Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)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.
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Toontrack EZdrummer Multi Layer Drum Sampler
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