Review: NUX DM-8 Electronic Drum Kit

Drum Pads & Cymbal Pads

This kit includes a solid lineup of multi-zone pads, including mesh drum pads and 360 cymbal pads with playable zones all the way around. The drum pads are fully enclosed and the heads are tension adjustable. There is a difference in sensors between the snare and tom pads. Let’s take a closer look at each pad around around the kit.

Snare Pad

The snare drum is the NPD-12, which is a 12 inch dual zone pad with a 2 ply mesh head. The snare can be played on the head and rim, and it has rim shot capabilities as well. The rim height feels like a typical snare drum. Cross sticking can be done by laying the stick across both sides of the rim. It sits on a snare drum stand which I like, so it doesn’t put any extra stress on the rack.

There are three sensors inside of the snare, placed around the outer edge, which helps to provide a fairly even response around the head. Even with the multiple sensors there is a slight hot spot in the center of the head, but I don’t really notice it when I’m playing so it’s not really an issue.

I like how this snare drum plays and I’m able to get some good dynamics out of it. The module responds well with everything from ghost notes to rim shots, with some of the onboard snare drum sounds sounding more natural than others. The only triggering issue I’ve run into with the snare pad is when I hard buzz roll with one hand, keep the drum stick pressed fairly hard into the head, and whack the head hard with the other stick with a specific timing while the other stick is still pushing hard into the head – the whack after the buzz doesn’t register. It’s hard to reproduce though, and I can only do it when I’m trying hard to make it happen after several attempts.

Tom Pads

The tom pads are the NDP-10 pads from NUX, and there are three included with this kit. The toms are 10-inch dual-zone pads with 2 ply mesh heads. There is a single sensor near the front of the pad, and the pads have a fairly even response all the way around with just a little roll off on the edge furthest away from the drummer.

The tom pads play nicely, I don’t have any complaints about them. I like to loosen up the mesh head on the toms more than the snare and they respond well when setup that way, it that helps them feel more like how I’d set up my acoustic drums. Most of the preset drum kits have a rim sound assigned to the rims but you can assign any sound to the rim zone. I like to assign cymbal sounds to the tom rims to add some more expanded variation in sounds around the kit.

The Cymbal Pads

The cymbals all the way around the kit are 360 degree pads, meaning you can strike anywhere all the way around the surface to trigger the sounds. While the trigger zones are 360 degrees, the choke zones are only on the front edge of the pad. This works fine since the cymbal arm mounts keep the cymbals from rotating, which keeps the choke zones facing the drummer at all times. I like how these cymbals feel during play, and I think they are pretty good for a drum kit at this price point. The edges of the cymbals feel a little softer and not not as hard as the bow, which I think helps them feel a little more natural with various sticking actions.

The Triple Zone Ride Cymbal Pad

The ride cymbal pad is the NRC-14C pad from NUX. It’s a 14-inch, triple-zone pad with edge, bow and bell zones as well as a choke. The pad connects to the module via a single cable rather than multiple cables which is seem on some other kits with multiple zone rides. The zones on the pad respond well to dynamic play and I like how it responds in conjunction with both the module and external drum software via MIDI.

The Crash Cymbal Pads

The two crash cymbal pads are both the NCY-12 pad from NUX. These are 12-inch, dual-zone pads with edge and bow zones and a choke. They respond well during play and I like how they feel for both more dynamic or aggressive approaches.

The Hi-Hat Pad

The hi-hat pad is designed to mount on a standard hi-hat stand and I don’t see any specific model numbers for this one. It’s a dual-zone pad with both edge and bow zones. There is a separate trigger and sensor mechanism that sits under the hi-hat pad which senses the open/closed position of the hi-hat as well as the foot tapping actions. Both the pad and the controller mechanism have their own cable connection to the sound module.

The hi-hat can do fully open, half open and closed positions, with both edge and bow sound variations on each position. The three positions is certainly a limitation for extremely nuanced hi-hat play, but it isn’t really out of line when compared to other drum kits in this price range, so it’s hard to complain about.

