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EZ Drummer vs Superior Drummer?

  • 20-12-2009 5:18pm
    #1
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 4,093
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    So they're both by Toontrack. But is there a huge difference in the quality of samples on offer? Or what is the difference exactly?


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Comments

  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 247 Mataguri
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    They are two different products aimed at two different markets.

    EZ-Drummers kits are processed which is a good and bad thing. On the positive side it makes it very easy to use, just open it up and select a kit and away you go. Its also very good for the casual user/beginner looking for immediate results. However on the downside its not very flexible as you arent really able to fine tune the drum sounds.

    In comparison Superior is more raw but gives you a lot more control. For example you get individual tom mics (5 in total), 3 kick mics and 3 snare mics. If you're willing to spend more time with superior, you can get a FAR superior sounding drum mix using these extra mics becuase you can really fine tune the sound. It does require a much bigger investment however, in both time and money, compared to EZ-drummer.

    Its worth noting that Superior 2.0 can load the EXdrummer EZX's so one can have the best of both worlds. Use an EZX, like the fantastic sounding Nashville kit, for writing quick ideas and then swap over to one of the Superior 2.0 kits for the final mix.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 2,655 i57dwun4yb1pt8
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    get superior- you wont be sorry


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 4,093 TelePaul
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    Thanks for the responses guys! I was looking at those Nashville sounds, they did sound awesome, nice and roomy. Interesting comparisons too.
    DaDumTish wrote: »
    get superior- you wont be sorry

    I had a feeling you might say that! I would if money were no issue, but I've already set myself back a grand on the roland kit and I'm no drummer. I'd also like to see just how good triggered samples are generally. I have to say though, even the EZ stuff sounds pretty good to my untrained ears.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,472 Rockshamrover
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    Try Addictive drums. You can download a demo from XLNAUDIO.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 247 Mataguri
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    TelePaul wrote: »
    Thanks for the responses guys! I was looking at those Nashville sounds, they did sound awesome, nice and roomy. Interesting comparisons too.

    The Nashville kit is great and for the record I dont like country music or anything. It sounds amazing for rock music.


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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 303 slavedave
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    +1 for Nashville EZX. Really like it (albeit the toms can be a bit "ringy"). Can be used for various music genres.
    The two products are aimed at different users though. Ezd is exactly that - load it up, play it in real time with e-drums or a keyboard, or load midifiles into your DAW from the interface directly. It is very quick to create scratch tracks and you can humanise the midifiles and vary their velocity to make very credible drum tracks. The EZD and EZX's do have multiple outs too to treat individual channels of kits however it doesn't have the flexibility of Superior. EZD is pre-processed though you can have it dry if needed. I understand from TT that the velocity layering is the same with both products. Superior samples definitely load faster.
    Superior has more kit pieces, more stick/brush/mallet options, more control all around. You can have it dry and unprocessed or load up a preset/create your own to enable processed tracks. You are getting an excellent room ambience with the basic kit. Each mic can be processed individually with transient shapers/compressors and then bussed out to room mics. MUCH more flexibility but a steeper learning curve ( I am just scratching the surface at the moment).
    Horses for courses! Quick and easy = EZD + EZX's
    Deep & flexible = Superior

    Sample shops often do a buy EZD and get an ezx free (timeandspace for example) but there are some great deals on Superior from the states at the mo esp if you already have EZD.

    Addictive drums is also great and has expansion packs. As suggested download the demo and give it a lash.
    Steven SLate drums also sound fab and are very processed but are known to sit in a mix well. ALso, this month esounds.com are doing a group buy on Ocean Way Drums for 99 dollars and the kits sound really good (some use actual kits from classic recordings so see the web site to hear the demos. You can also download a trial period player software and a free kit to try out).


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 4,093 TelePaul
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    Lots of great advice there lads! Okay, I'll probably settle for EZ Drummer. Stupid question, but given that the EZ samples are 16bit will I be able to track other audio in a project at 24 bits?

    And Dave, you mentioned some sample shops that bundle EZ products. Don't suppose you could suggest one or two?


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,456 ZV Yoda
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    Just to throw a spanner in the works... SD also comes with midi files, so you can use it to create grooves straight away.... and while it is true that the SD samples are untreated (they still sound amazing untreated!), it couldn't be easier to process them.

    Each "channel" within SD has it's own strip effects (just like any other DAW). There’s a great selection of processing presets (combination of EQ, compression & transient designer). There’s no reverb, but that comes from turning up the ambient studio mics relative to the closed mics. What’s really clever is that the presets are specific to each drum/mic (kick, snare, tom, overhead etc) so you can tweak each individual drum to suit your own taste.

