Toontrack EZ Drummer

20 years of making music, keyboards, Cubase, PC/XP

First - don't buy it! If you want to sell it - you will have to pay! 50$!!! - I had big problems during instalation solved by update. But again - you pay for a piece of non-working software and if you want to sell it - you have to PAY!!! don't buy it!

First - don't buy it! If you want to sell it - you will have to pay! 50$!!! Sound is ok. I have Battery, Addictive Drums and had BFD. Addictive Drums are the best. Battery is slightly different type. BFD has great samples. But again - if you need money because you're ill - you will have to pay them to sell the software. And it doesn't sound good at all....

First - don't buy it! If you want to sell it - you will have to pay! 50$!!! first version - buggy, buggy, buggy. With update - ok. But still - don't buy it!!!

I am an expert at guitar bass and keyboard. I have been playing for more than 20 years. The ezdrummer version is 1.1.3. I use the pluig in with Cubase SX3. I record blues, jaxx, alrternative, folk, rock. I use windows XP. I use tascam inputs and studio monitors as well as headphones.

BUYER BEWARE Do not buy this product. This company is a bunch of liars and cheats. Once they get your money they run you around and then leave you cold. Don???t be a sucker like I was.
Forget about support, forget about straight answers.

Been making music for about 20 years. Guitar, vocals, bass, keys, etc.

Using EZDrummer 1.1.3 (latest).

I use it with Pro Tools 7.4.

I make pop/indie music, both electric and acoustic based rock.

Windows XP, Athlon X2 dual-core cpu, 2GB ram, A8N-SLi motherboard.

The interface is beyond intuitive. It's awesome. It's wonderful to be able to view the kit and which pieces are actually being played when you're moving midi notes around. Everything is kept simple, but just powerful enough to do what you have to do. Seriously, the interface could not be any better. I love it.

Installation was easy as it gets. Just follow the directions on your screen. If you've installed any other plugin or software that required a serial number or authorization, you'll be fine.

Getting good sounds out of this is much easier than any other drum program I've used. More on this in Sounds/Sound Quality.

Regarding a Manual... seriously, you don't need one. It's on the DVD-ROM as a .pdf, but unless you just want something to read on the bowl or just have to know if there's anything you missed, you won't need it. The program really is that intuitive to run and operate.

The sounds are awesome. The expansion packs are very affordable and give you new sets of usable kits. Each kit is very different however, and this is a good thing. When you buy an expansion, you know you are getting a very different collection of sounds, but all are just as usable as the next, just depends what your song is calling for.

For mixing, I find that routing the kick and snare, and toms to their own mono aux tracks to be the best best. The overheads, cymbals, room mic, can be routed to the same stereo aux in your DAW.
The I compress the kick if needed to tweak the sound a little bit, same with the snare. EQ them if that's your thing. Maybe a little grit with Massey Tape-Head or similar plug.

Don't get me wrong, the sound right out of the box is awesome, and if I wanted to be lazy, I could get away with doing pretty much nothing other than settings levels to get a good drum sound. It's worth mentioning that the cymbals are awesome, and that seems to be one of the hardest thing for these drums plugins to get. I used BFD for a while, and the EZDrummer cymbals rock BFDs socks off easily.
I love that EZDrummer lets you be lazy, if you want to be. That's why we pay for these things, to make our lives easier. I don't want to buy a $250+ plugin and have to spend hours getting their samples to sound good. I know this gives you flexibility, but not all of us want to slave over sampled drums. If I'm going to do that much work, I'd rather bring in a real drummer. EZDrummer lets you tweak if you want, but gives you kick-arse sounds right off the bat.

I have two EZXs, Vintage, and Nashville. Vintage is a real sweet dry kit. This kit can benefit a lot if you want to tweak it in your DAW. It can also be left alone, all depends on what you're going for. Nashville is just amazing. The cymbal options are amazing, and the sounds available on the kit pieces were recording and put together with great care.

This was worth twice what I paid. They had a rebate offer not too long ago, so you ended up getting EZDrummer for about 99 bucks. Seriously folks, for this price, even if you DO use another drum program, having this in your arsenal for 99 bucks is a no brainer. Even for full price, 150, this thing is a bargain.

All my comparisons and perceptions are based on first using an Alesis DM5 back in the day, then BFD 1.5 for the past year. I hated BFD. The interface was awkward, the application was unstable and would crash, not work correctly, and was a serious system hog, even with 2GB ram and a dual core Athlon X2 cpu. I immediately took to EZDrummer and sold my BFD on Ebay. No regrets here.

EZDrummer is so easy on my CPU, especially compared to BFD. The only waiting involved is when you load up a new EZX or change a kit piece. And it's rather quick. One everything is loaded, you're good to just go nuts. I can't say enough good things about the coding that must have went into this piece of software. Lovin' it.

