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[sveje77]

Dammit, I couldn’t resist and just bought the crossgrade. 250 EUR for a Grid Editor… my wife will kill me.

[sveje77]

For straight ot-of-the-box mix-ready presets that cover everything from prog rock to metal go for the „Progressive“ EZX. If you want a less pre-processed, warmer sound – that perhaps might need some additional processing to sound less dull, depending on your track – choose „Made Of Metal“. Both libraries are very, very good and well worth the money.

Personally, I prefer the „Progressive“ EZX, although I‘m a big fan of Colin Richardson‘s productions (the guy did Carcass‘ „Heartwork“ and Bolt Thrower‘s „For Victory“!). But that‘s just my personal preference. Ask 100 other people and you will get 100 different answers.

But before you buy additional libraries, try out the EZD2 Modern „Basic“ preset and switch the whole Kit to „Yamaha 9000“. You might be surpised how great the basic library can sound for metal.

[sveje77]

The obvious answer would be Andy Sneap‘s „Metal Machine“ EZX. However, I always found the Kicks in that library lacking punch and low end. The original DFH and its successors „Metal!“ and „Metalheads“ are all produced and/or engineered by Daniel Bergstrand and have a certain sound in common that IMHO sounds a little dated. Colin Richardson‘s „Made Of Metal“ has a much more natural, less processed approach which perhaps would need some additional EQ/processing to fit in a dense metal mix and not sound dull. But its “Steel Truth” preset might be a good starting point. I also bought the “Progressive” EZX a couple of days ago, really like the „Metalsesque“ and „Default DW“ presets‘ kicks, snares and cymbals for rock/metal, but the Toms are lacking punch and definition, sound somewhat distorted and mushy.

Have you tried the Yamaha 9000 Kit from EZdrummer 2‘s Modern library? I find that one very suitable for metal. Just load the „Basic“ preset and change the Kit to Yamaha 9000 = metal goodness.

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Thanked by: seanski

[sveje77]

Hey Henrik,

I can totally understand that – from a business perspective – SD3 has to have more features than EZD2. However, from a customer point of view it would absolutely make sense to have a Grid Editor in EZdrummer, because it makes programming drums so much more convenient, „EZ“ so to speak. And I always thought that convenience really is what EZD is about in comparison to all the tweaking possibilities in SD. And it would offer a great opportunity to combine Toontrack‘s MIDI grooves with the customer‘s own patterns. Right now the Grid Editor is the only feature of SD3 that I’d really want to have in comparison to EZD2, and I’m not quite sure if that single feature can justify the 269 EUR crossgrade price for me (and I would even have to buy an additional external harddrive for the huge core library, which adds to the 269 EUR crossgrade fee). Although I have to admit it’s tempting… Well, perhaps there is some hope for a Grid Editor in a future EZdrummer 3 ?! 😉

But honestly, I‘m not here to complain. I remember how I ordered the very first DFH samples when they were still distributed as wav files on a standard „home-burnt“ CD-R and I had to drag every single hit manually into Logic‘s arrange window. So relating to the above mentioned convenience EZdrummer 2 is already a huge step forwards. But a Grid Editor would make drum programming even „EZier“ – without having to deal with the wealth of professional tweaking possibilities (or requirements?) of Superior, which – to me as an amateur user – seems rather intimidating than motivating.

Cheers 🙂
Sven

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Thanked by: pangyre

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