The Sample offers a more diverse experience and is arguably the more "useful" of the two, but the Beats remains a very enjoyable drum machine with a character of its own.

The Volca Beats is an impressive little analog/hybrid drum machine with powerful sounds, but also some notable limitations even beyond some of the functionality constraints common to the whole series

While it's certainly got a tinny/metallic sound to it and is by no means your classic acid machine, the thing really screams and can make some great sounds

The Volca Beats is a drum machine with analog and PCM voices and a layout that is mildly reminiscent of classic Roland drum machines like the TR-808 and the TR-909.

Great little drum machine, perfect balance of toy like fun and a serious sound

Hook up a $50 MIDI keyboard & you have a pretty decent analog synth.

Awesome synth, i love the sounds you can make with this is really amazing!

There are apps sold for $10 to $20 on iPad and iPhone that offer true polyphony and far more variety of sounds than the Volca Keys offers, so you could use that as your lead synth.

With a controller and a midi cable you could have a pretty cool synth for under $300, but then again, for that price you could have the microbrute which is a better unit in many ways

I use this product to give me a deeper more Moog sounding background filler, and it can replicate most sounds from today's music, along with much of the past.con: wish it had a bit more functionality with smoother synth

Amazing product for the price, works great as a mini synthesizer

The Korg Volca Keys is an amazing product at a remarkable price

Overall, a pretty cool like rhythm machine, but useless for things like melodies or chords, somewhat unwieldy to work with, except the sequencing itself which is easy, and super cheap compared to competing portable products, so it sticks out as a fun piece of quirky kit.

That stated, this is, again, a very fun (and rather inexpensive) product that would give many people an accessible entrance into old-style analogue synthesis

Amazing product for the price, works great as a mini synthesizer

It's an unfortunate oversight because the kick drum and toms are actually surprisingly good

The Volca Beats is an impressive little analog/hybrid drum machine with powerful sounds, but also some notable limitations even beyond some of the functionality constraints common to the whole series

There is no "ACCENT" feature, which was a key feature on the 808 and other popular drum machines.

The Sample offers a more diverse experience and is arguably the more "useful" of the two, but the Beats remains a very enjoyable drum machine with a character of its own.

The Volca Beats is still a fantastic instrument if what you like are analog drums -- it gives you knob-level controls over the synthesis parameters that you want in an analog kit

But with synthesizers - and especially affordable ANALOG synthesizers - true polyphony is actually somewhat rare.

That led me to look more at the overall landscape for affordable analog synthesizers (which, until quite recently, was a sentence that wouldn't have made any sense).

Hook up a $50 MIDI keyboard & you have a pretty decent analog synth.

The Volca Beats is an impressive little analog/hybrid drum machine with powerful sounds, but also some notable limitations even beyond some of the functionality constraints common to the whole series

Korg's recent adventure into classic analog electronics produces some interesting instruments and the Volca series first three releases, Beats, Bass, and Keys, are no exception.

But I got it at a great price and decided I had to try it out, with the option of selling it at no loss if I didn't dig it

Great price, prompt shipping... product is exactly as described.

The Korg Volca Keys is an amazing product at a remarkable price

They're roughly the same price, but a bit more versatile (although bigger), and at least in comparing the ER-1 to the Beats, sound considerably better (the Beats snare issue is annoying, but not a total deal breaker if the other pros outweigh that con).In summary, I think these are really great, affordable little machines

You can easily use the headphone jack as a “line out” into a mixer or powered monitor, and it works great

So far, this synth is fun and easy to use, though I am sure I would struggle to create the kinds of very crisp, clear lines necessary for recording, but this was known, given the tiny, flat style "keyboard" it posesses

Here are some features that I think would greatly enhance the Volca Keys.-A true line-out (you will need to purchase a 3.5mm trs to 1/4" ts line to make the keys usable as an instrument)-A line-in, allowing you to process other input through the filter-A USB midi in (not just DIN.)

I wish it was a better way to upload samples into it other than using an iPhone or aftermarket app

The best way to deal with this is to use the Caustic or AudioPocket editor and identify some of the longer factory samples (1 second or longer) and target those to be replaced.

There are 100 sample slots for storage, but whatever you upload needs to be in place of something else, so you can free up more storage that way.

This is a great way to get those digital drum machine sounds and one-offs like sirens into your Volca Rig

The best way I can describe it is that the Keys is a more "optimistic" device, whereas the Bass is better at is specific stated task.

It would make a good addition to the inventory of most artists.

The Leds that flash and highlight motions are a great idea and addition for workflow

I've seen complaints about them being 'toys', or limited in what you can do with them, and while I won't argue the merits of that based on some folks' perspectives, the small, portable nature of them makes them a non-invasive addition to a small space and perfect for picking up and messing around outside of the desk or studio environment

You may inevitably choose to own more than one Volca, and if you do, the Keys is a great addition to the lineup.

