Toontrack EZ Drummer Reviews

[brandondrury]

Toontrack EZ Drummer @ Musiciansfriend


Toontrack EZ Drummer Description
EZdrummer was designed to give you optimum drum-sample quality presented in a compact, affordable plug-in format that's as easy to use as it is to mix. With Toontrack's EZdrummer, musicians and producers can simply drag-and-drop audition sounds and construct drumkits recorded with multi-microphone setups. You also get a mixer that allows for stereo and multitrack routing into the host via a single plug-in and has presets for quick mix modes quick sound changing. With the second-generation Toontrack Percussive Compression (TPC), system requirements are low, meaning this is a very accessible virtual kit worthy of high-end studios, but available for the home studio too.

[DarrenH]

Hi

do you know if EZDrummer's function are accessible through standard windows' command.

I'm a totally blind person and having something that is totally visual for changing settings wouldn't work for me.

I've contacting Toontracks for their comments, but 3 days later I've heard nothing from them.

Cheers
Darren H

[Nicko]

I emailed them about my questions and was responded to very quickly.

I would suggest trying again..?

[the3kgt2]

Quality: 9
This is one of my must-have pieces of software. The sound and ease of use is is exactly how it should be. There are several expansion kits that give you a new style drumset. My favorite is Drumkit From Hell. I have been drumming off and on for 7 years. I moved into an apartment and wanted to go electronic. I sold my 11-piece pearl export and bought a cheap $250 electronic drumkit with midi-out. The kit wasn't good enough for recording until I got a hold of EZ Drummer. I load EZ Drummer as a VSTi into my DAW and enable MIDI. Nobody I know has been able to tell that it's software and not a real kit. Each kit has a mixer for each drum/cymbal. Every drum/cymbal has alternative brands and sizes (you can change a 16" zildjian crash to an 18" sabian). The downside about EZ Drummer is that it's fairly expensive, especially if you buy an expansion kit. The sound banks are extremely large and take a long time to load. It takes almost 2 minutes to load my "Drumkit From Hell" expansion kit and takes 444mb of memory! Every time you change kits, it has to reload all over again.

Reliability: 7
It has crashed a couple of times. This may or may not be because of EZ Drummer. MIDI signals can hang and cause a lock-up. My DAW could be crashing it too, but I think that's unlikely. I wouldn't let this defer you from purchasing this. I have heard that Toontrack has extremely good customer support, but I haven't needed to use it yet.

Overall Rating: 9
Pros
The sound quality is absolutely amazing
Very easy to use
Several available expansion packs to suit your sound
Customer support is supposedly good

Cons
Fairly expensive
Takes a lot of memory
Takes forever to load a kit
Seldomly crashes, but still crashes

[uab9253]

Quality: 10
Kicks azz. Seriously. I love this thing. I have only the base version and have not added any expansion kits yet, but I love what I have. My only other one would be Drumkit From Hell and maybe Latin Percussion. Other wise, the sounds it has fit what I do, which is pop and rock. I don't really do the hip hop or electronica but you can get those sounds too. I haven't tried triggering it from my Yamaha DT Express kit yet, but I intend to.

Reliability: 9
No problems. No support. No crashes. It is a memory hog and a little slow to load the kit initially. But I have plenty of RAM and patience. I don't plan to wildly change kits back and forth midsession anyway.

Overall Rating: 0
Overall - this works for me. A ton of usable loops to string together to make drum tracks. I hate programming drum tracks. I hated it on the Roland TR505, I hate it on the Alesis SR16. I like good beats that I can tweak. This product has that and is easy to use and sounds like a million dollars. The mixer is simple, yet excellent:

Would like mics for each cymbal instead of just "overhead"
at least the high hats have their own mic. If I need to make a ride more present I have to live with a louder crash unless I want to fader surf the whole track. Of course I could fart with the velocities in midi, but that ain't making rock, that feels like twiddling.

Pros -
The Price
The Sounds
The Loops
The modularity of it
Cons-
No mics for each cymbal

[sparqee]

I've worked with BFD & more recently BFD 2 (do not own them but have spent several hours on each) and found them to be too time consuming for my purposes. ezDrummer on the other hand totally lives up to it's name. It's easy! It's fast to get going and if you like the sound it's great. I like the sound. The Pop/Rock kit and the Nashville expansion pack give me all that I need for the straight ahead/Alt Rock music I'm doing these days. 50% of my midi drum tracks come from a Roland VDrum rig and 50% are played in from a keyboard. Both methods sound great driving ezDrummer (i.e. ezDrummer is a very "playable" library). In fact I would consider ezDrummer to be a Virtual Instrument more than just a sample library, meaning that ezDrummer inspires me to "play" rather than "program".

The only problem I have experienced with it (running under Cubase SX3 on a WinXP system) is that if I try changing the drum sounds while it's playing back midi info I can sometimes completely lock up Cubase. I've learned to just stop playback before changing sounds.

[ChicoBluez]

No locking with same software.


EZ Drummer is super excellent!

Chico

[Jamie Garner]

Quality: 9
absolutely happy with the quality of the sounds. I own all the add-on packs except 'claustrophobic' and, except for 'drumkit from hell' i love them all. As mentioned in an earlier review, noone
has ever pegged them as 'fake'. The
standalone solo mode works perfectly
with my e-drums, and the positional
sensing of the snare/hat/cymbals is
excellent. It would rate a '10' if you
could swap drums from other exansion
packs, but for that you need to step up
to superior2.
The basic kit included with the program is versatile enough to cover most any style, but the stellar standout is the 'nashville' expansion. I've used it for funk, surf, hard rock, r&b, and jazz. The kit is truly world class.

Reliability: 0
The latest expansions, 'nashville' and 'funkmasters' do require a little over 300 megs each to run, but with the price of ram now anybody with a recording bug can afford 2 gigs, which is enough to let
it run comfortably. I had to reformat my
laptop's system drive, and toontracks' support was very quick in giving me
extra reinstall permission. Other than
that i've had no problems with it.

Overall Rating: 0
In the last couple of years, several drum samplers have been released that give stunning results, they just differ in the interfaces. What sets ez apart is the ease of getting killer sounds, and it's
fantastic midi library. For those who
don't drum, or don't like to program
beats, it's a godsend. Easily the best
collection included with any sampler.
The cost of the core package is cheaper than most of the other samplers on the market. Even with a single expansion pack, it's still cheaper- but there is nothing cheap about the sound.
Highly recommended!

[roysboy]

I have never used a drum program and I am trying to figure out how to use EZ drummer. I have used midi sound modules to program rhythms track by track ( kik , snares/toms/cymbals/perc etc) then bounce them to sudio for effects. I have used soundfonts also . I really have no idea how EZ drummer is accessed from my recording software . Could anyone walk me through this ? I have heard is called a VST plugin but still not sure how to access it . Thanks ...

[Jamie Garner]

Roysboy, you kinda need to tell us what you recording program is before you can get help on it........