It's not crash proof however. I've gotten it to crash by changing EZXs too quickly in succession, or changing kit pieces too quickly in succession. Meaning, one would not be fully loaded (you can watch the progress on the interface), and I'd go to load another one. I can fully understand, as it's loading this stuff into RAM, and anytime your OS feels like it's RAM is being messed with it likes to crash things. Since then I've learned to just wait till things are loaded before you change your mind and go to load something different. Other than that, it's stable as anything. Last night I was working for hours with no problems.

There's nothing I wish this had that it doesn't have... well... one thing... maybe. You can't share kit pieces between kits. Meaning, you can't load up your Vintage kit, and then load up a snare that comes with the Nashville kit. You can however create two instances of the plugin on two different Instrument tracks and for example drag your snare midi notes to the new instance loading the EZX you want to use in order to get access to the snares associated with it.

In a way though, I like that you can't do this in one instance. It helps to keep things organized, predictable, and clutter-free. Sometimes too much flexibility can become overwhelming. I don't want to audition 25 snares to find one I want. I'll be there all day. I like that each EZX gives you a handful of snare, played different ways (brushes, sticks, hands in some cases too). The way it is, you get plenty of customization without clutter and confusion. I find this to be of utmost important to maintain a creative flow. I enjoy getting to the MUSIC as soon as possible, not spending half the day on the drum plugin.

I have making computer based music for five years, I have used BFD, and DFH. I am using EZ Drummer to make backing tracks for practicing guitar. I am using FL Studio as the host software.

As long as you know at least a little bit about MIDI and VST plug-ins, and you already have some experience with at least one host program (I use FL Studio) EZ Drummer can very easy to use. In fact, markedly easier than BFD/DFH because all of the mixing is already done for you. For novice-beginner level users who want to get reasonable drum sounds right out of the box without much time investment/effort, EZ Drummer is for you. If you want to have very realistic sounds, for production for example, BFD, DFH are better, but they require a lot of time commitment and experience to use properly. I get the impression that the people who review BFD/DFH badly generally have not invested the time or have the experience necessary to get an optimal sound.

Sound quality is excellent for entry level/casual users. Professional level users will probably want something better like DFH/BFD.

This is totally awesome for casual and recreational users. Great out of the box drum sounds, with minimal effort. Quite convincing and non-mechanical sounding when sharing music with friends/family who are not musicians (specifically drummers.) You will need to have some MIDI/VST experience, and a host program of course. If you need professional level sounds, you will need BFD/DFH/Superior Drummer, but be prepared to invest much more time/effort if you want to maximize your experience with these higher level programs.

Very experienced hobbyist ??25 years of music making.
DAW based on Steinberg's Cubase 4; RME; Intel; UAD technology.
Own a small project studio - fully equipped to record, mix and master individual artists and small groups.

Interface is very easy to use - elegant, intuitive, only an imbecile would struggle.
Copy protection straight fwd - serial number! nice in this day and age.
Few people complained about controlling the cymbal volume - but one has to remember that the overhead mic's are the ONLY samples of the ride and crash cymbals, and no close mic'd samples are included. This does require carefully adjusting the onboard mixer for a good balance.

As for getting a good - check out the demo's [http://www.toontrack.com/ezdrummer.asp#] - judge for yourself.

My score is 8, because I believe close mic'd cymbals are still desirable.

Sound quality is excellent! In fact Superior Drummer should be better, but the difference is small and once in a complete mix - indistinguishable..MHO.






Side note - some other comments I have seen earlier were written by mentally unstable reviewers - I believe they have since been caught and subjected to 80's recordings of rock songs made in top studios at the time.

Worth every penny - I have since bought an expansion pack - a stripped down version of the original DFH.

Compared to Steinberg's GA - the acoustic quality is superior even though the lack of various music styles, might bother some users.

Cannot compare to BFD - this product is strictly speaking at a lower price point.

Very stable, loading times are reasonable.

30 years, ez drummer, mac os 10.4, cubase, professional studio.

interface is almost impossible to get working, very confusing, online help is just horrible. annoying registration, computer specific registration. Did not work at all on my mac os 10.4 with cubase.

installed it on my brothers pc, and finally got it to work, Sounds like ASS! cheesy drum machine, dont waste your time or money, look elsewhere.

Not worth $5, ads looked great, very decieving, hate all of it. Now the icing on the cake. I sold it and the toontracks charged my $50 to transfer the license. FIFTY BUCKS!!!. They are crooks and scam artists, stay awya RUN away screaming from this company and there crappy products.

I play bass, but also some drums, guitar and keyboards.
I do music since '92.
I use EZDrummer since it came out, mostly with FlStudio because I like the pattern way of programming, but the midi files coming with EZD are great, I'm starting to use them.

