Toontrack EZ Drummer Virtual Instrument :: Education by Design Store

Editorial Review
DFH EZ Drummer is a multiple microphone drum sample playback engine designed for musicians in need of a compact, affordable, and easy to handle plug-in without compromising any sound quality or control. The visualized drumkit interface combines auditioning of sounds and drumkit construction. The extensive drag and drop midi library enables users to create a great drumtrack in less than five mouse clicks. For more advanced handling, users can control microphone bleed and levels between drums using the internal mixer. The mixer also allows stereo and multitrack routing into the host through one single plug-in, and thanks to the second generation Toontrack Percussive Compression (TPC), system requirements are kept to the minimum. The drums for DFH EZ Drummer were recorded, produced and played with the best in the business, making these drum samples the pinnacle in digital drum production. With EZ Drummer, TOONTRACK have stepped into the next generation of acoustic drum-samples. You re welcome to follow! QUICK FACTS 7000 sound files at 16-bit / 44.1kHz equivalent to 5Gb of uncompressed wav files Drums recorded at Avatar Studios, New York by Nir Z (Genesis), produced by Neil Dorfsman (Sting, Def Leppard, Dire Straits, Bruce Springsteen, etc.) and Pat Thrall, Mattias Eklund & Henrik Kjellberg. Instant access to more than 8000 drum patterns with prelistening, quick browsing and drag n drop functionality Same extensive layer depth on all drums and cymbals as...
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Customer Reviews

Be prepared to spend a lot of money.

2008-01-10
First of all you need Midi Sequencer software to use this product. If you don't have one be prepared to spend $100 to $500 for a descent one. The registration process for this product is very tedious and requires many steps. And after I have done all this the program still doesn't work. My Midi Sequencer can't find the EZ Drummer plug in (wasted $150 on that). I even downloaded Toontracks free Midi Sequencer and even it can't find the plug-in. So basically I have invested approximately $300 for absolutely nothing. If you are lucky enough to get it to work it does sound great.

Amazing

2007-11-26
This could very well be the best software-based drum plug-in in existence. It sounds too good to be believed. Each drum/cymbal must have been sampled at least 10 times at different velocities to get this type of realism. You also have a varying selection of drums to choose from and each individual drum and symbol can be switched. The slider board is fantastic as well; the room reverbs this program uses are amazing.

Both the Rock and Cocktail drum kits sound fantastic and the expansion packs I've used so far (Nashville, DFH, and Vintage) are equally indispensible.

I'm literally stunned by how well this product sounds. It's that good.

Impressive

2007-08-21
I am very impressed with this product. The drums do sound as realistic as the advertisements claim. This has been worth every penny for me. Make sure you have a good MIDI Sequencer for your computer that you know how to use or is easy to learn. You do have to wait a few minutes every time you open the plugin for the sounds to load into your RAM, but once it's loaded it works fine. This is a good buy!

Worth it's weight in gold

2008-06-16
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.

Buyer Beware don't fall victim to these liars

2008-06-08
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.

why the bad rap?

2008-06-01
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.

I love this...

2008-05-28
I have Cubase 4, Reason3, Drum addition to Reason. I am using this with Alesis DM5 electronic drum set. Cubase and Reason don't come close to how real and full sounding the EZDrummer sets sound. I am really appreciating this product.

I Stand Corrected and Apologize

2008-02-04
...for the trashing I gave this product in a previous review. My own impatience and ignorance kept me from learning what a great product this really is. When I finally got it to work, I was most pleased. As a music composer, it is a great tool with some excellent drum sounds. It works perfectly with Pro-Tools and even loads into Logic. There's not a huge variety of sounds (unless you buy the expansion packs), but for this price, you get some very useable stuff.