Volca Sample vs. Volca Drum (A Compassionate Comparison)

I just wanna make beats. But with whom shall I make beats with??

#VolcaSample #VolcaDrum #KorgVolca #comparison

[redfernmusic]

The drum is not so great for like hip hop its a great tool for noise music where you can do things that might have required a whole euro-rack in the past from a small noise machine that costs less than $200. The sample has the perfect simplicity but it is better suited to one shot samples than loops. Its hard to think of any hardware that can do better than software like ableton live with loops.

[MadelineTasquin]

thanks so much! i was agonizing over the decision of which one of these volcas to make my first… imma gonna go with the sample. appreciated the direct A/B comparison of the features ❤️🤓 subscribing

[chaoswires]

Drum is synth, Sample is sample player. What i love in Drum: polyrythmic sequencer, synthesis engine, probabilities, with latest updates it can be used to play chords, pitch quantization has been added. Volca sample become fully powered by Pajen's firmware. The only thing it lacks now is polyrythmic sequencer, it cannot be implemented without affecting other features. But if we add midi out to volca Drum, it can sequence 6 parts on Sample, so.. It's good to have both, they are for different purposes

[SithMirth]

I just ordered a Volca Sample as my first drum machine. I feel like I made the right decision. Cheers!

[lumpselecta]

Awesome man. Definitely sticking to the Sample one then.

[SkelaKing]

You need to check out the Pajen custom firmware for the sample and make an update video. The pajen software add so many features, but mainly it adds things like probability, bar filter, polyphony, better midi control, and tons of others. I use the bar filter in order to create a pseudo 4 bar loop instead of the typical 16 step limit

[AndrewPRoberts]

I own both of these; they're both great, just different flavors. I know what sounds I'm gonna get when I pick one up, so it just depends on how I'm feeling.

[NatePerdomo]

A tutorial video but you gradually add more and more bracelets until by the end everything is covered

[gabrielleplaysbass]

Just watched this video and found it very helpful to combine and understand the 2 samplers. Thank you!

[eighteenfiftynine]

You missed loads off the Volca Drum. There's three effects in the parameters menu, plus the pitch quantisation, which allows you to more easily play notes on the thing. I also don't think your assessment of the faceplate as bad design was fair - it's got a different look to the Sample, granted, but it works well as a kind of simple flowchart to make sense of how the different sections work. Really, the biggest limitation I've found to the Drum is its total lack of ability to produce a decent cymbal sound. Given some time and patience, you can get some really cool stuff out of the Drum, even on its own. There's some really cool minimal techno stuff that people here on YouTube have done with it.

[DarioMiticocchio]

Not sure if you’ve mentioned it, but on the sample you can make long, dronish sounds with the loop function, and you can pitch the notes, mess with the envelope and whatnot. It’s basically a very minimal wave table synth

[strangefields]

Recently ordered the volca drum. Found out about the volca sample the next day and I would love to have it but I have so many ways to play with my samples in my daw (not to mention FL studio has that drum sequencer) I think I made the right choice. I think the sample would be the most useful to me in combination with my tascam recorder when I’m on the go. Maybe I’ll get it next. Thanks for the quality content and in depth review of these awesome sequencers!

[cubis]

That's funny, I always heard people say the opposite about the sample, that it's "ugly" or "looks like it belongs at a hospital". I always thought it looked cool as-is, but I did put a custom skin on mine. Maybe you wouldn't like it since you're a designer lol.

I have to say though, that I think you're being a little unfair to the sample in regards to sample limits. Honestly the sample size is less of a restriction than the sample time (slightly over 1 min total for all samples). In both cases though, the most useful things you can do to cut down the impact of a given sample is to reduce the sample rate, convert stereo samples to mono, trim silent or very quiet heads/tails, and speed them up (both tempo and pitch). You can later pitch it down on the volca itself to get back to the normal speed with a little loss of fidelity. Using a bunch of these tricks, you can get easily get what was originally waaaay more than 4mb of samples to load just fine in your volca. I think that's what the other user was talking about.

[evenmind-music]

One thing to mention on the Sample:
Quiet some of its limitations can be worked around (as you imply with compressing samples). One that comes to my mind comparing it to the new Volca Drum (which seems nice) is a workaround I found for the lack of a "Slice" feature using motion sequencing. However, it doesnt work for samples that are super short and - beeing a workaround - it takes a couple of steps more.
VOLCA SAMPLE WORKAROUND FOR SLICES goes like this:
1. Make sure Motion Sequence is ON
2. Activate the respective part
3. Set the part to LOOP
4. Enter STEP MODE
5. Hit PLAY
6. Hold down the step (pad) you want to have a slice on
7. While holding down the step, set the SAMPLE LENGTH fairly SHORT (this puts the Length value as automation data on that step). You should hear the sample retriggering quickly, as it´s looping and the loop lenght is set short.
8. Adjust the sample Lenght to your liking, you should be able to get quiet straight notes
9. Release the Step
10. Set the SAMPLE LENGTH back to MAXIMUM (this sets maximum sample Length to every step without automation data, avoiding those steps to retrigger - if not followed by too long a pause)



Hope that´s of help for someone, nice thing to experiment with anyways :)
Cheers.

[System]

I am just curious. Why would you need a sample based external equipment, if the samples already can be played with the Live11 of any DAW. But yes, if you live loop Dawless, make sense.

[thomashanson]

I am a newby, and find the tutorials seem to be aimed at the learner is at your level of understanding. In other words having an understanding of techniques and progressions and even mode understanding. Why Korg has not done this is beyond me. So many more users could be drawn to their product. For me, listening to this was a study of esoteric tutorials where a body of knowledge is required. I am guilty of the same thing when teaching Photoshop. Please try doing a Korg volca 101 as l am 'do' type learner. Thanx

[stefan-]

Thank you so much for this very helpful video! I never owned any device like this and don't know much about music creation, I'm just searching which one to get as a surprise gift my son who started electronic music creation. I'll got with the sampler for its versatility (may get the Drum later though haha!).

[shikasketchbook]

Love to hear your voice & narration, so relaxing, im still considering volca fm for the Dx sound, but still considering

[reubenrussi]

The live kit samples you have are great! Are they factory standard samples or did you upload your own?

[Pheonix]

Omg love the waves. Also thanks for the video and all the great jams.