Yamaha enlisted the help of several of our drum artists, and looked at the requests from consumers to make sure that new module meets the needs of e-drummers at all levels. The most important feature in an electronic drum set is the sound. Yamaha began by sampling our most popular acoustic drums, the legendary Recording Custom and Maple Custom. Then Yamaha added the groundbreaking Oak Custom and industry standard Maple, Birch, and Beech Absolute. Then sampled many of their most popular artist snare drums and cymbals from all the major manufacturers. Yamaha combined these, along with samples of percussion instruments from around the world and dozens of special effects to create 50 pre-programmed kits.

When you want to customize your sound, you can take any of over 1,000 internal drum, percussion, special effects voices and loops to create up to fifty user kits. Insert a USB stick and you can save another 1,584 kits. Taking it even further, you can assign any MIDI channel to each pad, giving you access to over 200 melodic GM voices that you can trigger from any pad. With the optional DIMM, you have 512mb of sampling memory allowing an additional 1,016 user voices.

There are 15 trigger inputs, 14 of which will accept three-zone pads. Input 10/11 is able to accept two mono pads by using a stereo splitter. For live performance or recording, there is a stereo pair of outputs, or six individual outputs that also function as three stereo pair, and an S/P DIF digital output. The Aux in allows you to plug an external music source in so that you can play along, or lets you sample directly into the module. There is a full-function sample editor so that you can tweak your samples once recorded. The MIDI in/out allow connection to other devices, and the USB and TO Host terminals allow easy connection to a computer. The USB also allows use of a flash drive to store and load user created data such as kits, samples, songs, and click settings.

The DXTIII has a fully programmable metronome on board, and to take your practice to the next level our Groove Check feature shows you if you are playing ahead of, on, or behind the click. An additional feature of the click, the Rhythm Gate, mutes any hit that is not in time. The width of this gate is adjustable and can track all triggers, or your choice of up to five triggers. The Groove Check and Rhythm Gate function with either the click or the internal sequencer.

The onboard two-track sequencer is loaded with great preset songs in many styles from rock, pop, blues, funk, Latin, and jazz. The sounds are from our famous MOTIF synthesizer so they sound amazing. You can mute the drums, bass, or rhythm/melody instruments to play along, and even record your own drum track to any preset song, and you can speed up or slow the tempo without changing the pitch. There are 50 user songs that you can record your own compositions, either from the pads or with an external MIDI device. There are also 40 pad songs that you can start and stop from any pad, up to four per kit.

The DXTIIISP includes revolutionary Hexrack featuring hexagonal tubing and tom clamps that rotate on a synthetic ball. Originally developed this rack system for use with Yamaha acoustic drums, so it is more than sturdy enough to handle duty with an electronic drum set. The clamps allow minute angle adjustments so the pad placement wherever you choose is easy. The kit also includes updated 700 series SS-740A snare stand, HS-740A hi hat stand, (1) CH-750 and (2) CH755 cymbal booms. There are five different accessory clamps and three curved rack tubes available to allow you to customize your kit.