PreSonus ATOM 16-pad Performance Controller Reviews

Compared to other controllers in this price range, the ATOM is by far the nicest. The pads are nice and sensitive, soft and bright. The buttons are soft and slightly clicky!! The knobs are very smooth and tight!! This thing is very compact and nice and thin. Very easily mobile. It instantly integrates with Studio One with no problems. The ATOM is way better than the Akia midi controllers period and I have had multiple over the years from cheap to expensive. All of them felt cheap and eventually quit working. Highly recommended : )

Needed a sensitive 16 pad controller for use with Cubase 12. Able to easily reprogram the unit with Cubase Midi Remote. Additional help for Cubase users at Groove3 Tutorials, last chapters. Great price from Sweetwater, thanks!

I've been producing music for a long time. I always used my keyboard(s) to record MIDI Drums whether from the internal sounds of a keyboard to a soft synth using a MIDI controller keyboard. Pads never really appealed to me. When I saw this, at the price it is, and considering I already use Studio One, I thought, eh, why not? Well, not 5 minutes after playing with this thing, I was instantly hooked! The pads are great, especially the velocity and pressure sensitive feel. The controls are well thought out, and I even started a track where all the instruments I used were recorded using these pads rather than my keyboard, just to try it out. It was a load of fun. I am a keyboardist, so I'm not giving that up. But I am gladly going to incorporate this pad controller into my recording sessions now. Thanks Presonus for making this, and thanks to Sweetwater for the typical painless shopping experience.

Great Unit!
Built Tough.
Pretty lights ;)
Still learning to use its full functionality.
I am really a guitarist and I cant physically play real drums as well as I would like. This puts amazing sounding Drums sets at my finger tips!

Still gets 5 stars, but wish it had on/off switch

I bought this controller to use with the 1010 music Black box. I have to say that I love the feel of the pads and coupled with the MIDI learn function that is inside the BLACK box it is the best accompaniment for my on-the-go setup.

Recently started to record in Studio One 5 and I love it. My workflow is so much faster and targeted even with my Push2 using "Shove" plugin. PreSonus seamless integration between software and hardware lead me to purchase a Faderport "Man I get songs out quick and polished." After a couple of videos/tutorials on ATOM 16-Pad Controller, I decided to go all-in!

The ATOM is so intuitive and easy to use, I rarely use my touchpad. I've got my MPC workflow vibe back. The best thing about ATOM, Faderport and Studio One 5 is they all integrate with Ableton Live. My musical horizon is wide open. If you track in Studio One 5 the ATOM 16-Pad Controller is a must-have! Better late than never!

The ATOM is the perfect pad controller for me works seamlessly in Studio One Pro and also in Superior Drummer 3 (with some easy quick adjustments.

This pad controller came with bundled software, one of which I began using (Studio One Artist). The controller has logically placed transport controls and great feel on the buttons and pads. The built-in shortcuts and secondary functions make navigating Studio One a nearly seamless process. Presonus also has helpful tutorials on their website and on YouTube for those becoming acclimated with the controllers more advanced functionality.

So easy to use and comes with awesome software

Needed something to work on beats. This works well with my homes studio. Connected and loaded up Studio one, works perfect

I've used other Pad-style control surfaces. For the price, the ATOM is an excellent device. Great touch, easy to learn how to use. It's integration support for Ableton Live users was fantastic

Presonus is there only DAW you need... Almost no point in learning anything else. Most of my home studio equipment is dominated by products from Presonus! Next, the iO Station!! That thing is fire! But the Atom has so much potential, and is perfect if you like Impact XT... Almost essential piece of equipment if you're into electronic music, beat production, learning or advanced. Just simple enough to learn, but the features of MPC... Fantastic product!!

Very bright multi-color soft pads that have a great feel to them and work great.
The whole thing is easy to set up and use with Studio One.
Fireware must be updated using Universal Control Driver installer application but that is easy and almost automatic.
You will need to find the pop-up menu near the top of any instrument you are using to point it at ATOM so it will respond to pad hits.