    One other point… don’t be put off by the names used on the SD expansion packs – I think they’re very misleading. I’m not a fan of metal music, but the Metal Foundry pack is the biz… great selection of drums & cymbals that can be used in any genre (e.g. just some of the Pearl snares available are… Sensitone, Reference, Maple free floater… none of these are specific to metal & are used in many genres. Likewise for the cymbals). For me, the only thing that links the packs to a specific genre are the midi files – they are very genre specific.

    Honestly, if you’re serious about drum sound, SD via vDrums is as good as it gets for a home set up.

    Having said all of that, EZ will do what you want it to do… but SD will give you a whole lot more besides. I’m not a fan of advising people to spend more than their budget allows, but if you’ve already shelled out a grand on the TD4, why settle for EZ (€100) when €200 will get SD2?


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 4 stuntnuts


    I too recoomend S2 because the quality of the samples and also there are more artriculations especially for Hi hats. The sound of the Avatar kits alone are worth it. The Other SDXs (Custom and Vintage,Metal foundry and New york Studios) sound amazing too. They are alot more versitile then their names suggest as stated in a reply above. I also love the bounce feature.
    I personally can't wait for the release of Joe barresi Evil Drums. Take a listen to some of the samples on the Platinum Samples website.
    https://www.platinumsamples.com/index.php

    Hope this helps :confused:


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 4,093 TelePaul
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    Ah lads, you're killing me here! I'll give it a think.


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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 303 slavedave
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    If I was starting again I would go straight for Superior 2. Hope that clarifies my position ;)


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,456 ZV Yoda
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    slavedave wrote: »
    If I was starting again I would go straight for Superior 2. Hope that clarifies my position ;)

    +1… absolutely!

    ... and if you don't have the funds right now, I'd say this is definitely a case of hold off till you can get the extra €100. The way I look at it this… why spend €1000 on a fancy midi trigger (which is effectively what the TD be used for - same as mine)... but then compromise on the quality of the samples?


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 79 Valcin
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    I have both EZ drummer and superior drums as well. You should definitley wait and get superior drums. You will get Ez drummer, love it and then want sup drums and the money you spent on EZ drummer will be wasted. The features on sup drums are savage and it has a great sound. I'm not even a drummer but its probably my favourite software. If you spent all that money on a vdrums dont be mayne(mean) on the samples. Also superior drums is set up better (optimised) for V drums.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 2,655 i57dwun4yb1pt8
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    take it from the three drummers here me and YODA and slave dave

    SD is the best fcking package PERIOD for vdrumming.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 4,093 TelePaul
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    Are you guys gonna ignore me if I come on tomorrow and say I've ordered EZDrummer?


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 79 Valcin
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    EZ drummer is for pussys. :D


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 4,093 TelePaul
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    Valcin wrote: »
    EZ drummer is for pussys. :D

    You can go ahead and ignore me :)


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,456 ZV Yoda
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    TelePaul wrote: »
    Are you guys gonna ignore me if I come on tomorrow and say I've ordered EZDrummer?


    DaDumTish & Slavedave are right (we drummers usually are :D ) We've been through this already & have done all of your research for you! Go for SD.

    Don't make us come over there...


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 303 slavedave
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    You won't be disappointed with ezd - I have used it for nearly two years with lots of satisfaction.
    IF you want you can flog it on adverts.ie if you dont register it and you shouldn't lose too much. Then you can put the money towards SD2 if you want but I think you are going to have a blast either way. Sooo much better sounding than modules. (only thing I didn't like in EZD was the inability to increase the ride volume without increasing the overhead volume - SD allows me to do this)


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 4,093 TelePaul
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    Okay guys, i'm going with EZdrummer. Now hold on; before you ask yourselves why I came here asking for advice if I'm going to do the opposite, please hear me out:

    1) I'm not a drummer. I'm a lead guitarist and therefore have no natural sense of rhythm. I've only recently started getting to grips with playing drums, let alone tracking or mixing. I need to keep things simple.

    2) I'm not even sure how the roland kit and Cubase SE3 are gonna get along. AFAIK, SE3 won't capitalise upon my dual core processor (it's that bit too old) and my latency is around 5ms...probably not a deal breaker, but I've been experimenting with Reaper these last few days to see how that'll compare with my Alesis i/o 26. My point is, I don't wanna spend more than I have to if I'm just going to run into problems with the setup.

    3) I'm pretty interested in using presets for practice (solo and accompanied). I'm not looking for 100% true to life sounding samples - I know even the Roland's stock samples will sound better than my crappy acoustic kit (don't get me started!). Flexibility is important but so is ease of use.

