Korg Volca Beats Analogue Rhythm Machine

Excellent value small factor drum machine. The analog sounds are all good but range from fantastic (kick) to hmmm not so good (snare), although the snare is better "in person" than it seemed on videos of people eager to mod the capacitor onto the circuit board. The PCM sounds are all very quiet compared to the analog ones though which means you would have to turn all the analog sounds down and then turn the main volume up which is fiddly and will probably get noisy. Love the colours of the unit though: feels like a 1970s hot tub, sports car, chocolate fondue set or something!

Big fan. This is a fun machine to play around with. I like running it through crazy effects and tweaking the stutter button on the high hats.

It was my first approach with the synth/drum machine world and I use it in every situation, especially when I play on solo shows or in duo. It's an honest drum machine with some good sounds. I think that on the track "Interfuit" you can hear a good example of it: https://lepiccolemorti.bandcamp.com/track/interfuit

Nice little drum machine, with a nice little feature to mix up the beat. The 808ish kick is to weak for my taste.

The Kick is awesome, you are limited in sound shaping but you get a lot of bang for the buck. Great for getting into drum synthesis. And a funny little tool for on the run jamming. I like it but it's not my favourite synth of the Korg Volca series (which is the Korg Volca Keys).

To be honest, I don't like it enough to use it as the main percussion in a track, but it is good at adding an analog feel to the drum part in a track. It's also surprisingly good at making some messed up, cool sounds which I love to do.

A brilliantly price tiny box of nothing but fun. I really enjoy playing around with the volca beats and I always love just making beats from scratch. As I own a unit with the snare mod all of the sounds are great except from the crash, its neither realistic like a 909 or like an 808 but except from that really good quality sounds. The level balancing could be improved e.g. the snare and kick are a little too loud in comparison to the hi-hats and the PCM sounds need to be a lot louder. There are a couple more things it could do with like shuffle and MIDI out and maybe the motion recording of all the analogue sound parameters but other than all that it is an excellent drum machine for the money and is THE drum machine to go for if you're on a small budget.

The biggest flaw is the lack of MIDI volume control for individual sounds

Pretty easy and funny to use, the hugeness of the sound does"t seem to be here for me but it's cool to find some ideas on the fly !

The Volca Beats drum machine is fun to use. Has a lot of neat features that integrate well for the studio. The only downfall is the snare drum, which has a bad distortion to it. However, custom modification instructions are available on Youtube.

Simple drum machine, but you can complicate when you rec motions of the parameters like the stutter, these 2 knob are really funny modifying the rhythm and adding a depth sound. Esthetically beautiful, excellent touch of materials, specially the keyboard that is lovely. <3

Drums. Obsessive tweaking. Mostly the latter. I love it!

Nice synth

Even better with the Snare mod. But be careful! Tough to do.

Mod multi-out & snare noise modification

Hugely let down by some weak sounds, most noticeably the terrible snare.

It’s good for a little analogue drum machine on the cheap, but there are better options out there

Good for Korg. Maybe I would ask for a special out for the kick and for the rest. That's all.

but I have had trouble integrating it into my rig. That said it sounds good but can be noisy when recording. An interesting form factor and nice control of sounds and sequencer records parameters so has lots of potential but so far I am not able to totally take advantage of all this though I do plan to have another go at the Volcas and see if I can use it with my Novation SL MKIII.

A simple and easy to use drum machine. I sample this in some of my songs.

The sound is great. The downside is that the machine is quite noisy and not so loud.

Bought it recently and really happy with its 4 analog sounds and pocket size. Really love it!

The Volca Beats is part of a series of small, but versatile line of synthesizers known as the Volca range. It has 6 Analogue sounds and 4 PCM (Sampled) Sounds (which cannot be swapped out). People have an issue with the snare, as they feel that it does not have enough punch, but why? You don't need that extra punch, especially when layered with the kick and claps. The Hihats are reminiscent of the Roland C78 Hihats. The volca does offer a speaker for more portability but you can run this unit into headphones or a soundcard. My two issues with this is the low output level, meaning the signal has to be compressed when recording into my soundcard, and the only output on this device is the 3.5 mm Jack meant for headphones that are aimed at the average Joe. I wish that it had a 6.5 mm jack to route to my soundcard, making for a much louder signal.

Haha even if it wasn't, this little fella has a lot of charm to him. And that kick is absolutely insane! Be warned: you will need to adjust it's volume in your mixes, it tends to want to be a hero.

...the kick, toms, agogo sound really good in all configurations and the hi hats sound cool as fuck when you mess with the grain setting in real time. Beware that of all the Volcas, the Beats has the greatest difference between what it sounds like through it's own speakers vs. headphones or a line feed. Like perhaps all Volcas, the MIDI implementation of the Beats is strong as Bunyan. I've been able to use a Squarp Pyramid MIDI CC track to get good sounds out of the Beats that I've not gotten out of any other drum machine, including the Tempst. And this, without any effects!

This is an unbelievably fantastic sound for such a tiny box and such a tiny price. I can't imagine it'll be long before I buy the other two.

Love and hate as with other Volca gear. Snare is pretty bad, sounds like pure noise. Kick seems to be too low and no cutting through the mix really well. Has to me tamed and EQed a lot to get something decent.

It is a very cheap drum machine which can be used in many situations, but it has limits which you can dislike: only mono sound, you may dislike sounds. But it can be modded, used in experiments. And of course it is very simple. But for its price I think you wouldn't find anything.

Again a great volca. Nice long delaytime on the bass drum, good scatter FX, you NEED to mod it with snare fix because that one's just too flimsy. I modded my volca's with midi out so the sequencer puts out some nice patterned data.

I desperately want a stand alone drum machine that i can use either live or in the studio - something that sounds tight and professional, and that i can set up and edit on the fly. I'd probably run something like that through it's own effects board - put on some controllable distortion, a bit crusher, delays and such - hell, even build a few custom circuits into a rack for it.

I am Volca User of the first hour and of all 3 analog Volcas I use this most often, And especially the kick and the hi-hats! For me the perfect warm fat bass drum, both for electro sounds, as well as to simulate a "natural" kick.

I also like the analog toms, as well as Clap and the other PCM percussion sounds.

The Hi Hats are especially fun when you loosen rigid 16-figure figures using triplets with the help of Motion Record and Stutter. In general, Motion Record can generate very lively grooves. This also applies to the slightly weaker snare drum, which I like to use for subtle ghost notes, as it is perfect for that.

However, if you can handle soldering iron: There are numerous MODs for snare, MIDI-out, single outputs etc ... Because the biggest drawback for me and therefore a star deduction is the restriction to 16 steps at the sequencer, This can only be avoided with an external sequencer. Everything else can be done - with a bit of skill change yourself thanks to moding-friendly PCB.