To capture this facet as well as add a lot more, all the grooves of the hardware Roland CR-8000 have been recorded in four bars. You get both a "mix" loop and the loop broken down into parts. These grooves have been recorded at 60 bpm

The Real CR-8000 Contains:

• 2 programs for NI Kontakt
• 3 programs for HALion
• 1 program for SoundFont (16bit)
• 227 single hits and rolls in 24-bit WAV.
• 255 24-bit Rx2 loops
• 255 24-bit WAV loops

All of the formats are included upon purchase so you can make use of your Real CR-8000 for your sample player of choice. If you are a Kontakt user, you'er in luck because the Kontakt version has a "round robin" program that alternates between different hits of the same sound which emulates analog fluctuations occurring in the oscillators of a hardware CR-8000. SoundFont (16-bit), HALion and NI Kontakt users also have their work cut out for them as well as all the single hits and rolls have already been mapped out.

Real CR-8000 is available as a download for $19.00. You will have to add $11.00 more if you want to have the CD/DVD-ROM version instead. Once you have your copy, the only thing left for you to do is to straighten out the debate caused by existence of the Real CR-8000 and the "real" CR-8000 from Roland. Are you confused? Well, I guess so am I.