A great addition to other volcas to use as a drum machine.

I do have some nice things to say about the Volca Beats.

Of course the thing is tiny, cheap, so easy to use, battery-powered, etc

the crazy thing even came with batteries & a built-in speaker!

The one thing I don't like is how the midi channels are set up

One of the really fun things to do on both the FM and the Volca Keys is to record a lumbering sequence over 4 measures (1/4 tempo), and then play it back as a quantized pattern compressed into a single measure (1/1 tempo).

The housing, while largely plastic, is extremely well-executed, and the device feels like a quality product, even relative to the $160 street price.

The device has a little noise on the output too which this imbalance doesn't help with

If you want something that has pro sound quality, more sample time, loop slicing, and more features, you could move up to the Electribe Sampler, which seems like a really nice device

I ultimately feel I cannot afford this excellent device and returned it-but for the few days I was able to play with it, it was interesting

I ultimately feel I cannot afford this excellent device and returned it-but for the few days I was able to play with it, it was interesting

You need this, I plugged it in a studio with High Quality sound system, and the Volca sound great, I can see my self performing live with this little beast and having a blast.

So it's a really satisfying experience, and I recommend the Volca to anyone who wants a sampler that's fun to play.

If you know that your primary goal is to use your Volca for single note bass grooves or lead tones, get the Bass.

The Caustic Volca Editor easily links up with an app called AudioShare to import samples stored on your device, or imported from a cloud service like DropBox.

Fortunately, the Volca FM has a trick up its sleeve: access to online libraries of Yamaha DX7 patches created and reproduced as sysex files from 1983 to the present, and available all over the web

I really like this thing, the bass sounds great in headphones, but it has sort of limited possibilities by itself

The Bass also functions like a traditional step sequencer, whereas the Keys is more geared at live play.

This was actually another reason I preferred the Bass over the Keys

I bought the volca bass by mistake (I was actually looking for the volca sample for my project), but damn that thing was the best - excellent fat bass sounds, beautiful tweets, far easier to use and get started than the volca keys, far more responsive to just noodling around to get improvised bass-lines

I really like this thing, the bass sounds great in headphones, but it has sort of limited possibilities by itself

I will say the snare is a bit weak, with the bass drum being the best part

Instead the snare sounds really good for an analog snare voice even when heard through the unit's internal speaker.

Ultimately, I felt like the Beats had a few weaknesses (snare not very popular; limited arsenal of sounds) and that I could cover most of the Beats' sounds plus a whole lot more with the Volca Sample

Unfortunately the snare is a little weak and takes some finesse to get a decent snare tone (the stutter effect seems to help), bit for this price it's very hard to argue

Ultimately, I felt like the Beats had a few weaknesses (snare not very popular; limited arsenal of sounds) and that I could cover most of the Beats' sounds plus a whole lot more with the Volca Sample

The Caustic Volca Editor easily links up with an app called AudioShare to import samples stored on your device, or imported from a cloud service like DropBox.

This is a very fun unit and the caustic editor for iOS is definitely nicer than Korg's

I haven't tried any of the computer apps, but Caustic Editor for Volca Sample is free on both iOS and Android

I haven't tried any of the computer apps, but Caustic Editor for Volca Sample is free on both iOS and Android

On iOS, I use AudioShare (it also supports AudioCopy) to get samples into the Caustic Editor app, and it has tools for trimming samples and such as well as a whole set of effects you can apply to your samples to get them ready for the Volca -- chorus, compressor, etc

While I would need to experiment with recording some more to determine if it's truly "line level" output, it certainly can power a quality pair of headphones through the 3.5mm jack, and while there may be some faint hissing or extraneous noise in the background, it's totally acceptable and impressive how good it is at this price

most of the modes only enable you to either make number "foggy" noise or all-out scratchy noise.

Giant OKGO is bad enough, but then red lettering on black background or light graylettering on white background!!

The biggest, most annoying problem with the OKGO unit though is the TERRIBLE lettering

The biggest, most annoying problem with the OKGO unit though is the TERRIBLE lettering

This is a neat little analog rhythm machine that is very simple to use, lots of fun to play with, and actually sounds amazingly good when recorded or integrated into a proper system (and by that I mean, send the audio out into a nice compressor, slap a bit of reverb or delay on it, and this thing is fat!!).I played with it in a store and wasn't too impressed, even with headphones

As with any Volca you do get a bit more noise compared to a high-end synth, especially when you've got the tone knob cranked

Raw analog sawtooth sounds can be a bit harsh, though you can tame this with the VCF cutoff or add external effects

I don't mean to imply that the snare is completely unusable - with the snappy and decay knobs set around 12:00, you get a short, percussive snare sound that is passable, albeit very limited in scope and a bit weak in output.