The NUX DP-2000 digital percussion pad is a new offering from NUX in it’s digital drum line. It can be used as a standalone percussion pad or along with acoustic and electronic drum kits.
What Is The DP-2000?
This looks like an affordable digital percussion pad that is meant to compete with other percussion pads such as the Alesis Strike Pad, the DDrum NIO or the various Roland SPD pads.
The DP-2000 looks to offer a built in sound library with around 20 presets, and it includes some of the drum kits sounds from the newer DM-8 module from the DM-8 electronic drum kit. In addition to the built-in sounds, you can load in your own WAV samples via USB and use it as a sample pad.
I’m seeing it listed for around $329 at USA based drum shops and online stores so it looks to be a very affordable option that will undercut many of the other digital percussion pads in price.
Notable Features
The DP-2000 has several features that make it look interesting, especially at it’s price point.
Sound Library
It doesn’t have an overwhelming amount of built in sounds, but the 20 preset kits offer a nice variety of sounds that can cover a lot of styles. With the built in sounds, you can just turn it on and play without having to worry about loading any samples first.
Layering
In the manual and marketing materials it says that a pad can be split into two parts and then sounds can be layered into those two parts. I still haven’t seen any good example of how this works exactly, so I’m not sure if that means that there are multiple strike zones on each pad or not. This feature is a bit of a mystery to me so I’m curious to see how it works when I get a chance to try one of these out.
USB Port
The USB port can be used to import samples from a USB drive, and it’s also where you connect the additional Bluetooth module if you want to add wireless capabilities. The Bluetooth module looks to support both wireless audio and MIDI features.
Importing WAV Files
You can use the USB port to import WAV files and play your own samples with the pads. It looks like there are some limitations here. The length of the WAV files can’t exceed 20 seconds per file. There is also a limit of 80mb for the total amount of samples imported. There is also a limit of 80 total samples. That seems kind of low to me in terms of limits, but it’s enough to bring in a custom drum kit or something like that. It might not work as well for storing and playing really long sound samples or loops.
Sound FX
There are some built in effects, including delay, reverb, EQ and compression. The affects can be assigned to pads and then the amount of the effect in the mix is controlled with knobs on the front panel.
Additional Trigger Inputs
This module has 3 trigger inputs. One is designated for a hi-hat controller, one is designated for a kick pad, and one is designated as a generic trigger input.
Use the DP-2000 As a Mini Drum Kit
One interesting thing about this percussion pad is that you can use it as a mini drum kit if you connect a hi-hat controller and kick pad to it. That is a pretty neat approach and it could be appealing to certain types of drummers who want a very compact or portable method of practicing or playing electronic drums.
Check out this demo video from NUX that shows this in action, pretty neat stuff.
Even though you can hook up those extra controller pedals, I’m not seeing any package deals that include the pedals. There is also currently limited information on which types of pedal might be compatible at this time. I would guess that most standard kick pads or hi-hat controllers would work, but it would be nice to see a more concrete list of what NUX recommends to use.
Use It To Expand Digital or Acoustic Drums
These types of percussion pads are a great way to add some extra capabilities and triggers to an electronic drum kit without taking up much more space. They also are a great option for drummers who want to mix some digital drum sounds into their acoustic drum kits. It can even work as an alternative to a practice pad if you want to practice on something that has some more interesting sound capabilities.
Where Can You Buy the DP-2000?
It looks like the DP-2000 is still being rolled out to USA based retailers, and I currently only see import options from overseas stores when looking for it online. Places like Amazon and Guitar Center do have listing up, but they indicate it’s not in stock and is on back order for the time being. It looks like it should be available in the USA during the summer of 2024 at some point.
