Its tough. I like the overall tone of beat 2 better, but beat 1 is wayyyy more clean. I'm listening off my tv, so its tough to tell but for some reason beat 2 has a bunch of clicks playing through it on these speakers, and not in the satisfying vinyl crackle way. It almost sounds like its the kick causing it, but I'm not sure. Beat 1 is weird to me. Very dissonant, which isn't necessarily bad. I think with the right drums it would be dope af, but I think the pattern needs something. I'm not sure what, but it definitely needs something.
I'm going with beat 1, If beat 2 was cleaner I'd pick beat 2 all day, but its just not there.
*edit* a day later and I've done a re-listen to beat 2 on my monitors. The clicking is still there, but its a lot easier to tell what it is now. I think I was wrong about it being the kick. It just shared a similar timing to the kicks in the first loop. Maybe it was sampled off of a record that had that? Either that or it was izotope vinyl just overemphasized. Either way its distracting tbh.
