EzDrummer 3

[WhiskeyJack]

We'll make on official home for it here.

@vomitHatSteve have you tried getting this installed yet? For some strange reason i can't seem to find a way to redirect the big library installs to my dedicated samples drive? It just doesn't give me any option to redirect it to where i have all my other toontrack drum libraries?

I am going to put it on hold until i hear back from you and / or have time to dig more into the release and this stupid project manager they made me download.

I will say though that the project manager made updating all my other existing stuff a snap. That was pretty slick.

[Armistice]

I'm thinking after the next album, which I may or may not be making, that it's time for a PC upgrade - the Win 7 OS is starting to be a constraint with a few things. At that point it'll be time for a new drum VSTi, pretty sick of the Slate samples by now - and JD's excursions with SD seem interesting, so I'll hang around this thread and see what's to learn.

[WhiskeyJack]

I'm thinking after the next album, which I may or may not be making, that it's time for a PC upgrade - the Win 7 OS is starting to be a constraint with a few things. At that point it'll be time for a new drum VSTi, pretty sick of the Slate samples by now - and JD's excursions with SD seem interesting, so I'll hang around this thread and see what's to learn.

Yea. Buy a new machine outright. I did a windows 10 upgrade to a windows 7 machine and while parts of the experience is faster other stuff is anything but. for some reason unpacking .zip files or moving anything of any size from one place to another takes an obscene amount of time now. Where before everything was like flick of a switch instant.

Anyways. Not the reason why we are gathered here in this thread are we? LOL. I'll keep posting updates as things unravel.

[vomitHatSteve]

Oh, I thought it was on the 5th for some reason. Downloading now. Will get it installed either tonight or tomorrow.

I don't use their download manager since I've air-gapped my recording PC. So, I'm just doing a direct download

What's this "Core library" download that apparently requires the download manager?

[WhiskeyJack]

All good man.

Oh, I thought it was on the 5th for some reason. Downloading now. Will get it installed either tonight or tomorrow.

I don't use their download manager since I've air-gapped my recording PC. So, I'm just doing a direct download

What's this "Core library" download that apparently requires the download manager?

I believe that is the all the midi, sounds, and all the room voodoo witchcraft stuff. Perspective wise EZD2 is 5GB EZD3 is 15GB and SD3 is about 200+GB

I don't want that shit on my main SSD.

[vomitHatSteve]

Ok, I contacted support to ask how I could download that bad boy without their DL manager (since my DAW is air-gapped)

They expect to respond in 3-5 days.

[Armistice]

Ok, I contacted support to ask how I could download that bad boy without their DL manager (since my DAW is air-gapped)

They expect to respond in 3-5 days.

Can you explain "air-gapped" to me?

[WhiskeyJack]

They expect to respond in 3-5 days.

[vomitHatSteve]

Ok, I contacted support to ask how I could download that bad boy without their DL manager (since my DAW is air-gapped)

They expect to respond in 3-5 days.

Can you explain "air-gapped" to me?

Physically disconnected from the network. (and also no wifi). All transfers between it and my networked PCs are by walking (well, rolly-chairing) USBs between them.

[Armistice]

Can you explain "air-gapped" to me?

Physically disconnected from the network. (and also no wifi). All transfers between it and my networked PCs are by walking (well, rolly-chairing) USBs between them.

Ah - who knew I was doing something that has a trendy name...

Apart from Reaper updates that is... my recording PC has always been "air-gapped"

[vomitHatSteve]

Ah - who knew I was doing something that has a trendy name...

Apart from Reaper updates that is... my recording PC has always been "air-gapped"

Yeah, I picked up the habit from HR recommendations 15 or so years ago when optimizing the performance of your recording computer was much more involved (and feasible, tbh; Windows does not like you turning of features like firewalls nowadays)

I started using the term "air-gap" because that's what it's called in the security world. (Where it obviously has quite different applications)

[vomitHatSteve]

Ok, I had to install the product manager on my main computer to download the core libraries, but once I did that, everything installed pretty smoothly on my recording box.

I'm having a little bit of trouble with my presets. It recognizes my EZD 1 presets, but it has drastically changed the way the drums sound, and it no longer remembers my routing.
The good news about having to rebuild all my routing tho is that I have 32 channels now.

[vomitHatSteve]

So calling it for the night, but it was taking me an average of 30 minutes per kit to get the routing back to roughly where I had it before.

Fortunately, it looks like it will happily co-exist with EZD1 in Reaper, so I can hang onto my old track templates

[WhiskeyJack]

Ok i made a bit of progress on this. Been so freaking busy with life and a thousand other things. But i want ot use this plug in if for no other reaso nthan my own mental sanity and farting around.

