EZDrummer 2

Tadpui

Tadpui

Well-known member
I never know whether virtual drum talk belongs in the Drums forum or the MIDI forum...plopping it here, mods feel free to move it if needed.

So, has anyone given a try to EZD 2 yet? It came out yesterday. I grabbed the upgrade from EZD 1 last night ($99) and spent about an hour fiddling and banging around with it. First impressions are that it's definitely a much-needed update. It looks prettier, that's for sure. It sounds marginally better, and I haven't used Superior so I don't know if it's approaching that in sound quality but I kinda doubt it.

The one annoyance to me (might be a great feature to others) is the addition of effects chains to each of the kit presets. They're on there by default and I have to go turn them down/off in the mixer. Even the standard setup of the included kits have some reverb added by default.

The kits are a good change from the default Rock/Pop kit from EZD1. The old Ludwig kits in the "vintage" section sound convincing to me, and the ride cymbals on all of the kits are definitely improved from EZD1. I like that there are 5 total kits included, and I haven't even explored all 5 of them fully yet.

Lots of additions to the groove building, but I don't really use those features. I trigger the samples thru a Yamaha e-kit. They did actually add some features for e-drums, with a few branded layouts for Roland, Yamaha, and a couple other brands.

So far I've been able to boot up projects that had EZD1 in them and I didn't notice any issues since EZD2 completely replaces EZD1 during installation. The MIDI maps are different, so I'll be looking for instances where the wrong sample is triggered.

Anyways, this isn't an exhaustive review, I just got carried away blabbing about it. Anybody else given it a try yet?
 
Nice review. Thanks for posting. I'm on the fence about upgrading or not. I have Superior, but probably need to reinstall as I don't have all the libraries for some weird reason.

We've been keeping the virtual drum stuff here in the drum forum.

:cool:
 
Tadpui said:
The one annoyance to me (might be a great feature to others) is the addition of effects chains to each of the kit presets. They're on there by default and I have to go turn them down/off in the mixer. Even the standard setup of the included kits have some reverb added by default.
Click to expand...

The way they designed and are selling EZD2 is that it's a "songwriter's tool".....rather than an engineer's tool.
IOW....they wanted to preset a lot of the stuff so that you can get somewhat of a polished sound immediately as you are composing on-the fly.

Now that may appeal to some people....BUT....if you are going to be doing formal recording/mixing, and you want the drums to be "raw" so that you can do all your processing later....not sure if EZD2 is the best choice.
Toontrack still sees Superior Drummer as the engineer's tool....and I did send them an email asking, and they said that SD is still they main drum app, but the felt that a lot of people didn't want to have to make too make decisions/choices, and that EZD1 kinda fell short or providing a more "finished" sound, so with EZD2 they wanted to focus on the plug-n-play guys....and you can see that in their promos, they keep bringing up the songwriters and being able to use EZD2 as a composition tool on-the-fly.
 
I'm a little worried that Superior 3 will come out late this year and would rather spend money on that over ez 2.
 
I know EZD2 has a 'songbuilding' stand-alone interface, but can you also use like EZD1- just drag and drop loops into your DAW project?
Sweetwater has the upgrade listed for $89.99
 
mjbphotos said:
I know EZD2 has a 'songbuilding' stand-alone interface, but can you also use like EZD1- just drag and drop loops into your DAW project?
Sweetwater has the upgrade listed for $89.99
Click to expand...

Yes, it still has the drag-and-drop groove interface as well. It added the ability to drop the grooves into an internal "songbuilder" as well, so you can do it all in EZD if you prefer.

One cool thing they added is the ability to tap out a snare, kick, hihat, etc. pattern and it shows you all of the loops that would go along with it, greatly simplifying the search for loops. I tend to just play my drum parts and don't really use the built-in loops, but I can see how this would be really useful and save tons of time.
 
Yes...I think you can just drop grooves....the rest is probably a question of either turning off a lot of presets/processing that they've included, if you don't want any of it....or leaving them alone and just going with what's there in the presets.

Still....I think if you prefer to work with more "raw" samples and then add all your FX/processing later, during mixdown....Superior Drummer will be the better choice.

I don't really expect a new SD version any time soon....as it already does pretty much what it needs to. I mean, there's no point in turning SD into just a better version of EZD2. I would think if that's what they wanted, they would already have done that and ended up with just one drum app instead of two.
 
miroslav said:
The way they designed and are selling EZD2 is that it's a "songwriter's tool".....rather than an engineer's tool.
IOW....they wanted to preset a lot of the stuff so that you can get somewhat of a polished sound immediately as you are composing on-the fly.

Now that may appeal to some people....BUT....if you are going to be doing formal recording/mixing, and you want the drums to be "raw" so that you can do all your processing later....not sure if EZD2 is the best choice.
Toontrack still sees Superior Drummer as the engineer's tool....and I did send them an email asking, and they said that SD is still they main drum app, but the felt that a lot of people didn't want to have to make too make decisions/choices, and that EZD1 kinda fell short or providing a more "finished" sound, so with EZD2 they wanted to focus on the plug-n-play guys....and you can see that in their promos, they keep bringing up the songwriters and being able to use EZD2 as a composition tool on-the-fly.
Click to expand...

I hear ya, and I agree that's the focus of EZD. I have a feeling that I'll eventually cross-grade to Superior, but EZD does the trick for me for now. I'll get bored/frustrated with EZD eventually...
 
Tadpui said:
One cool thing they added is the ability to tap out a snare, kick, hihat, etc. pattern and it shows you all of the loops that would go along with it, greatly simplifying the search for loops.
Click to expand...

