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What is typically the lowest price for EZ Drummer?  I have the free Steven Slate Drummer 5.5 and I am tempted to get the full version for $59, but then I heard that EZ Drummer has a feature where you can tap in a beat, and it will search its grooves for matches.  This would be cool.

I'm really impressed with the sound of the free SSD 5.5 and the few grooves that it has.  How does EZ Drummer compare with regard to styles and number of grooves?  It does look like a bit of a money pit to buy all the style expansions.

Edited by pbognar
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46 minutes ago, pbognar said:

What is typically the lowest price for EZ Drummer?  I have the free Steven Slate Drummer 5.5 and I am tempted to get the full version for $59, but then I heard that EZ Drummer has a feature where you can tap in a beat, and it will search its grooves for matches.  This would be cool.

I'm really impressed with the sound of the free SSD 5.5 and the few grooves that it has.  How does EZ Drummer compare with regard to styles and number of grooves?  It does look like a bit of a money pit to buy all the style expansions.

Just getting started with EZDrummer 2. So I'll only comment on price.

MSRP is $179, but they briefly dropped it to $79 during Black Friday Week. That's the lowest I've ever seen it, as it's been on my wish list for a while.

The second best I've seen is a special at Sweetwater, with a sale price of $149, plus a free EZX expansion of your choice, that can be a $79 value.

The EZX include new drum kits, plus drum MIDI patterns for a particular style. They are pricey, but go on sale occasionally. I grabbed one for $20 on sale.

They sell the Drum MIDI expansions for much less, without any additional kits. The patterns are the same ones that come in the EZX, so you don't need both. I picked up a few Drum MIDI expansions for $10 on sale.

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49 minutes ago, pbognar said:

What is typically the lowest price for EZ Drummer?  I have the free Steven Slate Drummer 5.5 and I am tempted to get the full version for $59, but then I heard that EZ Drummer has a feature where you can tap in a beat, and it will search its grooves for matches.  This would be cool.

I'm really impressed with the sound of the free SSD 5.5 and the few grooves that it has.  How does EZ Drummer compare with regard to styles and number of grooves?  It does look like a bit of a money pit to buy all the style expansions.

EZDrummer similar to others makes $$ from you buying their midi loops. Like you say, a money pit.

If you know how to match midi grooves up to drum software decent midi grooves can be had in much larger quantities and for much less elsewhere. It's basically just changing the mapping. Not sure if EZDrummer is general midi spec. I doubt it because that would be counter productive to their marketing.

I bought a whole slew of drum midi a few years ago for much less. You would search this as drum midi. Mapping is usually straight forward. Load midi. Low noted are bass drum, high notes are cymbals. Those in between are either percussion, toms or snare.  If you want to avoid mapping just use the paks. If you want to save money buy drum midi from 3rd party and map it.

I still have trouble finding beats that match my songs and sometimes find myself playing lame beats in. 

I'm not really a rocker but was experimenting with the new basic kits. It's a religious  Christian Rock tune. I'm not pushing that here, just showing you how the drums sound . I was pretty happy with the drums. Still some work to do on vox and guitars.

 

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The tap to find feature is really good. If you build your track In EZD and save it you can go back and time and see where the midi came from so you can go look in those packs for more. Groove Monkee and some others work with the tap to find. Great feature and time saver too.

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The thing which impressed me with the free SSD 5.5 is the sound and the nuanced playing in the limited number of MIDI grooves.

Are the EZ Drummer Drum MIDI expansions just plain MIDI and with the proper mapping could they be used in SSD?

Also, in your opinions, comparing SSD 5.5 @ $59 and EZ Drummer @ $79, which would is your preference for sound, ease of use for assembling human sounding drum parts and importing/mapping 3rd party grooves?

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21 hours ago, abacab said:

Just getting started with EZDrummer 2. So I'll only comment on price.

MSRP is $179, but they briefly dropped it to $79 during Black Friday Week. That's the lowest I've ever seen it, as it's been on my wish list for a while.

The second best I've seen is a special at Sweetwater, with a sale price of $149, plus a free EZX expansion of your choice, that can be a $79 value.

The EZX include new drum kits, plus drum MIDI patterns for a particular style. They are pricey, but go on sale occasionally. I grabbed one for $20 on sale.

They sell the Drum MIDI expansions for much less, without any additional kits. The patterns are the same ones that come in the EZX, so you don't need both. I picked up a few Drum MIDI expansions for $10 on sale.

Not entirely correct. The MIDI expansions are just that...expansions of the MIDI grooves that are included in the EZX.

 

From Toontrack:

Unless stated as otherwise, all MIDI packs contain unique MIDI that isn’t duplicate or repeated anywhere else in any other MIDI pack or EZX or SDX.

 

Unless you see a disclaimer like the following on the MIDI expansion pack description, they're all unique grooves.

Screenshot_2017-04-12-13-54-30.jpg

 

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5 hours ago, abacab said:

Like I said, was just getting started with EZDrummer, and the Americana EZX is the first one that I selected. "Please note that this is the same...".

Thanks for the updated info!

😄 You got one of the few!

There's also one (Blues EZX MIDI Pack) where they pulled the MIDI out of the EZX and sell it separately, to complement the Blues MIDI Pack (I have both).

Edited by John Maar
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22 hours ago, pbognar said:

Are the EZ Drummer Drum MIDI expansions just plain MIDI and with the proper mapping could they be used in SSD?

 Any track that plays midi can transmit it. You could take that midi and do something with it. If this isn't something you think you would enjoy probably better off just buying the paks. I doubt ANY kits from different manufacturers will match up.

Another Toontrack product called EZ Player Pro has mappings for all of the major drum manufacturers kits. Here's a pic on my desktop . If you look you will see I have mapping loaded for SSD 3.5, I get a lot of my loops from Looploft.

 

ezplayer.JPG

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On 12/8/2020 at 9:56 AM, pbognar said:

Are the EZ Drummer Drum MIDI expansions just plain MIDI

 

EZ Drummer plays the midi ToonTrack Midi expansion packs like a human, not a machine. They are also just midi info, like Starise says. But a kick on EZD is assigned to a different parameter than say the SSD kick, so you would have to reassign the mdid accordingly. Which for some programs, can be a PITA.

Groove Monkey has different midi mappings for different drum programs for it's midi it sells. Works well with EZD. 

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