Clavia Digital Instrument has just release the new ddrum4 System, a whole new percussion controller and pad system. The Cast Precision Series uses real drum heads on cast aluminum shells so both the "feel" and tracking closely rival acoustic drums with natural rebound and nuance capability.

The ddrum4 controller has more than 500 different instruments that allow for eight different variations of each instrument. Individual instruments can be changed with just one touch in ddrum's "one-hand access" system. These changes happen without changing the complete kit setup. The new playback engine allows the simulation of acoustic percussion sounds in many new ways. Several dynamic filter algorithms have been developed to reproduce samples more naturally than before. ddrum's Drumhead Vibration Algorithm called DVA ver. 2.0 will change the relationship of overtones between every new stroke.

You can download new samples free of charge from Clavia's WEB site (sorry I didn't get the URL yet!!) and then load them via MIDI from your computer right into your ddrum brain. You can also load and save sounds through the SCSI (optional) and Flashram cards. Later this year, there will be the entire ddrum Vintage Sound library available on CD-ROM. The disk will have several megs of new percussion sounds as well as many drum loops.