After I got EZDrummer2 I decided that Controller might help in laying down the percussion parts for recording. It did, after a bit of a learning curve it does what I needed it to do.

Decided to upgrade my DAW from StudioOne2 Producer to 4 Professional via my Presonus account. Not being a great keyboardist (I'm a guitar player) I was thinking of buying a Machine Jam controller since I have some NI software. But after reviewing various videos, I was convinced that the ATOM pad was a better fit. The improvements to SO4 Pro + ATOM are very well integrated and pads are more responsive than those on my Akai LPD8. Sweetwater Cutomer Service (Nicholas Weaver) was excellent from first contact to final followup with emails and phone call. Pre-Shipment notifications were prompt and package arrived on time in good condition. Needless to say, I am now a Sweetwater customer from here on.

The pads on this controller beat the drumbrute! The feel of the pads will have you adding ghost notes without even thinking about it. Super easy to get dynamics and depth into your beats. It was so easy to get running basically just plugged it in and started playing, it automatically plays my impact kits exactly how they appear on the computer and it is saving me a boat load of time. My work flow has never been faster! Anyone who uses Studio One has no excuse to not be using this drum pad it is better quality pads than all other at its price point and it's full integration to studio one is un matched!

Great pads and nice integration with Studio One 4. Between Studio One, the StudioLive series III mixers, and the Atom, I am becoming a huge Presonus fanboy. I am just using the Atom for scratch drum parts, but the pads are perfectly responsive and velocity sensitive and correspond perfectly to Impact XT, so it works great for that. I usually use an outboard drum machine, because I don't especially like working in the box except for recording, but this almost gives the feel of a real drum machine. I started with a cheaper Akai pad controller and the Atom is so much better it wasn't even a contest. I would not waste your money on a cheaper pad controller. The Atom isn't exactly expensive anyway and it is very high quality.

With us using the ATOM to serve as a controller within our current set-up, there's really is'nt much to say, because IT'S REALLY AS SIMPLE as plug and play! We simply plugged the ATOM in and our DAW (NUENDO by Steinberg) automatically recognized ATOM as "another" controller with there being no FURTHER need for any reconfigurations of our system or any future need to swap out controllers, interrupting our creative flow.

REALLY GLAD WE GOT IT! And.... Price wise, well, how can you beat something so inexpensive that works exactly as you had hoped?

Like we said, it's just that simple............ Oh yea, ...almost forgot! It feels fantastic.

TrackCrafters ProAudio Recording Studio (Gainesville, Florida)

I waited a whole year before I decided to purchase the Presonus atom. I wanted to wait until a few more customer reviews and videos came out about it. Most of the reviews and comments I've seen were overwelmingly positive. In the mean time, I had downloaded the manule for it. With the combination of the manule and youtube videos, I had a good idea on how to work it once I received it. I had no problems installing the universal control drivers from my Presonus account and getting it set up to work in studio 1 4. Once you're familiar with the layout of the atom, you'll be flying around it, not even thinking about it. Love the sensitivity and responsiveness of the pads, as well as the customability you can set in the quick setup mode. It truly is a physical representation of the impact xt drum sampler in studio one. Love having the option to be able to record in the pattern step sequencer as well as the regular linear way. Highly recommend, you won't regret it. Thanks again to my sales rep Bob Mondok. p.s check out a good master class series of the Presonus Atom on youtube by johnny geib from home studio trainer.

