■ The Alesis SR16 is one of the most popular and widely used drum machines to date, Originally In production since the early 1990s, and recently brought back to life. The Alesis SR16 also features 50 preset patterns that were played in by professional session musicians, rather than programmed and quantised.
■ SR16 is a small black plastic box with blue and white lettering, a large LCD display and an 'alpha dial' style volume control. There are two pairs of stereo outputs (labelled Main and Aux), a stereo mini-jack (for tape data storage), MIDI In and Out sockets, two footswitch jacks and a power socket (for which Alesis provide a 9V AC adaptor).
■The SR16 features 50 preset rhythm Patterns A and B, and a pair of Fill Patterns which are always the same length as their corresponding A or B Patterns (The idea is that Pattern A should be used for a verse, and Pattern B for a choru) Fill A provides an appropriate transition from Pattern A to B (verse to chorus) and Fill B the transition from B to A (chorus to verse).
■ Big SOUND Rom for the time: 49 kick drums, 59 snares, 19 hi-hats, 12 cymbals, 52 toms and 42 percussion sounds into the SR16, making a grand total of 233 sounds coded at 16 bits.
■ SEQUENCER: both real and step-time recording with quantise level. The step mode is usually used to enter fast notes, spot erase can be almost impossible to use without lowering the tempo. A total capacity of around 24,576 notes, that cannot be expanded.