So it appears as though that no, you can not at the time of install, choose where to put the midi/sound library. So that kinda sucks and i am not sure why the hell they would ever think that was a an intuitive feature anybody would ever want.

I guess in the work flow you just install it as they have it and it goes to your C drive (**caveat to follow, keep reading) and then when the install is complete you open the stand alone version of EZD > 'settings' >'libraries & paths' and from this window it will show where everything has been default saved to, and from here you can use the stack of pancake things to navigate to view the default location in explorer and copy it's windows location address to your clipboard. Now, Close out of the standalone version, go to window explorer paste the libarires location into the address bar, and then move all the files from there to your desired destination folder. Once this is done you will have to reopen the standalone version and if it doesn't prompt for the new path to library automatically, you will have to go into the same place and manually just tell it where you moved everything.

**The caveat in my case is somehow it just knew where all my EZdrumemr stuff was because remarkable it installed the library and everything else to where i wanted it. So, for me i am o.k with this. I just wish it had a splash screen or something that said it was going ot use old default location rather than just a generic and formidable "we are installing this now" So dumb




Also at a first glance this new EZD3 feels and looks amazing. I didn't think they could improve on EZD2 for value for budget but, yea. they sure friggin' did!! More reviews to follow shortly.

[WhiskeyJack]

More reviews.

I stayed up way past my bed time last night getting stoked on music. man i got a MAJOR stock pile of awesome stuff sitting around my hard drives. I gotta seriously fuck off and do something with it. I spread myself ay to thin over too much stuff.

First thing first and most obvious place I headed to to check out was the bandmate feature! It's a friggin game changer!!! for me anyways. The TL;DR from me and form where i sit is that if you have a guitar or other instrument part recorded on time and you know the BPM you simply load the wav into the plug, tell it the BPM and it will pretty instantly shit out some midi. It's fairly basic and rudimentary at this point. I wish i was better at making video's becasue this would be cool to make a quick review for.

From there you can go on and tweak a bunch of stuff to further tailor it to your sound / style. You can adjust in more snare, kick, hats accent notes and features, you can tailor in a wild plethora of drumming styles and timings. you can change what piece of the kit you want to dominate. So someone like me i am a crash heavy guy. So a lot of my time spent wasted on EZD in the past was like 70% looking for the right midi and then editing the shit out of it to be crashy smashy and humanized.

Now?!

Now you check off a button and it does all that in a fraction of a second.

I am entirely impressed so far. I mostly just played with the band mate feature last night and didn't get to invested into some of the other stuff like humanization improvements etc.

The UI is pretty badass. It looks and feels so much more grown up and pleasant to be in. It's nice to have all the different kits and the choices of rooms now. Again, didn't spend much time there in those rabbit holes as i was honestly having a blast loading in some of my really old riff ideas that had no drums and watching them come to a new type of life in the bandmates feature. So bloody cool!!!

I have my Rec Chal#9 mostly done but I think I am going to go back and revisit the drums with EZD3!!!! Also my vocals aren't great in it so they might get a do over too.

[WhiskeyJack]

there appear to be heaps of videos on the youtubes right now highlighting all the cool new features as expected but i just watched 5 and all these youtube turds are loading in 10 - 20 seconds worth of a bass or guitar in to the bandmate. not really a great testament to see how intuitive it actually is for a complete piece.

[Armistice]

I gotta seriously fuck off and do something with it. I spread myself ay to thin over too much stuff.

Wisdom poking its head shyly over the hill, right there.

Why I don't build guitars and amps and furniture... it's not that I don't have the time, and not that I wouldn't enjoy learning the skills, it's the mental bandwidth.

[vomitHatSteve]

Huh... So I'm watching a video about this, and they talk about triggering the kick off of transients.

Meaning, you could probably get 90% of the way towards EZD bandmate with some clever chaining of Reaper built-in FX

[WhiskeyJack]

Huh... So I'm watching a video about this, and they talk about triggering the kick off of transients.

Meaning, you could probably get 90% of the way towards EZD bandmate with some clever chaining of Reaper built-in FX

what do you mean? like you can do something similar without the use of the EZD plug?

[WhiskeyJack]

I gotta seriously fuck off and do something with it. I spread myself ay to thin over too much stuff.

Wisdom poking its head shyly over the hill, right there.

Why I don't build guitars and amps and furniture... it's not that I don't have the time, and not that I wouldn't enjoy learning the skills, it's the mental bandwidth.

Fair. But i also couldn't sleep at night knowing i was capable of something and not try / do those things. I am sure this is a mental illness / condition of some sort.

It's also terrible condition for someone with suspected completion anxiety.