Hungry like a Rhythm Wolf

The Rhythm Wolf is a drum machine released several years ago at the NAMM show. In a post-Volca world of musicians keen to get hold of analogue equipment in a relatively small and cheap package, it seemed to provide a good alternative to Korg’s grooveboxes and Roland’s (at the time) non existent competition.

I managed to get hold of one for very cheap on the second hand market and thought I would share my experiences of using one and why I ultimately sold it.


Joining the pack

Following the Volcas around 2014, Akai pounced in with the Rhythm Wolf, which packs a five instrument drum machine (Kick,snare, percussive hit, open and closed hat) with a single oscillator synthesiser into a flat box the size of a child’s sized pizza. It also comes with solid MPC style pads that are velocity sensitive (with three levels of sensitivity), A/B variants for each patch, patch memory, multiple sequencing methods, 5 pin MIDI in and out/thru and USB MIDI, plus dual outputs for the drums and synth voice.

This setup is clearly meant to ape a classic combination of a 303 and a Roland drum machine for some acid sounds, though in practice the results leave a little to be desired. The Kick drum is a deep kick that instantly reminds me of the 808, which is no surprise given this sound’s enduring popularity. You can coax other 909-alike sounds but it lacks the weight to do this with any conviction.

Meanwhile the Snare drum is a lovely bright splashy number that definitely evokes the TR-909 but not quite. In fact, I will have to say that it is the best sound on this thing by far for punchy dnb snares and that I sampled pretty quickly. The less said about the hit hats and the percussion the better, however the bass part can be used to make acid lines with the simple envelope and either saw or square wave shapes. 

Connectivity is pretty good for the price as well, with 3.5mm jacks for sync in and out, 5 Pin MIDI in and out, USB for external sequencing or firmware updating and separate quarter inch mono jacks for the bass synth and drums. You can also run the synth just using the output of the drums jack, which functions as a master out.

A hoot not a howl

One of its selling points, the Howl function works like a distortion effect akin to the Minimoog output hack to dirty up a signal. Even at 30% or so, the affect is very pronounced and does wonders for the snare and square wave to dirty them up nicely. However, my praise with this feature is short-lived and there are issues that make this a massive turn off for me, at any price.

The first is that this is a global effect that works for all the instruments, meaning that it affects the already crunchy hi hats and all the instruments as well as the bass part. Second is that the effect adds a significant amount of noise, even at 20% or more. Both of these issues render this feature pretty much unuseable unless you want to do heavy glitch or punk sounds.

There is a redeeming feature of the Wolf in that it does have separate outs for the bass synth and drums, meaning that you can use external effects to spice up the sound. I turned to a number of cheap distortion, delay and chorus pedals from Amazon and was quite impressed with the results, though it would have been nice not to have to rely on external effects in the first place.

Underwelming

It is difficult to offer any praise about the Rhythm Wolf without adding significant caveats or a healthy collection of phrases starting with “but”. When you examine the thought processes behind each of the features, it is easy to understand why they have been included. Unfortunately it is the execution of those features that so sorely lets down the Rhythm Wolf and it is this that makes it so disappointing as a musical instrument.

MPC pads: it's great to get six MPC pads to craft beats with, but sadly they only respond to three levels of velocity: soft, medium and hard. In practice it is difficult to trigger the medium setting and the difference between medium and hard is not easy to discern either. 

Howl: as explained before, this function works like a distortion effect akin to the Minimoog output hack to dirty up a signal. Even at 30% or so, the affect is very pronounced and does wonders for the snare and square wave to dirty them up nicely. But even at 10% the Rhythm Wolf also adds a layer of very pronounced static to the output. If that wasn't bad enough, this is a global effect, meaning that it dirties up the already very crunchy percussion as well as the bassline. Both of these side effects renders the feature completely useless.

Lackluster Percussion: whether it's the non-descriptive “percussion” sound or the closed and open hats, all of them leave a lot to be desired. I have failed to make any valuable sound with (or that matches any famous vintage drum machine sound for that matter) and I wonder what exactly they were aiming for when Akai put this in. As for the hats, it is difficult to tell the difference between the two as the sounds are so noisy/crunchy that they are indistinct.

MIDI woes: I felt that even if I found it difficult to use the sequencer controls that if the Wolf had MIDI that I could at least control it from my DAW. So imagine to my distaste that the MIDI component ONLY sends note data to the bass element and I have not yet found a way to trigger the drum pads over MIDI. I suspected there must be a way but it's certainly not obvious and certainly not in the manual.

Oscillator tuning: My musical theory is pretty terrible at the best of times, but even I know that an octave is composed of 12 semitones for a well-tempered piano. So why in all that is holy is it that the Wolf has 14 per octave? It doesn't matter if you wait for it to warm up or try to use their third party tuning app, or even use MIDI over the built in sequencer, the Rhythm Wolf just can't keep in tune. 

I have looked online and it seems that a bunch of early models have this issue but say that it is fixable. That said there seem to be plenty of others who say that later models also suffer from this but that Akai won't admit it. All this points to a design fault with the Rhythm Wolf or that it was put together on the cheap.

Goodbye and good riddance:

It is for these reasons why I was able to pick up the Rhythm Wolf for less than half of the RRP, though I was able to sell it for slightly more than I paid for it. I suppose I should be grateful; the internet is awash with bad press about the unit, although some like Peter Kirn's CDM review is more disappointed rather than negative. Combining enough instruments to do analogue acid in one box sounds great on paper and is not based on overly new technology, so this should have been straightforward.

"...it seems that people either are forgiving of the Rhythm Wolf’s eccentricities and are happily making music with it, or they react rather negatively as I did – and without a whole lot of middle ground. It’s good to see some discussion, though. I’d much rather talk frankly about what we think of gear than have the same vanilla review of everything – and the surprising upshot is that the criticism here appears to be giving the Rhythm Wolf some impassioned advocates." Peter Kirn, 2014.

I can see why people have these strong opinions; I can appreciate that it if you didn't have anything else or are able to get around some of the misgivings of the Rhythm Wolf that it might be a good starter synth. For around £140 I can appreciated that it's not going to be the best equipment, but having a bass synth that doesn't keep in tune is pretty unforgivable.

This makes me wonder why Richard Devine, a man who I respect for patch development and modular synth music, was asked to promote it. From his promotional video, even he admits that the wolf needs stomp boxes and external gear to get the most out of it.

The Rhythm Wolf, and perhaps its brother the Tom Cat, are good examples of the premature rush to the analogue market and warnings to manufacturers that if the implementation is not up to the standards set by other companies, don't expect a warm reception.