first off generally speaking my upgrade went smooth and it just worked. no major issues and all the key stuff seemed to go as planned which was great. i wanted to follow up on a few odd things post install below:
1) so i hadn’t used my presonus S1 PRO and EZD / SD setup for probably almost a year (i’ve been busy doing other things unfortunately 
). in order to reacquaint myself with EZD and SD after a long period of disuse, i played around with them both all weekend long and I AM POSITIVE (b/c i wrote it down in notes) that at least on my Americana EZX kit, withOUT using a controller and just my mouse, if i hit different parts of the snare, it triggered different sounds vs just a straight up snare. for example there was a stick if you mouse clicked the the rim, mouse clicks close to the rim but on the snare produced a variety of more muffled flam / loose snare sounds (like a real drum) and it eventually became a very tight snare as you approached center and south of center line. i experienced similar layering with the americana cymbals and the hat would trigger open or closed depending on where i clicked with the mouse. i believe the toms had at least two different sounds depending on where you struck them. i swear i’m not making this up! i know what heard and was pretty excited to hear it :). using the mouse on different parts of each virtual piece image triggered a different sample. it wasn’t changing the velocity!
after my upgrade to EZD2 and running both the americana ezx 150 midi and sound library updates, i seem to have lost the functionality i describe above! the same tight snare sound is triggered no matter where i click on the virtual snare image. the snare stick/rimshot is still there if you click exactly on the rim. the high hat is always an open high hat never closed. cymbals trigger one sound except for ride bell. sure i’m not using a controller and only the mouse, but i’m curious why the triggering seems to have changed in this version vs what i experienced a week ago with the old EZD and my same EZX kits?
1a) unless i need to run a patch for SD, all my EZXs (jazz, americana and latin percussion) all have the same generic looking kit images which i’m positive each were different last week as well (each was unique i thought)??? this is SD btw and not EZD2.
1b) i could have sworn i had the option in the old EZD on the americana EZX to switch to a “Fibes Preset / kit” which appears to be missing in the new EZD2? my notes say i was able to pull that from a dropdown menu in the upper left of the old EZD and that doesn’t exist anymore in the new one. You have the upper right dropdown in EZD2 to choose your library and then a submenu popout to choose a kit or preset but they don’t seem to match what they were before. There is no left dropdown menu in SD so i’m pretty sure my notes from last week were accurate.
2) i have a presonus firestudio firewire mobile interface. EZD2 works fine routing the sound to the headphones of the unit when it is hosted by Studio One Pro. But when i play EZD2 in standalone mode, and choose the ASO drivers for presonus in the audio setup, i don’t hear anything through my headphones. NOTE, i don’t have monitors hooked up to the speaker outs which is why i need to be able to route to the headphones. this might be a presonus driver issue but the fact that EZD2 works fine as a host in S1 pro but not in it’s own toontrack host program makes me wonder if toontrack’s EZD2 standalone isn’t interfacing with the driver properly in the audio settings
3) a lot of the midi loops supplied with all these EZXs, SD, EZD and EZD2 and my old versions of EZ player are all listed in both the new EZD2 and old EZ Player pro browsers with the different tempos they were recorded with and presumably sound best with. i know you can switch both the old EZ Player pro or and the new EZD2 built-in “sequencers” to use your daw song’s tempo vs their own builtin sequencer tempos. But is there anyway to force the midi file to play at the tempo it was recorded and listed with in the browser AUTOMATICALLY so i don’t have to play around with tempos every time i switch to a new midi groove which has it’s own tempo? it’s a royal time sapper pita to have to do that and try to get a feel for what the original performance was supposed to be. multiply by 100s of 1000s of grooves and it’s driving me crazy ;). i think you get my drift.
thanks
Hi!
My name is Stefan and I’m a Sound Designer at Toontrack, so I will answer the questions that I know the answers to.
1.
The way that the graphics are done in EZD2 is not the same as in EZD1, therefore there can be differences in how the samples and articulations are being triggered when clicking the mouse in the GUI if you compare the two. The EZXs does however still contain the same amount of samples and react the same way to MIDI as before.
1a.
Superior Drummer has always used generic looking drums in the GUI. So the expected behaviour is that Americana and Jazz should have drums with the same colour, but with different sizes and positions (in Superior). Latin Percussion should have percussion drums.
1b
The presets in EZD are a new kind of presets that include both drum selection, effects and mixer bussing. To gain access to the kit presets that you could choose in the top left corner of EZD1, you need to go into the drum selection of any of the individual drums and to the right side of that window you have the old kit presets. If you want an EZX to sound the same as they did in EZD1, choose the EZD2 preset called Original Mix (or any of the EZD1 presets that are still included) and then choose any of the drum kits from the kit presets in the instrument selection window.
I hope this helps, let me know if I didn’t make sense 
Stefan Bränberg - Toontrack
Coder
@Stefan said:
Hi!
My name is Stefan and I’m a Sound Designer at Toontrack, so I will answer the questions that I know the answers to.
1.
The way that the graphics are done in EZD2 is not the same as in EZD1, therefore there can be differences in how the samples and articulations are being triggered when clicking the mouse in the GUI if you compare the two. The EZXs does however still contain the same amount of samples and react the same way to MIDI as before.1a.
Superior Drummer has always used generic looking drums in the GUI. So the expected behaviour is that Americana and Jazz should have drums with the same colour, but with different sizes and positions (in Superior). Latin Percussion should have percussion drums.1b
The presets in EZD are a new kind of presets that include both drum selection, effects and mixer bussing. To gain access to the kit presets that you could choose in the top left corner of EZD1, you need to go into the drum selection of any of the individual drums and to the right side of that window you have the old kit presets. If you want an EZX to sound the same as they did in EZD1, choose the EZD2 preset called Original Mix (or any of the EZD1 presets that are still included) and then choose any of the drum kits from the kit presets in the instrument selection window.I hope this helps, let me know if I didn’t make sense
stephan, thx for the quick replies. 1a makes sense. 1b will make more sense when i become more familiar with the interface and play around with it a bit.
regarding #1 : so i guess i wasn’t hearing things a week ago? i knew i wasn’t crazy
some feedback from a user perspective (mind you i’m not a midi guy). what i really liked about the old triggering interface images was it allowed me to hear (preview) the different inflections / articulations simply on each instrument piece quickly and intuitively right on the main screen with the mouse which is kind of important / really useful when navigating a wide array of kits, EZXs and tons in relation to the numerous midi files available to find the right mix of what you’re looking for. why did you guys leave this great functionality out?
as i said i’m not a midi guy. mouse clicks on a screen are quick and intuitive for me. if i want to be able to *quickly* achieve (sample the different trigger sounds available in each kit instrument) what i described in the old EZD, how do i do that in the new one? fwiw i have a small usb korg nano pad with 12 “finger trigger controllers” which might be able to map to the instrument articulations if that helps in a solution. my worry is this requires mapping which is likely to change from EZX to EZX, saving configurations and presets and i only have 12 triggers whereas this functionality was automagically and intuitively available to me without having to do anything but look at a snare image.. click on different parts of it and get the sound out of it that i would expect to if it was a real drum in front of me .. eg. drop dead easy!
thanks for any solutions you can provide
