It's 2025, NAMM is approaching, and the gear announcements are beginning to roll in. Kicking things off in fine style this year is Japanese manufacturer Sonicware, best known for its highly affordable synths, samplers and grooveboxes, who has just released a fantastic-looking drum synth at a characteristically generous price point.
CyDrums is a drum synth and sequencer built around a dual-oscillator wavetable synthesis engine equipped with 64 proprietary wavetables. Though it arrives with 520 preset sounds and 128 drum kits, there's plenty of scope for designing your own patches.
The synth is kitted out with 22 preset "sound structures", each geared towards producing a specific kind of drum sound. Many of the usual suspects - bass drum, snare drum, rim shot, tom, cymbal, clap, open hi-hat and closed hi-hat - offer multiple variations, and there's also a conventional, non-percussion synth structure onboard for adding melodies and basslines to your grooves.
CyDrums can be programmed via an 8-track, 128-step sequencer which can store up to 128 patterns per project. Based on the workflow of the Lofi-12 XT, the sequencer is capable of polyrhythmic, randomized and probabilty-based sequencing, along with Elektron-style parameter locking, and is equipped with a handful of performance modes that include VariSpeed, a timestretching device that emulates tape machine playback.
CyDrums' 15 backlit pads can be used not only to trigger sounds, but also to control various parameters of the synth engines and effects via velocity and pressure sensitivity, giving you plenty of options for expressive live performance.
Each of CyDrums' eight tracks runs through a multi-mode filter and an amp envelope with adjustable ADR curves and a distortion module, before being processed by a comprehensive effects engine that features 22 insert effects; chorus, flanger, reverb, delay, ring mod, overdrive, bitcrusher, compressor and a vinyl noise simulator are joined by five master effects - including a sidechain compressor and looper - that can be used to process entire patterns.
As for the hardware, CyDrums shares its form factor with SmplTrek and Lofi-12 XT, two previous Sonicware products. Equipped with a 1.5" OLED display, onboard microphone and speaker (both mono), it's battery- or mains-powered and weighs around half a kilo.
Connectivity-wise, you've got 1/4" stereo ins and outs, a 3.5mm headphone jack, MIDI in/out, USB MIDI and audio, and sync in/out via 3.5mm minijacks. Presets and wavetables are stored on an included 32GB SDHC card.
All in all, CyDrums looks like a whole lot of drum machine for the price; though it's priced at $499, it's available now for an introductory discount of $399.
Find out more on Sonicware's website or watch a demo video below.
