Studio drum machines got worse after 1998, heres my theory

Ive been collecting cheap beat boxes for years, and I swear the switch happened around 1998 when everyone started chasing realistic samples over character. My old Roland R-8 from 1989 has this clunky, hollow snare that sounds terrible on its own, but in a mix it cuts through like nothing else. Then I picked up a 2001 Yamaha RM1x last month, and every preset is so polished and clean that it just sits flat, no life, no weirdness. I think the affordable gear makers got scared of sounding cheap, so they sanded off all the rough edges that actually made those old units fun. You can almost hear the moment they stopped letting engineers mess with wild parameters and started letting marketing pick the sounds. Am I crazy, or is there a clear before and after line in drum machine history around that time? Anyone else got a beat box from each era and feel the same way?

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grace56515d ago

...and honestly I used to be the total opposite on this. I was all about the clean, modern stuff because it sounded more "professional" to me, but then I dug out my old Alesis HR-16 and compared it to my newer gear and yeah, you're right. The older one has this weird, papery kick that should be awful but it just sits in a track and punches through in a way the polished one never does. Ngl, I think the real change is they stopped designing for people who would tweak everything and started designing for people who just want to hit play, and that's where the soul went. I still grab the new ones for certain things, but I finally get why people hold onto the old boxes like they're treasure.