Received my ATOM Pad Controller yesterday as the FREEBIE that came with my Faderport 16. WOW! Now, honestly, I never even looked at this controller before as I am set with my keyboard by habit. But, it came with the Faderport 16, soooooo. Let me say this, having it in my studio now, I would definitely drop the $150 knowing what I know now.
Added to my midi keyboard, the workflow split between the two is crazy good. Plugged it in, Studio One 4 Pro saw it, connected it, and wham....up and running. Took me longer to open the box.
One thing that has always drove me nuts was not being able to use switch keys on numerous VIs as I use a 49 key pad. With the ATOM, I simply toggle down the range a few clicks and the pads serve to trigger the keys. Next, routing one synth for base chords to the ATOM and the upper register to my keyboard makes two handed playing a breeze. Now the real killer.
Route one synth to the ATOM, say a pad, and my lead synth to the keyboard, and the possibilities are endless.
I use Slate Drums 5 for virtually all my kit needs. The ATOM makes the programming way easier and the pad sensitivity on the ATOM is stellar. The resulting dynamics are much easier to control with the pads and far better than the pads on my keylab.
So, for 150, this little gem is tank built and a no brainer for both playing and editing. Free with the Faderport 16, a monster good buy, it just keeps getting better.

Studio One is becoming my main Daw at my studio and I have to say adding the Atom to my setup was the best decision ever. The first day I got it. I made three beats. There are things I'm still learning but you can control a lot inside Studio One with this bad boy. I'm going to get the Faderport next.

Love the fact that I can make beats so fast in Presonus studio one with this controller. You can almost run studio one with just this controller. I love it !

LOVE IT SO FAR STILL LEARNING THIS THING.
RELAY COOL TOO USE.

The perfect controller for Studio One! Plus, it comes with Studio One Artist 4 so no need to purchase the upgrade from a previous version of Artist. I'm looking forward to learning more about Studio One and the world of the DAW. A big thank you to Andy at Sweetwater for getting me started and guiding me in the right direction as well as always helping to solve any and all musical equipment related issues I may have.

Presonus studio one 4 is the protools killer! With the power of studio one and the simplicity of the atom, we have a real winner!

I have used many many daw contolers like the push2, the mpc line, machine, but nothing compares to atom. Using serato sample with my atom is light years ahead of companies like akai.

The price , the design, and functionality can"t be matched.

The atoms small form factor makes it the perfect controller for traveling. This is a huge selling point to me, no one wants to carry a mpc live around. The atom is smaller then the mpd. The atom would be the better option as a basic midi contoler for any daw.

I don"t use stock sounds or care much for impulse and sample xt with my workflow so my review is not intended for basic function with presonus instruments, some areas need improvement to compete with akai and machine but I"m sure that will come . I"m positive it will.

I really hope this product does well for presonus and its competitors take notice because other companies are seriously damaging there relationship with customers. Presonus is changing the game!

I recently purchased another drum pad midi controller and was let down on it's capabilities as a controller surface for Ableton. Upon that realization, I went in search of a more versatile drum pad, that search led me to the PreSonus ATOM. I have been very happy with it. It's ease of use and instant partnership with my DAW was exactly what I was looking for. I would like some softer buttons, but for the price and usability, you wont find something better.

I'm using this with a Reaper DAW. Total midi control for all functions especially the play/record/stop transport. It makes using EZ-Drummer way easier than hooking up a keyboard or using your mouse to create. Durable and sensitive buttons are comfortable. Loving it so far.

I bought the Atom for finger drumming drum tracks into song tracks that were previously recorded digitally with digital to analog drum machines. It does a great job once it's set up. The Atom also takes the place of a mouse in Studio One for transport, moving the cursor, loops, making selections and working with the mixing pages. The pads are sensitive, easily customised, and can be drum pads, or intrument notes depending on your samples and intrument library. It also works ad a keyboard or a 16 note sequencer. It needs the Studio One Impact plug in to load drum kits.
I've recorde a couple of drum tracks with it, and the results are promising. Fidelity is excellent, pad sensitivity is really good. You can control volume, panning and pitch of each drum pad from dials on the controller.
Once you've recorded the drums in midi, you can convert each drum midi track into a separate audio track for mixing and editing which makes my mixing life easier.
The downside is the pointless and useless library of drum kits in the Studio One Impact library. Put together by monkeys, you get hundreds of drum kits, but none that are usable unless you are doing music tracks for 1980 video games. There are no samples that I could find. I have yet to find a recognizable drum kit. Maybe they're there, I don't know. I purchased some real drum kit sample libraries so it's all good. Creating custom drum kits and saving is real easy.
Less complicated than the Atom SQ, simple and fun to use, best used with Studio One.

works great with Studio One 5. seamless. top stuff.

