Singular Sound BeatBuddy

Ik heb deze BeatBuddy nu enkele jaren in gebruik in mijn homestudio en kan echt niet meer zonder. De kwaliteit van de samples is uitstekend en de uitgebreide set aan patterns af fabriek is meer dan voldoende. De bediening is ook zeer eenvoudig. Kies je genre, pattern, kit en tempo, en dan spelen maar. Voor mij als gitarist is het voetpedaal ideaal en letterlijk een BeatBuddy, oftewel een drummer in een doosje die precies doet wat ie moet doen. Tijdens het spelen trap je op de foot-switch voor perfect getimede fills inclusief variaties en transities. Met de BB Rig Manager software kun je je eigen custom patterns en zelfs hele tracks uploaden naar de BB. Heel handig als je drummer verhinderd is voor de oefensessie. En met de MIDI interface kun je DAW tracks met bass, synths en sample loops aansturen. Kortom, prima drum companion voor zowel in de homestudio als in de oefenruimte.

First up I nearly sent this back. Nearly. Why?
A/The software is too glitchy, and also quirky, the manuals do not help. They even refer to things that are not in the software, like say "organize". Some of the things you want are there, but not where you expect them.
B/ It is useless for Jazz swing. If you are into "avant garde" (which I suppose means less than 50 years old) then fine, go ahead. If you play standards or traditional swing, forget it. OK so you can download other sounds at reasonable rates, but when listening to the samples on sound cloud there was nothing there which would please our audiences. I know of a lot of bands that could use something useful in that area. This is not it.
OK you can import your own .wav files. Fine. See A/ above. So far we have only managed it by accident.
So why keep it? Because it is very very good at blues, rock, shuffle country and the Latin folder is quite extensive. Sound quality is OK, not too much hiss and once you are used to the software faults easy to make up new songs. If you want to load up a song into another folder with a new name you have to export it. Change the name, so you remember what it is. When you import it back in to a different folder say with a different tempo, the name of the song reverts to the original name. You have to change it again. Sustituting sounds in songs is easy as long as 1/ the sample is already in and 2/ The drum kit you are using has instruments which respond to the import.
After a long evaluation period we decided it would be useful for our duo sets as long as we don't do our Jazz set. We had to stick a volume pedal in the line from it to makes adjustments on the fly, there is no way we could find to alter volume in the software.
Hopefully updates of the software will become useable before singular sound comes out with the MKII version and makes this obsolete.
Lastly while it will pass input straight through to your PA, we didn't like the extra hiss we gained with our setup.
A lot of money for an imperfect product, but we are sticking with it. We have found nothing better, and we have tried quite a few.