Digital Drums Done Right – EzDrummer Review

In the world of MIDI drums, there are a whole lot of options. The unfortunate fact is that many of them totally suck. The other sad truth is that the ones that don’t, usually cost upwards of $500 and aren’t exactly intuitive.

I have been working on some new music in Logic and needed some really good drum sounds. The included UltraBeat plugin is admirable for techno stuff, but if your love is rock and roll, and you want drum sounds that will kick holes in people when the bass drums fire, you are going to be sorely disappointed by pretty much any “default” drumkit for any software you buy.

I had done some research and checked out BFD/BFD2 and various other plugins, all with exceptional sounds, but less than practical price points for your average hobbyist musician, aka me.

I came across EzDrummer ($150) watching some videos on youtube and was blown away at what people were doing, that and the fact that it seemed tailor made for simple beat creation and rock oriented sounds. When the UPS guy showed up yesterday with the DFH Expansion for EzDrummer, my drum sounds went into the stratosphere. DFH stands for Drumkit From Hell.

When you look at the plugin interface, it really is a drumkit from hell. Beyond the kit you see here, you get various options for each drum and cymbal, and then the ability to mix and adjust the sounds at will. Compliment that with true multichannel output and you can mix this monster just like you had the real audio tracks laid down for kick, snare top, snare bottom, hi-hat, toms, overheads, room mics, etc. Talk about real flexibility, you can also control how much mics bleed into each other.

Each drum has a selection of different drums if you want to customize the kit with different sounds. Once you get it into Logic, or your favorite application (it supports RTAS, Audio Unit and VST) you can EQ, compress and tweak the sounds 1,000 ways from Sunday, and that’s a LOT of ways.

Now the default kit is very nice, but with the DFH expansion (I think I paid $72) you get:

Kickdrums:
• Sonor Designer Series 18×22″ – damped and undamped neutral EQ, extreme eq,
• Ludwig Wood Fiber Glass 24″
Snaredrums:
• Ayotte 4×14″ Maple Shell
• Ludwig 8×14″
• Pearl Sensitone 6,5×14″ Bronze Shell
• Sonor Designer Series 6,5×14 Maple Light Shell
• Sonor Designer Series 5×14″ Maple Light Shell
• Sonor Hilite 5×12″ Maple Shell
• Tomas Haake Engineering 7×14″ Pockenholz Shell
Toms:
• Sonor Designer Series 10×10″, 12×12″, 13×13″, 16×16″ and 18×18″
Hats:
• 14″ Sabian HH Rock HiHat
Cymbal 1:
• 19″ Sabian AAXtreme Chinese
• 21″ Sabian AAXtreme Chinese
• 21″ Sabian AAXtreme Chinese
Cymbal 2:
• 16″ Sabian HH Medium Crash
• 17″ Sabian HH Medium Thin Crash
• 19″ Sabian HH Crash Ride
Cymbal 3:
• 10″ Sabian HH Splash
Cymbal 4:
• 20″ Sabian HH Crash Ride
• 21″ Sabian HH Crash Ride
Cymbal 5:
• 18″ Sabian HH Chinese/15″ Sabian HH Medium Crash
• 15″ Sabian AAXtreme Chinese/12″ Sabian HH Splash
• 15″ Sabian AAXtreme Chinese
Cymbal 6:
• 8″ Sabian HH Splash
Cymbal 7:
• 22″ Sabian HH Power Bell Ride
• 22″ Sabian HH Crash Ride
Cymbal 8:
• 12″ Sabian HH Splash
Cymbal 9:
• 20″ Sabian HH Dark Chinese (Brilliant)
• 20″ Sabian HH Dark Chinese
Cymbal 10:
• 21″ Sabian HH Medium Crash
• 22″ Sabian HH Crash Ride
Cymbal 11:
• 22″ Sabian Ed Thigpen Crystal Bell Ride
• 23″ Sabian HH Crash Ride

Throw in the included default kit and cocktail kit, and that’s a whole lot of drums for $225. The real cool part is that with between EzDrummer and DFH, I have over 16,000 extremely high quality midi loops made by real drummers to build my beats with. I can use the loop browser to find the beats I want, then just drag them into the sequencer, copy, paste and organize them to my hearts content. Throw in fills, edit midi to throw in some cymbal hits here and there, and you have some unbelievable drum tracks in no time.

If you are working on your own stuff, and don’t have a drummer, mics, nice room and very agreeable neighbors, you can’t go wrong with this product.

Of course you need to hear it for yourself, so go to ToonTrack’s site and listen to the sample MP3s.

Submit this post to

• Scoring Test Sample
• Philocast HD: Yamaha 01x Review
• Thoughts about putting too much stock in technology…