Best deal ever

Been using as a drum pad and it meshes well with both Logic Pro X and the included Studio One Artist package. I need to spend some time mapping functions, but I think it does what I need it to and it will hopefully be even more functional with some experience. Gotta day the pads are pretty good. Ghost double taps aren’t too frequent, but they’re present. I can see the pads responding even better with some more break-in though. Maybe that will fix the doubles?

Bien construido y tiene buena sensibilidad en los pad

Nice addition to my presonus studio. It works great easy set up. Great purchase gives you more options when producing music. Presonus did it right with the Atom well built fun to use and the manual easy to understand. Also having a 2 year warranty with Sweetwater is a additional bonus. It is a PRESONUS BONUS.... I give a 4.5. because there is always room for improvement. Thanks...

This is a GREAT piece of equipment. I already had an Akai MPK Mini mkIII, but after watching many demos and reviews of the ATOM, I made the decision to get one for my studio and I have zero regrets. Pads feel great and the response is also terrific. My only reason for not giving 5 stars is that while it does indeed make navigating around Studio One easier, it's not QUITE as easy as the demos make it seem, and some functions do not work for me. Now, that being said, it could be due to the fact that I am very green on this controller and still learning. Will definitely update and upgrade this review later if my opinion changes. If you are a hip hop/EDM producer, and you enjoy finger-drumming, THEN GET THIS CONTROLLER! You wont regret it.

Great control for the Studio One 6 UI without being directly at the keyboard.

It's a good set of pads. The pads themselves are a little smaller than most similar controllers I've tried which I prefer. Comparing it to a maschine mikro they feel a little more stiff which makes it feel more sturdy if you're somebody who really pounds beats with your hands. Transport controls and such worked out of the box in bitwig which the main thing I was looking for out of this was something that "just worked" in bitwig and this does that. The only real gripe I have is that the lighting on the unit has a high pitch whine so keep that in mind if you're somebody who likes to leave your controllers plugged in. There's no off switch. Good cheap controller though.

Need to watch videos on it to learn operations. Rock solid buttons and controls great value a must for studio one

I have to say that I really enjoy how this controller feels! It is obviously very powerful inside of studio one, and it makes Beat production a blast. Its listed at a great price, so if your thinking about buying it, I think you will enjoy it!

A nice product, but the pads require a decent amount of force to trigger. But... there isn't much to complain about

I can't even adjust the brightness by following the manual's instructions, and I have to map MIDI every time I open a new session because the save instructions from the manual don't work, either. I really wanted to like this but it's honestly pretty lame.

Purchased this after using Studio One 5-Complete newbie with midi devices. Using Atom and Impact XT and the Mai Tai plugin.
I can see where, in the hands of an experienced home recording studio user it can be invaluable. It has almost every conceivable drum sound and bass sounds you could want-"If" your a Hip-Hop or Rap artist. I'm not! I want a standard bass sound-not some alien sound or speaker crunching zap sound. Drums are the same-Using Impact XT-there are probably a hundred or so drums sounds-I found the Tom Breitlen drum sounds to be the most standard sounding drum kit. All in all, still learning how to use it. If you have a small keyboard to use, that would be good to add Bass runs. Otherwise, you will end up with with no choices if you want to play standard Blues, or Rock. Going with the pre-programmed drum loops in Studio One 5 is "excruciatingly" painful! If your music is geared towards a single beat-then Atom with the Mai Tai plugin is for you.
Overall, good purchase and hoping to see what I can do with it as I plan on buying a small midi keyboard and additional drum VST's. The 3 star rating is all I could manage.

