Versatile Sounds in a Retro Package

DM1 for the Mac is a great, old school style drum machine that gives you a fantastic array of classic machines (most of the big names and some obscurities) as well as a surprising amount of contemporary sets covering pretty much every genre it could (I mean, they went as far as commissioning the psychedelic post-punk / Portishead connected band Beak> to make a kit).

Will you make a record with it? By itself? No - while DM1 offers a some meldodic elements, it’s a drum machine and isn’t really pretending to be anything beyond that - it’s not a DAW. With that in mind, there’s no reason you couldn’t record some banging drum sequences, export a sound file and use it in a project in your DAW of choice. Well, beyond laziness.

In my opinion, DM1 is fantastic as a sketchpad and an easy, no hassle app to just pull up and make some beats with that are absolutely usable in bigger production. That anyone could complain too much for something this user friendly, with this big a library and this cheap is just telling that we’ve become spoiled by the 99¢ price point (I’m sorry - ten bucks for what DM1 does is more than fair). Perspective: if this, in the same form, were a VSTi / AU / RTAS, you’d be paying anywhere from 60 to 200 bucks US. I mean, c’mon.

Mars Hottentot about DM1 - The Drum Machine