These come as part of the ‘Legendary’ instruments offered in the Ultimate tier of the company’s Cloud subscription service, or as a bundle priced at $499 (plus tax) for a lifetime key. Roland’s Drum Machine Collection includes spot-on recreations of the 808 and 909, but also the lesser-known but still worthwhile TR-606, TR-707 and TR-727. In the software realm, if you want the authentic look, sound and workflow of the original machines, you can’t beat Roland’s own official emulations. This ubiquity doesn’t make the sounds any less essentia,l though.

Even plugins that don’t explicitly ape the look or workflow of Roland’s beatmakers will more often than not include sounds that owe a debt to the TR range. Inevitably, these machines have been sampled, emulated and replicated ad nauseum. Four decades on, the TR-909 remains the go-to machine for house and techno drums, while the TR-808 - or, at least, sampled versions of its sounds - provides the backbone of contemporary hip-hop. There have been countless excellent drum machines over the past few decades, but no instrument has dominated the beatmaking landscape like Roland’s TR machines.

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