The pad responds well during play and I have enjoyed playing on it. Being on a hi-hat stand definitely makes any foot action feel better than kits with a controller pedal. The hi-hat stand is actually pretty nice and feels fairly sturdy, and it’s great that it’s included. The hi-hat pad tends to want to swivel or rotate on the stand but you can tighten things down or wrap the cables in a way that keeps it from rotating.

My only complaint about the hi-hat is that some of the hi-hat sounds in the module have a somewhat abrupt transition at times between the half-closed and fully closed positions, which can sound slightly unnatural at times. I usually only notice it when I’m playing faster hi-hat patterns with quick hi-hat snaps. However, this issue disappears when I’m using EZ Drummer 3, which handles those sound transitions better.

The Kick Drum Pad

The kick drum pad that comes with this kit is the NKP-10 from NUX. It’s a 10-inch pad with a 2 ply mesh head. It has a fairly heavy and sturdy feel for it’s size, and doesn’t move or wobble at all when playing, which I like. Underneath the mesh head is a foam pad that centers with the drum head along with a sensor towards the bottom of the head surface. There are Velcro pads and spurs to keep it from sliding, and it doesn’t move at all when on a low pile rug.

The kick pad feels pretty good in terms of rebound and you can adjust the tension of the head to tweak the feel as well. I find the kick pad to be very playable and it responds well to both single and double bass pedals. I haven’t run into any triggering issues which is good.

Double Kick Bass

The kick pad does work well with double bass pedals, which helps make this kit more appealing for metal drummers or any drummer who wants to use a double pedal. The clip plate is wide enough that you have a little bit of left to right flexibility to account for any beater offsets from the center of the pedal.

I was able to use both my Tama Iron Cobra and Axis Longboard double pedals, which is something I wasn’t able to do with the cheaper kits I’ve tried out, so that was a nice change of pace. You can see in the photos below how they center on the kick pad. The Iron Cobra centers fairly well. The Axis needs to be set up more to one side to center the beaters, but there’s still just enough room to clip securely onto the kick pad even with the larger offset.

Included Drum Hardware

One nice thing about this kit in terms of overall value is that it comes with most of the required extra hardware. There is a hi-hat stand, a snare drum stand and a single bass drum pedal in the box. There is no drum throne though, so the only other major piece of hardware you’ll need to get is a drum throne.

The Hi-Hat Stand

The hi-hat stand is sturdy and it has double-braced tripod legs. There is a height lock at the height adjustment point. There is a mechanism on the pole near the pedal to set the height of the pedal when it’s fully closed. The pedal is driven by a single chain linkage. It also has a standard hi-hat clutch. There are spurs on the base to keep it from sliding on a rug, which is nice.  You could use this as a hi-hat stand for acoustic drums if you wanted to.

The only limitation I ran into with the hi-hat stand is that the legs can’t be rotated left or right in relation to the foot board. It could potentially be a tight fit to fit a double bass pedal right next to the hi-hat pedal, depending on the pedal of choice. However, this wasn’t an issue with either of my Iron Cobra or Axis double pedals, which fit just fine under the hi-hat legs when I tried them out.

The Snare Stand

The included snare stand is pretty nice for a bundled piece of hardware as well. It feels about the same quality as something that would cost me around a hundred bucks at a drum shop. It has double-braced tripod legs and is plenty sturdy for the snare pad. The basket can be tilted in two directions. There is a height lock at the height adjustment point.

The snare stand could potentially feel short for taller drummers. I’m 6 foot 3 inches tall and I felt like I maxed out the height to get it set at my typical snare drum height. So if you like to set your snare drum high you could potentially find this stand coming up short.

The Bass Drum Pedal

This kit includes a kick drum pedal and it’s actually not too bad at all for a bundled pedal. The first thing I noticed about it is that it’s got some heft to it and doesn’t feel cheap when held in hand. It has a solid base plate which helps it feel very stable. There’s no velcro on the bottom, just a ribbed rubber surface which I prefer.

The pedal has a dual chain, linear cam drive and the action is smooth. To me, the action feels more like the pedal is designed for power over speed. Spring tension is adjustable. The beater height and angle is adjustable, with a stopper for remembering height settings. The beater has both felt and hard surfaces.