    For these reasons, and the underlying fact that I'm flat broke, I'm gonna give EZ Drummer a spin. I know you guys know what you're talking about and if things go well I'll be joining you in the SD 2 club. Thanks all for your inputs, I'll probably have a few more questions as things progress.


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  • Closed Accounts Posts: 7,863 seachto7
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    I downloaded the addictive drummer demo yesterday, and it seems pretty straight forward to use. Far better than trying to program Sampletank anyways, and less time consuming...

    However, I'm more looking towards decent sounding demos more than anything else. So, on this basis, maybe EZ drummer would be sufficient for me?

    A lot of the stuff I'm recording would involve acoustic instruments, so I like the idea of being able to use kits with brushes etc. I wouldn't be using jazz drum licks as such, but downtuned guitars / open tunings, seems to go well with brushes / laid back kit sounds....


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 12 Norris-wf


    EZdrummer may be sufficient, but when I also queried this I was told (on another forum) that EZdrummer is a bit dated, now over 10 years old (dkfh at least) and for that reason superior was being recomended. I have EZdrummer myself and I wasn't a huge fan of it, it just didnt sound well in the mix so I've changed now to another one, but from what I've heard and seen, superior is one of the best, where as you can see from this thread, EZdrummer takes a fair bashing.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 4,093 TelePaul
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    seachto7 wrote: »
    I downloaded the addictive drummer demo yesterday, and it seems pretty straight forward to use. Far better than trying to program Sampletank anyways, and less time consuming...

    However, I'm more looking towards decent sounding demos more than anything else. So, on this basis, maybe EZ drummer would be sufficient for me?

    A lot of the stuff I'm recording would involve acoustic instruments, so I like the idea of being able to use kits with brushes etc. I wouldn't be using jazz drum licks as such, but downtuned guitars / open tunings, seems to go well with brushes / laid back kit sounds....

    Check out the EZ samples on the toontrack site, they sound awesome - especially the Nashville kit. I don't think EZ has taken a bashing in this thread - far from it.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 2,655 i57dwun4yb1pt8
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    i love EZ drummer - but once you try SD you will not want to go back .


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 7,790 PaulBrewer
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    ZV Yoda wrote: »
    +1… absolutely!

    ... and if you don't have the funds right now, I'd say this is definitely a case of hold off till you can get the extra €100. The way I look at it this… why spend €1000 on a fancy midi trigger (which is effectively what the TD be used for - same as mine)... but then compromise on the quality of the samples?

    I have no experience in this area at all really.

    However, I do concur with the idea of aiming at the highest quality target possible even if that means shooting less ....!


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 12 Norris-wf


    TelePaul wrote: »
    Check out the EZ samples on the toontrack site, they sound awesome - especially the Nashville kit. I don't think EZ has taken a bashing in this thread - far from it.

    My apologies Paul, I had picked it up wrong, just read through it again. It is a great program for the price, I just never found a kick or snare I was happy with. I now see there are a lot of people here that do indeed like it, sorry bout that ;)


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 7,863 seachto7
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    to my untrained ears, I can't hear any huge difference between the ez drummer and addictive drummer....?

    I might hold off for the SD if I can afford it....

    But after going through Nashville drummer, that could be right up my street for around €80, but that would be an add on to EZ drummer, so possibly SD it is.....?

    All I need is a basic sounding kit, but a decent sounding one, the sticks and brushes demos on the toontrack site could ne just the ticket for me....


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 4,093 TelePaul
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    Norris-wf wrote: »
    My apologies Paul, I had picked it up wrong, just read through it again. It is a great program for the price, I just never found a kick or snare I was happy with. I now see there are a lot of people here that do indeed like it, sorry bout that ;)

    No worries about that man, I'm just going by what I heard on the Toontrack site. My own copy finally arrived so I'm off to pick it up from the An Post depot. Will report back when it's up and running!


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 4,093 TelePaul
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    seachto7 wrote: »
    to my untrained ears, I can't hear any huge difference between the ez drummer and addictive drummer....?

    I might hold off for the SD if I can afford it....

    But after going through Nashville drummer, that could be right up my street for around €80, but that would be an add on to EZ drummer, so possibly SD it is.....?

    All I need is a basic sounding kit, but a decent sounding one, the sticks and brushes demos on the toontrack site could ne just the ticket for me....

    I got the Nashville kit bundled with EZ Drummer for approx. €132 on Thomann.


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  • Closed Accounts Posts: 2,655 i57dwun4yb1pt8
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    welcome to simple drum track sexy easiness :D


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 4,093 TelePaul
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    DaDumTish wrote: »
    welcome to simple drum track sexy easiness :D

    Oh man! You said it. Been playing around with it for the last two hours and the samples are just great. The roland kit almost seems more responsive with them; maybe that's just my imagination or maybe there actually is a greater velocity range with these samples. But man, that Nashville kit is bad ASS!

