Microtonic is almost my ideal drum machine. The interface is clean but flexible. CPU usage is negligible. I've never encountered any bugs with it and the huge library of patches and patterns is great. Patternarium is genius.

But I'm just not a big fan of the way it sounds. It has a very distinctive sound character that I do not enjoy. Of course this is subjective and I'm sure plenty of people do like it but I always wind up spending a lot of time add effects and processing to cover it up and, often as not, wind up not using it for this reason.

Are there any plans for an update that adds new drum modules with a different character?

Sorry to hear that, but to each their own of course. What kind of effects do you use on Microtonic and can you name a machine that has a character you like better?

This sort of thing is definitely a matter of taste. Personally I find there's a certain round, saturated sameness in a lot of the sounds and the snare/noise patches seem to lack punch on attack. The overall timbre sounds a bit like there's a resonant filter applied somewhere at the same freqs on all patches. I particularly struggle to get snare sounds out of Microtonic I like. If you audition a series of snare patches you'll hear they all particularly exhibit the sound character I'm talking about.

I tend to use compression and gates to change the dynamic characteristics I like and things like bit reducers to give it a bit more grit.

In terms of contrast the x0x emulations all have much more satisfying sounds to my ears, even if the sounds themselves are overused. I like the sounds I get out of Ultrabeat in Logic but of course the interface is a disaster.

For a more concrete example of what I'm talking about I made a simple Live project to demonstrate:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/117tg86045doj6j/utonic_example%20Project.zip?dl=0

If you toggle the effect chain on and off you can hear the sound character I'm starting with and shooting for. Of course it's normal to add compression etc for any drum machine but I feel like I have to work harder at this than I do with other machines or drum sample sets.