Product Description

The dfh EZdrummer from Toontrack is a multi-microphone drum sampler taht lets you pick the drums, the mics, and craft the sounds that lie at the foundation of your songs. EZdrummer is designed for musicians and producers in need of a compact, affordable, easy to handle plug-in without compromising sound quality or control. The visualized drums in the interface combine auditioning of sounds and drum kit construction. The extensive drag-n-drop MIDI-library (featuring 8000+ MIDI files) enables users to create a great drum track in just a few clicks. For more advanced handling, users can control microphone bleeding and levels between drums using the internal mixer. The mixer also allows stereo and multitrack routing into the host through one single plug-in. Combining easy and advanced handling and low system requirements, dfh EZdrummer is an entry level product as well as suited for the pro who needs to achieve high-end results in minutes.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1572 in Musical Instruments
• Brand: Toontrack
• Model: TT-EZD-H
• Dimensions: .0 pounds

Features

• 7000 sound files at 16-bit / 44.1kHz equivalent to 5Gb of uncompressed wav files
• Instant access to more than 8000 midi drum patterns with prelistening, quick browsing and drag?n?drop functionality
• Same extensive layer depth on all drums and cymbals as in EZdrummers big brother - dfh SUPERIOR
• TPC II reduces system requirements to a minimum
• Internal mixer allows stereo and multitrack routing into the host through one single plug in

Customer Reviews

why the bad rap?
I'm a bit baffled by some of the reviews here. I got EZDrummer recently and I'm very happy with it so far. Let me clear up a few things:

1) It's a virtual instrument (says so right on the name). Apparently some people don't understand what that means. What that means is that you plug it into your favorite "main" sequencer program (FL Studio, Cubase, Mixcraft, whatever) and use it from there. Actually, EZ Drummer *does* come with a stand-alone program as well, but it's mainly a virtual instrument. Complaining that you need to buy a sequencer to use it is like complaining that you need to have a computer or an operating system, or a disk drive, or a power outlet. Duh! That's it's nature, and it's well understood.

2) The licensing is not *that* bad. Here's what it is: you install the program from the disk, you login to their website and fill in some info including the "license key" that comes with your disk, Toontrack generates an automated email containing an authcode that is specific to your computer and your serial number, you type that in on your computer, and you are done. The bottom line is that you can set two machines up to run with a single copy of EZDrummer. Then if you want to install it on a 3rd machine you have to de-activate one of the licenses that you had previously activated.

I'm not real thrilled about the licensing. It is certainly a bit confusing, and I wish it were either a little more flexible or let you license it via a dongle but I've seen much much worse, and I had things running 15-20min after inserting the disk into my machine. It's actually pretty similar to how Adobe does licensing for example.

Ok, so how is it at helping you create drum beats? Seems pretty darn good to me. The "default" drum beats are great. Just select what you want and drag it right onto your favorite sequencer. That is one way to use it. And even using it on that simple level it gives you a lot of power. You can make modifications like how hard the drum strikes are, and you can control the mixer right on EZdrummer itself to tailor the individual drums and symbols. The other way to use it is to create completely custom beats. I have not played with that much yet, but that is the feature that distinguishes it from places that just offer you drum loops that you pretty much have to take "as is" for example. And to me the fact that it offers so many different "upgrades" is a nice plus. It means that you can start small and expand, and also that the company is alive and well and motivated to keep making their product better.

I haven't used it enough yet to give a real in-depth review, but I felt like a few of the things that were said about it were pretty far off-base, and I wanted to chime in on that. I think the real telling thing about EZDrummer is what the real experienced hard-core musicians think of it. Go and do some searches and I think you'll see that this program has a real nice, well-earned reputation in the musician community.

By the way, I've been using it with FL Studio and Mixcraft and it seems to work very well with both those programs.

Worth it's weight in gold
Hands down the best drummer I've worked with. Shows up on time, has no ego, and has no psycho girlfriend to deal with. Oh and did I mention that it sounds amazing?

I love this software. I've had it for two weeks and fell so in love with how easy it is to use that I just ordered all the expansion packs.

I was trying to use Session Drummer2 that came bundled with Sonar 7. It was awful. Took me two recording sessions to figure out that it would be forever useless. I now use EZdrummer exclusivley.

There is no end to what you can do with this software. Drag and drop and then edit the clip if needed. Just go to toontracks website and check out the video. If your not sold then get a real drummer.

But if your like me and you live in an apartment and you are tired of using drum machines that sound, well machine like. Then this is for you.

As for the whole registering it thing,it ain't that bad. In fact it was no harder then when I loaded up Sonar and had to go thru registering that.

Great sound
I have to admit. I was one of the stupid people that couldn't figure out how it worked. I had no previous knowledge on VSTs or plugin so I had to do a little of research to figure it out. It seems to me that this is kind of common sense for a lot of people so not a whole lot of information is out there. Anyway, I use a mac under garageband is located under the instrument list under the plug in dropdown menu. Choose this program and now click on manual (edit) and the window with the program comes up (sorry I don't have the program opened). Anyway good quality drums, very realistic sounds. It eats up quite a bit of memory if you use more than one track. 250MB per track so just becareful when dropping drum sounds as too many tracks can useup all your memory and cause the program to crash. The only thing I don't like is the 2/2 and 1/2 fills. they have to be trim cause they drop as 4/4 beats leaving two or three beats blank. That's no big deal but could be cumbersome.