Nothing could be more easy...
I really didn't understand the review from Mike, it seams he really didn't know anything about VSTi plugins.
Anyway, it's the easyest way to get the finished drum track you want, in a second.

The sound is just great, I also own 4 more expansions to cover all the sounds I would ever need.
It just need a little bit of compression/tube distorsion...but of course this is just a matter of taste.

Simply the best Drum RomPlayer....I tryed also BFD, Battery and many loops.
Very light on the CPU, just be sure you have at least 1Gb Ram....2Gb better.

I use it to creat background drum tracks. I have a Digidesign Mbow and work with Protools LE 7.3. I've bene working for 2 years with PT and I really wanted goodsounding drums with out having a kit. zo i got a Korg padKONTROL and EZ drummer. I use it now for about 2 months and love it. The preprogammed rythems are ni, I use the as a sort of guidance in the beginning fase of a song and later I program somthing myzelf with the pad kontrol. Thefirst fewdays it didn't work because my pc was to slow (I had only 512, so i updated it with extra 1024)

It is very easy to easy. make a stereo track with a midi track load select the program and away you go. The problem with the last user was probally that he wanted to use it as a stand alone program or his DAW doesn't accept it. But with Protools I had no problems. and I love it to make drumtracks with!

Thesound quality is great, a friend of mine who is a drummer couldn't hear the difference!! it's easy to mix it or use other plugings if you want it, but the sound on it's own is allready really really good. The room sometimes you nead to lower the room fader for some less reverbish overal sond.

GREAT PLUG-IN!!! After updating my pc it runs really good. the only minor thing is that it takes a little while to load at te beginning. But it sounds really great and is really EZ to use!

I've been playing about 5 years, recording for last 12 months. Use Mackie Tracktion on an Athlon 64 with 1 gig ram.

Software is crap. It only loaded the sound files, midi files and manuals. No files to execute the program could be found! Had to return it to the shop.

Sounds good in the demo if you can actually get it to work!

The software is rubbish and doesn't work. Maybe I was just unlucky but I've never experienced problems like this with any other software - I can usually get it to work eventually but with this software I just had to give up because it was never going to work!

Musician (guitarist) live and recording for more years than is decent to reveal !
Use EZDrummer with Cubase SX
Have always used portastudios until 3 years ago for songwriting sketches. Moved to computer based recording to expand my horizons.
Use a DELL with 1 Gb RAM and 80Gb hard disk with peripheral hard drives. Running XP Pro
Monitoring through passive genelecs, Delta 66 soundcard through a linear amp.
Headphones DT100s

Interface is good, with the whole visual drum thing going on.
No problams installing.
Why oh why do software manufacturers take it for granted that everyone has internet access??
I would not plug my music PC into the net of you paid me....no matter what firewalls or Virus protection, my music is far too valuable to take such risks.
Had to jump though too many hoops to get my copy of EZdrummer authorised, ( Start a user account with Toontracks site, enter serial number generated by PC, toontrack send out an authorisation code by email....enter the serial number into EZdrummer on first use...easy if your pC is online, not so easy if it aint !!
but hey, Toontracks are running a business so guess they have to prevent piracy.

Sounds are FANTASTIC....best sample drum sounds I have heard in a long time and excellent straight out of the box..

As seems to be the norm these days, manula is on the disk. Fair do....its at least environmentally friendly.....
Drag and drop midi feature is great for throwing together basic tracks, then thay can be tweaked.
All of it nicely integrates with Cubase.
Loading does take a while though..even with big RAM you are looking at 45 seconds to 1 min before all the sounds are loaded into a track.
You can use the Cubase 'Freeze' feature to prevent this, so its not too much of a problem.

Drum sounds are good in the mix,and are fabulously configurable. Select your kit....choice of three (I think!), then individually select each drum and cymbal to suit, then mess with the virtual microphones in the mixer to get the sound just spot on. The Humanizer feature is great. Composed a 12 bar blues track to test EZDrummer, and got a totally authentic acoustic sounding kit, a perfect shuffle with that Charlie Watts slightly offbeat feel to it. Sounds just as good with hard metal riffs and Jazz

Easlity worth the price. Compared to some pretty expensive Boss drum modules I have owned, this one beats em all hands down.
The software came recommended by a fellow muso.
Love all the features, and I believe its exapndable, which is great, though I can get everything I want right out of the box.
Registering it was the worst bit, but thats probably cos I am paranoid about hooking up to the web with my music system.
Never crashed.....in the three days I have had it !!
Slightly more control over the mikes might have been nice. Bringing down the overheads on the cymbals kills the hi hat too, and the hat gets right in your face if you try to bring up the cymbals in the mix.