Yeah....that is a cool feature. It can be time consuming just searching through countless loops...though I have to say, if I tapped out my patterns, they would be pretty simple and boring, since I don't have that drummer's touch.
I'm much better at thinking out the more complex patterns, hearing them in my head and then seeing the grooves and adjusting them visually, than I am at tapping them out with my fingers. :D
Much of that is probably left over from my early Cubase sequencing days, where I stared at MIDI grooves endlessly....so I'm better at seeing a groove than I am at tapping it out with my fingers.
 
Tadpui said:
I hear ya, and I agree that's the focus of EZD. I have a feeling that I'll eventually cross-grade to Superior, but EZD does the trick for me for now. I'll get bored/frustrated with EZD eventually...
Click to expand...

How much does EZD2 let you edit the individual drum samples...like the pitch, the attack/release....etc....and also the various "human feel" elements?
The main reason I prefer SD over EZ1 is because you CAN strip away everything but the raw/recorded samples...which is very much like you putting up some mics and recording a kit in your own studio (though of course, with SD you get the great studio room sound and well recorded drums)....and then you mix them in with the rest of your tracks.

EZ1 was more about plug-n-play with whatever they thought was the best combination...and there was already too much pre-mixing, whereas SD can do that, but also it lets you make your own choices on everything.
 
miroslav said:
How much does EZD2 let you edit the individual drum samples...like the pitch, the attack/release....etc....and also the various "human feel" elements?
The main reason I prefer SD over EZ1 is because you CAN strip away everything but the raw/recorded samples...which is very much like you putting up some mics and recording a kit in your own studio (though of course, with SD you get the great studio room sound and well recorded drums)....and then you mix them in with the rest of your tracks.

EZ1 was more about plug-n-play with whatever they thought was the best combination...and there was already too much pre-mixing, whereas SD can do that, but also it lets you make your own choices on everything.
Click to expand...

There is a pitch control for the drum pieces, but I have yet to play with it. At least, I did notice it on the percussion pieces (tambourine, shaker, claps) that are new with EZD2. I'll have to see if there is a pitch control for the drum kits themselves.

With EZD, I do get the impression that there has been some processing on the samples...maybe some EQ or light compression or something. I can't quite put my finger on it, but it does seem that the raw sounds aren't totally "raw".
 
Mr Clean said:
I think I might treat myself to this update at the weekend.
Click to expand...

I think that there are worse ways to spend $99 :)

I made the mistake of getting it on a Tuesday, so I haven't had proper time to spend whacking and banging away with it yet. I'm working from home today, and I can hear it calling me from the basement...
 
So can you remove ALL the processing from EZ2? Can you still put the individual drums on separate channels in your DAW like EZ1? The only reason I'd consider upgrading is that I love cymbals especially rides, and you seem to think they sound better in EZ2?
 
PDP said:
So can you remove ALL the processing from EZ2? Can you still put the individual drums on separate channels in your DAW like EZ1? The only reason I'd consider upgrading is that I love cymbals especially rides, and you seem to think they sound better in EZ2?
Click to expand...

I played around with it more last night, and yes you can remove all of the added processing. In the mixer section, there are sliders for the drum mics, both a mono and a stereo room mic slider, one for "comp" (not sure yet what that one is, maybe a compressed room mic), and one for reverb. I have yet to figure out how to totally get rid of the FX chain on a preset, but all of them have controls so if a slider doesn't turn an effect off, you can twiddle knobs to turn it off.

I do think that the cymbals sound better in EZ2, but I'm still in the honeymoon period with it. It could be better samples, it could be better cymbals that were used in the first place, or maybe they're just different and I'm inclined to like them better than the 2 ho-hum rides in the EZ1 default kit.

One thing I haven't been thrilled with are the toms. The vintage kit's toms sound kinda corny, and the modern ones just aren't my cup of tea. I'll have time this weekend to fiddle with them and see if I can build a kit from scratch, one that fits my tastes on every piece of the kit. Speaking of which, you can do this in EZ2. Each piece of the kit can be subbed out with a similar piece from any kit that you own. In EZ1 you were limited to just a couple of options for each piece.
 
Tadpui said:
So far I've been able to boot up projects that had EZD1 in them and I didn't notice any issues since EZD2 completely replaces EZD1 during installation. The MIDI maps are different, so I'll be looking for instances where the wrong sample is triggered.
Click to expand...


come across any wrong samples yet ? would be a stupid move on toontracks part to make it not compatible with itself (waits for the "its an easy fix,all you need to do is blah,blah blah .." yeah we know but we shouldn't have to :P )
 
cakewalkKaKed said:
come across any wrong samples yet ? would be a stupid move on toontracks part to make it not compatible with itself (waits for the "its an easy fix,all you need to do is blah,blah blah .." yeah we know but we shouldn't have to :P )
Click to expand...

It looks like they left most of the kits alone, but they did change where some of the "trig" notes and articulations are. Like the mod-wheel controlled hi hats are now a hi tom. Imagine my surprise when I let off the hihat pedal and got a tom sound...

But so far in my few projects with EZD1, EZD2 seems to fit right in. Just don't switch away from 44.1 kHz sample rate, because the multichannel output causes a crash. Supposedly that's on the list to be fixed with the first patch.
 
Tadpui said:
The one annoyance to me (might be a great feature to others) is the addition of effects chains to each of the kit presets. They're on there by default and I have to go turn them down/off in the mixer. Even the standard setup of the included kits have some reverb added by default.
Click to expand...

Surely there's got to be a way to save user preset kits in which these effects are turned off, yes?
 
famous beagle said:
Surely there's got to be a way to save user preset kits in which these effects are turned off, yes?
Click to expand...

I've been playing with EZD2 for the past three days and removing the effects are as easy as lowering the faders that control each effect in the mixer section to get a direct or dry signal.

So far, I'm really digging this program. it helps me build drum tracks fast.
 
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