The one thing I didn’t like about the pedal is that the foot plate has just a little side-to-side play on the hinge where it connects to the heel, and it can make a clicking sound while playing.

Feel & Playability

I really like how this kit feels during play. I primarily play funk, rock and metal and I’m liking the way this kit feels for all three. The drum pads feel really good and they are big enough that they don’t feel like small targets. The cymbal pads feel good too, I like them much more than the pads on any sub-$1000 kit I’ve tried. The cymbal pads have thick rubber edges and they feel just a little softer on the edges than the bow. They don’t really fatigue my hand with excessive stick vibrations, so that’s nice.

The rack is super solid and all the pads stay securely in place, and I can play this kit confidently without feeling like I need to be careful with anything. There are basically no parts that wobble or move around unnecessarily while I’m hammering away on this thing. It actually feels more stable than my acoustic kit overall.

I also like how I can spread the pads out and set things up similarly to how I’d setup my acoustic kit in terms of spacing and reach.

As far as negatives go, the slightly smaller size of the hi-hat and snare drum when compared to their acoustic counterparts (both are 12 inch pads) makes it feel like have the hi-hat and snare distanced from each other a little more than I’m used to, especially when I’m using a double pedal which requires me to move the hi-hat even a little further away from the snare. It’s just a matter of a couple inches, so not a huge deal, but something I noticed.

The Rack

The rack that comes with this kit is really nice and I really like it. It’s partially assembled out of the box so it can be assembled fairly easily. It has notches on the ends of the horizontal poles that fit into place with the corner brackets to keep them from rotating, which helps with stability and keeps the rack from twisting.

All of the poles and crossbars are round, and the drum and cymbal mounts tighten down securely and I haven’t had any issues with parts rotating or coming loose. The brackets and clamps are all a sturdy feeling type of plastic that I wasn’t worried about breaking when tightening things down. The only tool you need to tighten clamps on the rack is a drum key.

The cymbal arms are intended to mount inside of mounting points on the vertical poles. This seemed a little limiting when I was looking at the specs for this kit on paper, but after setting it up I didn’t really find it to be limiting. The cymbal mounting arms offer enough adjustment capabilities and reach that I was able to position everything where I wanted it without issue. There is a cymbal mounting clamp on the right side crossbar which you can optionally use to mount one of the cymbal pads if you don’t want to use the mount on the right side vertical pole.

There’s plenty of room to add another tom pad or another cymbal pad, but I haven’t tried expanding this kit yet myself.

The NUX DM-8 Drum Module

This kit comes with the DM-8 drum module, which appears to be a new module designed specifically for this particular drum kit. The module gives a nice first impression with it’s metal face plate, blue LED lights under the buttons and knobs, and a bright, multi-color screen which is easy to see and read. The LED lighting behind the knobs/buttons sometimes pulses to indicate which are associated with certain settings in the module, depending on which mode you’re in.

The version of the software on the module I have is 1.0. I checked their website and don’t see any updates or anything for this kit yet.

Interface

I found the interface to be pretty easy to understand, and it’s pretty easy to dive in and just play. There was a couple things that I needed to dive into the manual to figure out, which I’ll touch on shortly here.

Here’s what you’ll find right up front on the top panel:

• Enter/Kick/Snare – Confirm settings or select snare/kick for editing
• Tom/Cymbal – Select tom or cymbal pads for editing
• Rec Button – Activates recording features
• Start/Stop Button – Starts and stops songs and recordings
• Play Button – Start playback of a song, also works as stop button
• Preview Button – Plays sounds when editing kits or browsing the sound library
• Click Button – Activates the metronome
• USB Song – Browse songs from connected USB drive
• Drum Off – Turn off the drum track for preset demo songs
• Group Faders – Adjust the volume of pad groups quickly with these faders

Inputs & Outputs

Inputs and outputs are placed sensibly on this module. A cable snake is used to connect the bulk of the pads to the module, and the connector plugs in on the bottom of the module. The majority of the inputs/outputs for the various connections are all on the back of the module except for the headphone output which is on the front, which I think is ideal.

