Toontrack EZ Drummer

I am a professional songwriter who has cuts on major labels, mainly in Europe which is where I first heard of Toontrack cause they are a Swedish company. I do production as well, but am a terrible mixer/compression/EQ etc...I run Logic 7 on a Dual 1.8 G5 with 3 gigs of RAM. I do mainly pop and pop rock as well as some TV composing. I use NS-10's for monitors and a m-audio firewire 410 (which I do not like)

The interface is as dumbed down as can be. The install was simple and easy (on a mac what isn't?) The manual is about 15 pages total which is including the install instructions - easy. To get sound is as simple as opening up the plugin - highlight which kit you want, watch it load and see it's memory usage, and you are ready to go. I found the interface similar to BFD but it is the midi files and sound of the drums that make this worh every penny.

I have this conversation with many of my producer friends - when you buy a drum program, the midi files that come with them sound great but are not usable in a session - unless you are doing a Weather Report track. Pop and pop/rock are simple cool beats with fills, not a bunch of rat a tat playing and EZ delivers. Every pattern is played the exact same way yet with variations of the hit - soft, hard, open 4th hi hat, open hi hats etc...then fills are real fills that you can use and are broken down into 1 bar/2/3 etc..and since it is like Stylus RMX where you drag and drop the midi you can take a 4 bar fill and cut it up if you desire. I own Drumcore 2.0 (which i love the sound of the live audio files) DFH Superior (best sounding drum samples out there) and BFD - not my favorite for sound and this is the only one i use now - way too easy, sounds great and has usable midi files and fills.

As stated above - it is the only drum program i use now. I would like to hear the expansion packs that are coming out soon since after a while you want to hear new sounds but if they integrate into the plugin as can be expected i would be first in line to buy