Roland TR-06 Boutique

The Lounge Other Gear
#403

So I did a comparison with my friend’s real 606 I have in my studio, and while the cymbals are way off, I managed to get the other sounds to match almost exactly, or at least pretty close—the snare noise is brighter on the TR06. Kick and toms were so close I forgot which was which in the pattern I was using to compare…

Here are the settings that match the 606 I compared it to:

BD
Tune 0
Decay 86
Attack 126

SD
Tune -79
Decay 0
Snappy 182

LT
Tune 17
Decay -34
Color 0

HT
Tune 36
Decay 0
Color 0

CY
Tune -10
Decay 0

OH
Tune -57
Decay 0

CH
Tune -57
Decay 20

I’m interested to know if these settings are close to anyone else’s 606!

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#404

Agree :100:

The high end particularly has some great crack and sparkle. Zero complaints whatsoever with the overall quality of the sound. I wish I still had my Acidlab Drumatix to put next to it and really compare, as it also has a “holy hell!” punchiness and quality output.

3 Likes
#405

Interesting that you couldn’t recreate the cymbals on your 606 with the 06.
Shows how much aging components can affect the sound.

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#406

Yeah, not sure if anyone else with a real 606 had the same experience, but the fundamental frequency* of the cymbals seems lower on mine. I think it’s quite lower than the set of 606 samples I’d been using for years as well. I’ll try to do some proper sampling of it tomorrow.

* - I guess? Maybe not the fundamental, but definitely a prominent one was lower than in the 06, but tuning the 06’s cymbals down didn’t quite get there as the other oscillators went too low. I think someone else said that it’d benefit from being able to individually tune the oscillators (was it @darenager?). That’d be awesome if they unlocked that ability. That way it could be used for chord stabs as well :metal:

#407

Yeah I could not match the hats with my 606 either, the 6 squarewaves are subject to quite a bit of tuning variation due to component tolerances, at best 10% accuracy.
How much actual tuning deviation the resistor and capacitor tolerance, which set the frequency of each squarewave, cause is probably not as much as 10% but it definitely is a factor.
So since ACB models the circuit we could hope that Roland might do an update to account for this variation, but I don’t think they will, which is a shame given how much effort went into ACB.

3 Likes
#408

Sampled my friend’s 606, the hats and cymbals sound very different even to the sample packs I got from KB6.

TR-606.zip (1.3 MB)

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#409

It’s super common for the CY,CH,OH to sound unique from one 606 to another. I actually love this quality of it. It’s one of the reasons I collect so many 606 samples. They’re all so different. :slight_smile:
Yet still distinctly 606.

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#410

Definitely! I’d love to build up a collection of various 606 hihat samples :smiley:

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#411

just got mine yesterday. I’ve played less than an hour so far but know it’s a keeper. I was underwhelmed with the sound when I first played a pattern. Once I had got some conditional accents in and found how to quickly change the inst decay, the patterns came alive. These are so many sounds/tones in these. Step loop makes it very playable as well. Roland were clever with the sound variations as it has just the right amount of 808 in it. The acidlab drumatix may have convinced them this was a good idea. I guess on my wish list are more 808 sounds. Just because they could. I’ve asked for the 808 hats as cl/oh hat variation sounds. I’d also love instant pattern switching via a button and pattern select. I’d hoped triggering a fill pattern would happen instantly as a work around but alas no. Is there another way to change sounds without the switch? I worry about it wearing out.

4 Likes
#412

I want 909 toms!

#413

Got one here now for review purposes and echoing a lot of sentiments expressed here about how great the sound is. Super impressed. I wonder if Roland will add a few more sounds to this thing in the future; I wouldn’t be surprised if they did.

My one complaint so far is the placement of the trigger inputs and outputs. They make getting to the knobs a bit trickier.

Full review coming soon.

Curious if anyone else has different opinions after the honeymoon period is over. Cheers all.

2 Likes
#414

Yeah wish they were on the back edge.

Still like it, although it is a 1 trick pony it is a trick that I like :wink:

1 Like
#415

I returned mine because while it does sound incredibly good, I need kits, and due to my own personal quirks I need a way to fully pitch the 909 kick, as if it were a sample (not just how it acts on the TR-909/TR-09/TR-8, which is change the sweep depth of the pitch),

Also, the lack of either center detent on the physical drive effect knob OR numerical display of its value OR a TR-6S-esque HPF only FX option (not just HPF+LPF) made using my favorite master effect, HPF, more frustrating than enjoyable.

Plus having the 909 kick inside the TR-06 just made me want a 909 hat way too much, and for the money I figured I should either try the TR-6S (still on the fence) where I could pitch a 909 sample the way I want, or simply stick with my tried and true Model:Samples and retain probability in the sequencer.

I had zero complaints about the sound of this unit’s ACB or effects. Really fantastic all around. The sequencer tricks were wonderful as well, especially the brilliant master +/- probability amount. The lack of polyrhythms from Roland’s new cloud TR-606 plug-in would be welcome, and that’s really my only complaint about the sequencer. Other folks want micro-timing, but for these kind of classic drum sounds I don’t use microtiming much.
But while I usually jump on top of limitations as an opportunity to go down creative alleys I wouldn’t otherwise explore, enough small things about the TR-06 that weren’t compatible with my desires added up enough that the $400 wasn’t worth it for me, and I was still in the return period from Sam Ash.