On The Rear:

• MIDI Output
• USB Connection – For connecting to a computer
• USB Disk Port – For USB drives
• Power Adapter Input – DC 9V

On The Front Side:

• Headphone Output – 1/8″ stereo jack

Scope & Quality of Sounds

The DM-8 module has 48 preset drum kits grouped into 6 different styles – Pop, rock, metal, jazz, percussion and electronic. In the manual it states that there are 30 kits and 18 user slots for custom drum kits, but in my experience with the module that isn’t true. It’s actually 48 preset drum kits and all of them can be edited, but there are no empty or blank slots for saving new kits. You can edit any of the preset drum kits to change the sounds and effects, so it’s a pretty fun module to play around with in terms of sound design.

There are around 300 drum sounds in the module. I personally like the drum sounds in this kit and have found several presets that I like for jamming and practicing without any further editing. I think from a subjective standpoint I would describe them as good for a kit at it’s price point – not bad but not exactly the greatest either. There are a nice variety of sounds and the cymbal sounds have a good amount of sustain and don’t fade out too quickly or unnaturally which I like.

Here’s an awesome and relatively quick run through of the sounds from NUX so you can hear for yourself what this module sounds like.

Selecting Kits

Selecting kits was actually one of the few things that tripped me up with this module. It’s easy to do, but not entirely obvious how to go into the deeper kit selection if you’re new to the module.

The kit selection dial can be rotated to select a kit group, such as Rock or Jazz, and then you click the knob (this part I didn’t understand until I read the manual) and then keep rotating to further select individual kits within the group. It was kind of a duh moment for me when I realized you could click the selection dial.

Editing Kits

You can edit any of the kits in this module. When you have a kit selected and are in editing mode, you press the Kick/Snare or Tom/Cymbal button which selects a pad and enters the sound modify screen. Once you are in the sound modify screen you can also strike a pad to select it for modification.

When modifying sounds, you can rotate the instrument knob to select a new sound to assign to the pad, and you can also edit the pitch and level of the sound. In sound modify mode you can also use the split option to assign different sounds to different zones on the pads. This is where you can assign cymbal sounds to the tom rims, for example. You can even assign different sounds specifically to the different zones on the cymbal pads, which can lead to some interesting results.

Sound Effects

This module includes several built in sound effects: Pad EQ, Master EQ, Pad Compression, Master Compression, Overdrive and Reverb.

You can use the Pad EQ to change the EQ of any individual pad around the kit, and it affects all the trigger zones on any particular pad. The Pad Comp effect works the same for compression. The master EQ and compression options affect the entire kit.

The overdrive and reverb effects work a little differently. They use a send feature to dial in the amount of the effect applied to each pad around the kit. So you select an overdrive or reverb type and then apply the amount of the effect to any pad. This allows you to give your snare drum more reverb than the rest of the kit, or the snare could also be the only sound with reverb, as an example.

Overall, I like how flexible the effects are on this module, and I found the effects to be quite usable.

Memory Lock

There isn’t any sort of save function to save kit changes. Instead, the module has a memory lock function in the settings. If the memory lock is off, which it was by default on my kit, then any changes to the kits are automatically saved. I tested this by editing some of the kits and then turned the module off/on again and my changes were retained. You can also turn the memory lock function on. If the memory lock function is on, any changes to the kits aren’t saved when the module is turned off.

Bluetooth

The Bluetooth feature on this module can be used both for audio and MIDI. You can use Bluetooth like an aux in port – connect your phone or device via Bluetooth and then jam along with music from your phone. It also transmits MIDI over Bluetooth if you want to do that, which can be enabled in the module settings.

Audio & MIDI Over USB

The USB connection can be used to connect the module to a computer, and it basically turns the module into an audio/MIDI interface. When connected to a computer, you can send MIDI, stereo audio output or 14 tracks of individual audio outputs. When using the multi-track output the 14 tracks include the stereo master output pair, individual outputs for each pad around the kit including the two expansion trigger inputs, and the click track.

The multi-track audio output is a pretty sweet feature for a drum kit in this price level and one of it’s advantages over other similarly priced kits.

