Best Drum Machine for Techno and House (We Tested)

TR-8S is Roland's most advanced drum machine. It recreates the sounds, feels, and character of genres including hip hop, EDM, house music, dancehall reggae, and beyond while injecting new paradigms into rhythmic pattern creation. Tap it out, or through step sequencing, have the AIRA TR-8S do it for you with 16 built-in patterns to boot. Program beats endlessly on up to 32 steps in real-time. TR-8S contains individual outputs plus 12 individual outputs which synchronize together so performers can mix their blend on stage or at home with maximum control over threshold levels, ensuring precise triggering without distortion no matter how high your SPLs get!

Behringer is a manufacturer of professional and personal audio equipment. The classic analog drum machine is a workhorse for many popular techno tracks of the 1980s and 1990s, such as "The Ripper" by Breakwater, "Timber or Tailor Tuelor" by Newcleus, and "Is It Love?" by Zapp.

It's a versatile drum machine offering over 500 pre-installed drum sets spanning the full spectrum of different styles of music, from techno to jazz. Depending on your type of play, you can program single hits, loops, rolls, and fills to create your beats. With SR-16, you can also mix down any groove directly onto an Apple or Windows computer via the included USB cable for editing with more powerful software applications. The Alesis SR-16 is a studio-grade instrument that delivers everything from deep basses and crashing cymbals to crisp snares and detailed hi-hats thanks to its 16 velocity-sensitive pads, each with a 12 zone RGB LED display allowing you to see the state of every pad at a glance.

The Akai Professional MPC One: Drum Machine is a techno drum machine with a 13-inch LCD screen, a rubberized case, and two significant jog wheel controllers. The MPC One has been universally applauded for its design and features, which have been deemed to provide the most refined "user experience" of any hand-held electronic instrument available today. It can connect wirelessly to smartphones or tablets through MIDI, meaning that it can also function as a controller for DAWs such as Logic Pro X or FL Studio Mobile. In this way, it effectively replaces the need to carry an iPhone around with you on gigs just so that you can control all of your tracks from one device.

The Electribe2, along with the EPD1, builds on the original "Electribe" concept of a drum machine that integrated analog synthesis with sample playback. A series of performance parameters both affect how sample sounds are generated organically and allow for in-depth editing and processing. It means you can play live and use multi-samples in ways never before possible: adjusting tone, shaping filters, tinkering with effects—all while your sound is still playing back. You can even cut off loops in midstream or add jarring breaks to maintain tension in your music productions.

The Volca series drum machine integrates cutting-edge rhythm technologies and lets you create a new world of electronic beats with three synthesized sounds, six PCM drum sounds (four limited), a sequence (step) sequencer (16 parts), live sampling function that allows you to record the sound from the current session, and user sampling via microSDHC card. You can additionally process each sample with an FPGA for pitch shifting and time stretching, which yields an incredible range of possibilities at your fingertips. You could say Korg Drum Machine is a music production device that allows you to produce techno drums. It's pretty much all-encompassing because it covers so many different sounds, including synth drums, and has this pitch shift feature.

The DrumBrute Impact is a beautiful semi-modular analog drum machine that features a unique dual architecture. With one part step sequencer and the other free running, this drum machine is rhythmic and melodic. By combining these two different methods of rhythm generation, it's possible to make 'complex' sounding drums with aggressive attacks and subtle, evolving patterns. In addition to the analog sound generator, eight digital sample slots can be used to create your custom kits instead of using presets or downloading them from the internet - all managed via the Arturia BeatStep app.

The Elektron Analog Four MKII is a four-voice analog synthesizer with two envelope generators and one LFO for controlling the filter and amplifier sections. It was designed to be versatile, compact, and very user-friendly. The Analog Heat distortion module will work differently on different audio input signals. It's not just a distortion effect! For example, it can add some analog warmth to your vocals or make your hi-hat more old school sounding like you would hear in some Pink Floyd tracks from the "Dark Side of the Moon."

The OP-1 is a portable instrument combined with a synthesizer, sampler, and sequencer. The unique sound of the OP-1 comes from its integrated synthesizer engine, sampling/wavetable editor, twin drum machines with individual outputs, intuitive rhythm patterns with different ballistics, digital effects unit with delay and reverb. It's also possible to use the OP-1 as 'Duino or MIDI interface for external hardware synths/electronics.