    One question; is tehre a master volume button I'm missing?


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 7,863 seachto7
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    TelePaul wrote: »
    I got the Nashville kit bundled with EZ Drummer for approx. €132 on Thomann.

    yeah? sounds like that could be my solution. the demos of the kit sound pretty good (nashville..)


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 12 Norris-wf


    AFAIK there is only the individual channel mixers


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 303 slavedave
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    If you download toontrack Solo from their site, you can control the master volume of EZD or EZX's from that, otherwise yu have to use the channel faders within the EZD programme or your DAW channel faders (if you use one).
    I use Solo all the time and it is very intuitive to set up and use. You can mix and match kits on it if you want and, depending on your midi controller, can even create a 4 tom kit with the std ezd kit by setting up two "drummers" in the solo app and setting the second drummer to a different incoming midi channel, mutin all the kit pieces in the second drummer bar the floor tom, changing that to the lowest tuned option in its drop down menu, and then setting your physical trigger on your module to transmit on the same midi channel as the second kit.
    Nice tweak to do if your module allows this but if the above is gobbledegook just enjoy the 3 tom setup and make some noise!

    As an aside, I bought into the Group Buy kits from Sonic Reality/OWD last week and g0t to play on a few last night.
    http://www.esoundz.com/details.php?ProductID=4118&refcode=USDKVRVIT
    Pretty nice so far for stock kits. The best bit is that it only cost €99 for over 25 kits (plus loads of extras that got thrown into the mix). Not as "deep" as SD 2.0 but first impressions were good albeit they need to fix a couple of "bugs" with the Kontakt player set up.
    Can still buy at the existing price but don't get all the extra freebies, I think.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 4,093 TelePaul
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    slavedave wrote: »
    If you download toontrack Solo from their site, you can control the master volume of EZD or EZX's from that, otherwise yu have to use the channel faders within the EZD programme or your DAW channel faders (if you use one).
    I use Solo all the time and it is very intuitive to set up and use. You can mix and match kits on it if you want and, depending on your midi controller, can even create a 4 tom kit with the std ezd kit by setting up two "drummers" in the solo app and setting the second drummer to a different incoming midi channel, mutin all the kit pieces in the second drummer bar the floor tom, changing that to the lowest tuned option in its drop down menu, and then setting your physical trigger on your module to transmit on the same midi channel as the second kit.
    Nice tweak to do if your module allows this but if the above is gobbledegook just enjoy the 3 tom setup and make some noise!

    As an aside, I bought into the Group Buy kits from Sonic Reality/OWD last week and g0t to play on a few last night.
    http://www.esoundz.com/details.php?ProductID=4118&refcode=USDKVRVIT
    Pretty nice so far for stock kits. The best bit is that it only cost €99 for over 25 kits (plus loads of extras that got thrown into the mix). Not as "deep" as SD 2.0 but first impressions were good albeit they need to fix a couple of "bugs" with the Kontakt player set up.
    Can still buy at the existing price but don't get all the extra freebies, I think.

    I got most of that believe it or not! :D I have solo and it's cool but I can't use that as a VSTi in my DAW can I?I could use the volume on the midi channel in Cubase I guess?


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  • Closed Accounts Posts: 2,655 i57dwun4yb1pt8
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    you can set the ez drummer mixer to individual , and this can be mapped to indivdual DAW channells

    so , kik, chan 1 in daw ( or any chan you want )
    snare and snare bot to chan 2 or chan 2 and 3
    hats chan 4

    etc

    in SD you can even set overhead left to one chan and right to another same with room mics set to sep left and right this allows you to adjust the pans better in the daw instead of in the fiddly SD mixer

    i dont like 100% pans for overheads so i do this

    you can also set individual toms to seperate channells left and right to pan them better

    and then you can process all drums seperatley eq and compression wise in daw.

    then i recombine them into groups for group processing like sending toms kick and snare to crushy compressors
    and snare to reverb in the daw and then all out to a master drum channell for final eq and limiter.

    i do this for full control of the drums .
    but you can also keep it very simple if you wish, the worlds yer oyster .

    one tip i got if using 24 bit recording ( dunno if it makes sense but it seems to work - some duds think it pushes the gear less and makes everything mix and sound cleaner )

    is i like to record at around -12 db in the daw , say for bass , guitars and vocals , and also send the ez drummer channells out set to -12

    this gives plenty of room for compressors and eq without peaking channells in the daw

    the daw raw master mix then usually ends up around -6 or so .


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