6 Likes
Your Setups
#416

Agreed, having them on the back would have been much cleaner, especially when using the TR-06 at an angle. Oh well, can’t have everything :blush:

#417

After a lot of back and forth and listing/unlisting for sale, I’ve decided to keep it for the intent that I purchased it for…probability trigger machine.
Wouldn’t recommend the TR-06 sound-wise, despite really liking the noise toms. The fact that noone here or elsewhere has said “the hats sound just like my OG 606!” Should be a good indicator. Sure…there is variance with 606 from unit to unit, but these hats don’t fall within any variance I have heard. There’s too much pulse click in the kick, snare, and hats.

The sounds mix well with my 606 and DR-110, so it will work in that context. I would have willingly paid another $100 for a single assignable out to run the kick seperate (without USB).

As soon as I messed with the hpf/lpf, I had a feeling it would disapoint @AdamJay as you seemed excited about it. In my initial review above, I mentioned the lack of center detent, which to me was a non-starter in using it… other than maybe sending one sound to it.

Some interesting possibilities with the bit crusher and sideband flanger, but other than that the effects blow (imo) just like the TB-03’s. I’m stuck panning the kick hard left and the rest hard right. So the sideband flanger is useless as there’s no stereo information.

As far as ACB, I own: System 8, TR-06, TB-03, and have owned: SH-01a and TR-09. I know this won’t be a popular opinion, but I don’t think any of them sound “analog”. I actually like that attribute with the TB-03, as I also have an RE-303 and like how different they sound. Not the case with the SH-01a vs SH-101.
The System 8 use to stay on the JX-3P emulation until I got the real deal, so glad I did… now it stays on the S8’s native engine and almost exclusively for the stripped down FM and Formant options. The more digital and “small” I program it, the happier I am with it’s pallette.

The TR-09 didn’t sound good at all to me, the snare sounds really odd imo.

(IMO) there is an inherent muffled/flat sound in addition to the clicky attack in these ACB units. For instance, when lowering the cutoff of the filter on the S8/TB-03/SH-01a, the entirety of the sound gets pushed back, whereas with the original units, the remaining frequencies (post cutoff) bulge out/push harder. A lot of flavor words, I know…8 /
It really comes down to the way analogue filters saturate, best I can tell. This is rather minute in the large scale of things, I know.

I even mentioned previously in this topic about how these differences dissipated when recorded at 24bit/48k, but it has an effect on how well I think things are sounding when jamming out. The OG 606 just dance and sizzle more than the TR-06’s which has me looking to buss it out to delays or chorus to make up for the lack of movement.

Have been on the fence to sell the rest of my ACB and boutiques, but they do offer excellent functionality, almost exclusively trigger related, for me, regarding the TR-06 and TB-03.
If only Roland woukd introduce a mixer along the lines of the MX-1 that would convert the USB outs to physical outs…seeing as I don’t own a computer.

Went quite off-topic, but i’d recommend the TR-06 only to those who want the workflow (which is identical yet expanded) or if you are like me and love Trigger based configurations and will benefit from probability based trigs.

1 Like
#418

I’m not sure what you mean by this. You hear a pulse click in all of these sounds?

At first, I wasn’t too fond of the reverb, but now I really like it when used subtly.

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#419

I would make sure you aren’t having usb issues. I have a Roland system 1-m that gives a horrible click with each note when connected via usb.

#420

Yeah, for instance, the way the TR-606 generates it’s hihat sound is via pulse generation with noise generated on top of that pulse. Same for all it’s sounds really. On the TR-06 that pulse wave is louder than on the 2 original units I’ve compared it to. I think it’s down to how the original gets compressed as the waveforms saturate when summed into eachother. On the TR-06 the 2 “tones”, percussive pulse and noise, sound slightly more seperate that results in a more pronounced attack on the hats and snare. Same for the kick too, but the kick has an additional Attack parameter that can get slow enough to remove the pronounced attack. I believe it’s just because the sounds are generated as a whole, not generated seperately.

Let me clear though that I don’t think it would/should be a factor for most, but in addition to the pitch range of the hi hat not being able to match that of my 606 (which someone else also found to be true a few posts above) it just leave me a little let down by the sound character. Love the noise tom and rim though.

We’re talking about the minutia though, like the difference in listening to Compression vs the effect that Compression has on other sounds. I do realize that this is wading into pretentious territory, and I’d recommend not listening for it now if you havn’t noticed it already.

ADDED:
I’m listening and comparing now, because I don’t want to just blow smoke or discourage anyone. It’s subtle enough that using open back phones can soften it up enough to be negligible. Previously I had only used my closed back headphones (DT770), and with them it can become fatiguing.

If I were to make comparison clips of the TR-06/606, would it be better to attempt to match the 06 to my 606 or record the TR-06 as-is after a factory reset?

#421

I look at those gain and pitch parameters as a way to get instant variation out of the sounds, the kind of variation that had previously only been available after decades of analog component aging.

Considering the variations that every 606 has gone through now after nearly 40 years of aging of the analog components (especially the tuning of the cluster OSCs the hats and cymbal use), I’d try to match it with the 06’s parameters under the hood.

Indeed!

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#422

Here’s my hack, haha. I’ll be selling these as upgrade kits for the Tr-06 :joy:

image
image3024×3024 1.97 MB

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