This controller is Presonus attempt at keeping you in their eco system. The Atom performs well in the quality department. Very sturdy and the pads are great. The layout is taking sometime to get used to though. The transport functions are vertical and I find myself hitting the play button to stop and the stop button to play. At first start up when I got it the pads were not triggering the samples in Impact XT. All the knobs were doing what they were supposed to do but nothing with the pads. It took me awhile to figure it out. The solution was that in the inspector the atom was not the input source. I have another controller in the same system and it was defaulted to that. So make sure you select it in the drop down. Not as plug and play as I thought. The other issue is the that it's a new controller with a new set of ways to work with it. I have Machine Studio and Jam and they have ways of doing things and the Atom is just another user interface to learn. The 4 knobs is a bit limiting but at this size what do you expect.The knobs are not bankable you get 4 and 4 only so pick what you want to control and be happy with it. The note repeat function is great! It is tight live but when recording the note repeats in a pattern I found that I had to quantize to have it match what I had played on the pads. The setup button was a little frustrating in that after you hit set up and do what you want you have to exit set up to go back to the main and when in the middle of a jam the disrupt in the creative flow got a little tedious.

But for the most part if you are a Studio One user this will come in handy and it's a little quirky and take sometime to get used to but it's a nice addition but my no means a game changer. There are other controllers that if mapped correctly could do the same thing. Worth $...? Sure! Using it as another controller in a different app worked well too and the customizable pad settings is useful. Good controller and compact and fun.

I want to like the ATOM more, but there are several things that make me very dissatisfied with the overall experience.

First the positives: The overall build is nice and hefty, the side buttons are quite useful, the encoders are satisfying to use, and overall integration with Studio One 5 is almost seamless.

Now the main issue. Across my original unit and a replacement, both have some sort of coil whine, the first one being particularly bad and my replacement unit still audiable above the general din of my room. Second, both units have a tendancy to double trigger. The first unit had uneven pad thresholds, but this second unit (while having good thresholds) seems to retrigger much more frequenty regardless of the settings I am using.

Without this issues of mine, this is easily a 4-5 star device, but I can't lie to my experience.

Spending more time trying to get this to do what I need than making music.

I am a manual-reader, and have worked with equipment that had nested menus that require a series of button combinations (I programmed DX7's in the 1980s) but it seems this unit sometimes works as intended and other times not so much. Over the years I have used a variety of Presonus hardware and find they have a mixed bag with the quality of hardware they make--usually great but I should have passed on this one like their VSL series of interfaces 10 years ago.

Though Studio One sees ATOM just fine, Presonus' Universal Control software cannot detect it on a MIDI network and you have to plug it directly to your computer to check for/install Firmware updates.

The LEDs are comically bright--even at the lowest of the three settings. You have to see it in person as videos and pics don't really convey how distracting they are when not in use. On the more minor side of things, the garishly awkward colors make it look more like a toy than studio equipment.

I feel there are probably better options out there, even if you are using Studio One.

But it sits dead on my desk. Barely used, lit up with pretty lights when it was working, but: no on off switch, and the whole idea of it craping out on me with no real use other than tapping a few times on the pads, makes having this item a waste of $$$.

I've had many connection issues with the Atom. Upgraded to Studio One v5 & it wont connect at all. When I did get it connected in S1v4 the response of the pads wasn't very good.

While the pads on this are great and it works reasonably well with Presonus instruments it doesn't work well at all with anything 3rd party. If you are using Kontakt for example you will need to change the octave to trigger any sounds and that will make pads 14-16 useless. If you accidentally hit one of those 3 pads it will change the octave again rendering the controller useless. In other words this is a one octave controller NOT a 16 pad controller. Who would make a midi controller where you hit a pad to change the octave and there is no way to go back to a "play" mode? Presonus that is who...