Hands On: ddrum DDTi

Since 1983, ddrum has been in the electronic drum and trigger business. They know what it takes to help today’s drummer stay in line with modern music. The ddrum DDTi is an inexpensive and easy-to-use interface for triggering acoustic drums or electronic drum pads with your favorite drum machines, samplers, or computer plug-ins.

Easy to Set Up The DDTi is a compact unit. There are only four buttons on the front panel. The Function buttons scroll through the different parameters, and the Value buttons turn those parameters up or down. There are 10 trigger inputs, a USB port, and a MIDI port. It is bus powered, and there’s no need for any special drivers or software.

Electronic Pads and Acoustic Triggers The DDTi tells you exactly where to plug in your pads and acoustic triggers right on the back panel. A cool trick is if you only need three or four of the inputs for your acoustic triggers, then you can use the rest for your electronic pads and have a hybrid kit!

Get Right Into Playing I plugged in Roland pads from a TD-30 kit and opened up Toontrack’s EZdrummer on my computer, and right away got sounds. I was able to tweak how the pads responded easily using the Function and Value buttons. The same went for my acoustic triggers. After plugging them into the DDTi, I was able to adjust the triggers to my playing style with a few simple button pushes.

Wrap Up Playing electronic drums or using triggers on an acoustic kit makes playing the drums a different animal. The ddrum DDTi made it very easy to get going and understand. What are you waiting for? Expand your musical world with the DDTi!