It’s not that EZ is it? lol. I think its like a halfway point between a ‘Superior’ product and a proper ‘EZ’ product. I mean it literally has features from both sd3 and ezd2 so why did toontrack decide to call it ‘EZ’? Beats me. I really enjoy it though and don’t really have complaints so much as some criticisms here and there. EZBass reminds me of when ezd2 was first released and the velocity knob had been removed which was super crucial to user experience. Toontrack eventually put the velocity knob back as dragging each groove to the song track and using the edit/play feature to manipulate the velocity was not very…’EZ’! :p
I think some of the beef around ezbass though is different because 1) it’s a completely different instrument than drums and 2) toontrack wasn’t completely upfront about the way the engine works in regards to sample pool, bass tab fretboard note display and the intricacies of the tuning system. But once those are figured out i think some of the riff raff around these issues is less relevant. Who cares if EZBass doesn’t replicate the exact same drop tuning when the Metal EZX tunes down to D#/Eb? That is some serious range and will cover any alternate tuning c’mon now. Also knowing that toontrack didn’t sample each fret (as i understand it) explains why the fretboard on the bass tab shows notes in weird places. It’s small things that aren’t really detrimental to overall workflow.
Even if it has some limitations what it gets away with is a lot, the articulations and the quality of sound are top notch. The overall feature set is expansive for being an ‘EZ’ product which is why i struggle with understanding as to why it is even considered ‘EZ’ it occupies a different class of product than the other lines. That’s really a compliment since the editability of the features is very deep.
One of the coolest things about it is that it sounds so lifelike that i get the psychological urge to reach out and grab a bass and start playing as if there’s really one with me. of all the other virtual basses and guitars i’ve tried none of them do this. The realism is off the charts, especially with the new Metal EBX and the extended range tunings. The presets are so usable and malleable. I could go on forever about EZBass. It rules!
