Michael's patented drum design features a shell suspended and held in place only by its bearing edges in contact with the upper and lower heads, allowing for maximum resonance and purity of sound.

Though many attempts have been made, all previous endeavours have fallen short of three basic requirements, needed for a truly free-floating drum:

• A shell suspended and held in place only by its bearing edges in contact with the upper and lower heads, allowing the set to fully resonate.
  
• A shell completely void of hardware contact that would impede its resonance.
  
• The ability to maintain tension of the upper and lower heads to unequal degrees of rigidity. In other words, there needs to be dual-tension, as opposed to single-tension, capability

One thing to note about Downing's free-floating concept is that you cannot simply apply it to any drum; the shells have to be notched on one end to allow the drum to float.

Each drum boasts a four-octave tuning range. Of course, like regular drums, each has a natural sweet spot. But the ease and wide range of tuning might make these pieces especially appealing to players who have a more melodic or orchestral approach to the drumset. Given the aforementioned requirements, Mike Downing's concept allows you to switch from a jazz to a rock sound with tuning only a few lugs on the top heads. No need to tune bottom heads ever again, according to Downing.