Toontrack Ezdrummer Multi Layer Drum Sampler

Toontrack Ezdrummer Multi Layer Drum Sampler

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 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. EZdrummer sampler features the recording and producing expertise of Pat Thrall (Pat Travers, Black Crowes) and Neil Dorfsman (Dire Straits, Paul McCartney), the drumming skills of Nir Z (Genesis, Joss Stone, John Mayer), and the engineering help of Toontrack's own Mattias Eklund and Henrik Kjellberg. Their combined efforts have produced an extensive collection of more than 8000 MIDI files captured at Avatar Studios, a 50-year old venue that has been the place where a veritable who's who of award-winning musicians have bottled their magic.EZdrummer is now Windows Vista compatible.

Toontrack Ezdrummer Multi Layer Drum Sampler Picture

Toontrack Ezdrummer Multi Layer Drum Sampler Image

Toontrack Ezdrummer Multi Layer Drum Sampler Pic

Toontrack Ezdrummer Multi Layer Drum Sampler Image

Most helpful customer reviews

26 of 28 people found the following review helpful.
why the bad rap?
By GameMaker
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.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful.
Worth it's weight in gold
By K. Summerville
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.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful.
Insta-Drummer
By Bruce Horn
If you are using a computer-based recording system you can't make drums easier than this. And they sound awesome. You can use the large library of midi samples, or you can make your own. The thing that is so awesome about EZDrummer is that the loops are midi loops. as opposed to audio loops. So you can edit them in any way you want and it wont effect the sound. They now have Superior Drummer 2, but this program works great and it is much much cheaper. If you end up wanting Superior Drummer 2 you can upgrade from this.

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