Importing WAV Files

There is a feature that allows you to import WAV files into the module, which you can then assign to pads within the drum kits. This is a fun feature to have if you want to be able to add your own custom sounds or samples to your kits.

How it works is you have to create a WAVIMPORT folder on the USB drive you are using, and then any samples you want to import are put into that folder before connecting the drive to the module. Then the module will recognize the folder and will allow to browse the folder and import the files. You can also batch import all files that in the folder.

There are some limitations to the import function. There max amount of imported files you can store on the module is 100. The total size limit of all imported WAV files is 100MB. There is also a limit of 20 seconds in length for each individual sound.

Song Mode

Song mode allows you to play along with the demo songs in the module or with songs that you have on a USB drive. The demo songs are fairly limited but give you something to play along with out of the box.

Most drummers will want to USB song mode though. How that works is you create a folder called SONG on your connected USB drive and place the files for songs you want to play along with in there. The module then recognizes that folder and allows you browse the songs and play them. The songs must be either in WAV or MIDI format.

Recording Mode

The recording mode in this module allows you to record yourself playing along with either internal songs or USB songs, and you can also record just the drumming without any songs as a backing track. The recording mode allows you to adjust the volume of both the backing and drum tracks independently. Anything recorded with this feature is saved to the connected USB drive as a WAV file.

Coach Mode

The coach mode (practice mode) on this module has a few features that can be used to work on your timing and accents. The Accent Shift feature challenges you to play accents on different beats with different timings. The Time Check feature shows you how accurately you are keeping with click track. The Quiet Count feature mutes the metronome periodically to help you learn how to keep time without a click. The Change Up helps you learn how to change tempos and time signatures while playing.

Metronome

The metronome is pretty straightforward and what you’d expect from a digital metronome. The tempo range is 40-280. You can change the amount of beats or the rhythm. The volume of the metronome is adjustable and the sound of the metronome can be changed. I preferred the default sound of the metronome but there are some nice and varied options available for other types of sounds.

Trigger Settings

All of the typical trigger settings you’d expect to find in a good drum module are here. For each pad/trigger around the kit you can adjust: Sensitivity, threshold, scan time, mask time, retrigger cancel, crosstalk, velocity curve, rim gain (affects either the drum pad rim or the cymbal edge zone depending on the pad), rim shot sensitivity (for the snare pad), and head rim adjust.

Other System Options

The module has a few other system level options that allow you to tweak various settings. Here’s the rest of the things you can do that we haven’t already covered.

• Screen Brightness – Changes the brightness of the LED screen.
• MIDI Out Channel – Set the output channel for MIDI.
• Bluetooth – Turn if on or off.
• System Information – Shows current version of the drum module software and the name of the drum module.

What’s Not?

Here’s what’s not included with this kit or things you might want to pick up:

• Drum throne
• More drum sticks (the included sticks are really lightweight and feel cheap)
• Headphones
• A better bass drum pedal
• A drum kit rug

Setup & Assembly

I found this to be a fairly easy kit to setup. As usual, the rack took a little bit of studying the manual and photos to make sure I was putting that together properly. The pads mounted quickly and easily and cabling everything up didn’t take much time at all. It took me about an hour to get everything setup the first time.

I only needed a drum key and no other special tools to get it put together, so that’s always a good thing. Even when the rack joints aren’t fully tightened down the kit is pretty sturdy, and tightening everything down fully just makes it even more sturdy.

During setup I noticed that the rack can fold up pretty tightly when there’s no pads attached, which is nice for a larger rack like this one in case you ever need to store the kit or move it around.

The Verdict

The NUX DM-8 is a surprisingly solid drum kit for it’s price and it has a lot to offer for drummers of all experience levels.

This is a nearly complete package out of the box, with about the only thing missing being a drum throne and some headphones. All of the pads feel good to play and everything is very sturdy. This kit can stand up to more aggressive drumming which is great. This is also a good value for a set of hardware for drummers who are looking to mainly control drum software such as EZ drummer.

The sound module has plenty to offer for drummers who want to use the internal sounds and effects, and the ability to output 14 tracks of multi-track audio over USB is something you won’t find on other kits at this price level.