Superior Drummer 3 vs EZ Drummer 3 (Bandmate Feature)

[Oriohs]

Hello!

I have owned Superior Drummer 3 for several months now (still very new to the program). I recently saw the announcement for EZ Drummer 3. One of the features that caught my attention for EZ Drummer 3 was the “Bandmate” feature where you can drop in an audio track and the software will pump out an automated drum track based on the track you put in. Does that feature exist within Superior Drummer 3? If so, I have not stumbled across it yet. Being that I am not a drummer, that would be something that would be very helpful for my songwriting and that I am highly interested in that specific feature. Additionally, since I already own Superior Drummer 3, what would the benefits if any be for picking up EZ Drummer 3?

Thanks in advance!

• This topic was modified 2 years ago by Oriohs.

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Thanked by: TrebleHook

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[sumskilz]

Bandmate doesn’t exist in Superior Drummer 3, so you pretty much answered your own question. Other than that, maybe you’ll want the EZdrummer 3 sound library, but that seems to be it.

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Thanked by: Stilli, Barry Dalchow and TrebleHook

[Si]

Good question, particularly why Toontrack has introduced new features in ED3 but not updated SD. Perhaps cynically, it makes me wonder if Toontrack are forcing us to buy both products, despite the premium price for SD. I’m a songwriter, too and can see a lot of benefit in Bandmate although I’ve only just heard about it. So, now writing a song I have to choose between ED3 and SD tracks. ED3 has Bandmate but not SD. SD sounds great and was superior to ED2 but now is falling behind? Poor product planning, Toontrack. I expected better. I raised this with them and got some rubbish corporate reply.

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Thanked by: Stilli, paulcusick, t_ho and 3 others.

[TrebleHook]

I just upgraded to SD3 from SD2.  From watching tutorials to better familiarize myself with the features in SD3 I ran across the video for bandmate in EZD3.  Then started looking for the feature in SD3, because I have a groove in a rhythm guitar part I’d like to match and found out it only works in the Tracker feature with drum grooves, even deciphering the different kit pieces into their respective midi part.   If by miscalculation and picks up the snare as a tom or vice versa, or any number of other similar drums, it has a menu so the part can be reassigned.   What I’m wondering is if I took the recorded rhythm guitar, and dropped the part into tracker, then assigned it to say a Tom, which is the essence of what I’m going after in a Bo Didley style beat for the song, if it would work similar to bandmate?  It would make sense then some hits in the translation could be reassigned from the Tom hits to another track like a kick.  For the most part it is the transients of the rhythm groove part I’m playing on the guitar I’m looking to capture.  It also makes me wonder if there will be an update for SD3 to add bandmate as a feature, because technically it’s almost there, or do the plan on adding it in an SD4 version and have to pay for an upgrade?  The Caveats is there is no crossgrade pricing from SD2 to SD3, so full price was the cost to upgrade, but if I needed the bandmate feature of EZD3 I could of purchased it first and then get crossgrade price for SD3.

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[andrei_7]

I have SD3 too but I wish I got EZD3 since I find the Bandmate feature useful.  Any chance Toontrack will add Bandmate to SD3?

[Nicholas DiFabbio]

SD 3 is the premium drummer app from Toontrack.

To have such a useful feature in the more basic program but not the premium program seems counter to good business practice.

I think they’ll be adding it to SD 3 soon.

• This post was modified 10 months, 3 weeks ago by Nicholas DiFabbio.

[John]

Hi guys, of course you are perfectly free to add your voices to request new features in Toontrack products, but I do not understand the referring of SD3 as “the premium” product and EZD3 as a “lesser” product.
The two have different target groups and as such have different feature sets. If they had the same feature sets, what would be the purpose of them being different products?
SD3 is geared more towards producers, studios and E-drummers who need the extra tweaking options, bells and whistles.
EZD3 gets you good sounding drums without any fuzz.
SD3 users “in general” tend to create their own MIDI or record people creating the drum MIDI live with other musicians.
EZD3 lets the user explore the existing MIDI and creatively modify it with Edit Play Style, the Grid Editor and of course Bandmate.

IMHO they are both premium products. Different target groups.

BR,
John

John Rammelt - Toontrack
Technical Advisor

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Thanked by: Scott Eshleman

[Nicholas DiFabbio]

Then why don’t they cost the same, and why is SD 3 something to upgrade to. BTW, I didn’t say ‘lesser’ just more basic. Which supports my point.

I’m not a producer, don’t have a commercial studio, and don’t create MIDI live with other musicians,  I wanted SD 3 for the advanced libraries and more tweakable mixing.

You would, I assume want people to move to SD 3 for those and other reasons, yet why would they want to lose an obviously valuable (and seeming great from what I’ve seen in tutorial videos) feature when they’re about to, in their eyes, upgrade and pay more.

SD 3 should have Bandmate, and as I said, I believe it will.

 

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Thanked by: Rene Lavoie, Haaga and matthias.kahlau

[matthias.kahlau]

John wrote:

Hi guys, of course you are perfectly free to add your voices to request new features in Toontrack products, but I do not understand the referring of SD3 as “the premium” product and EZD3 as a “lesser” product.
The two have different target groups and as such have different feature sets. If they had the same feature sets, what would be the purpose of them being different products?
SD3 is geared more towards producers, studios and E-drummers who need the extra tweaking options, bells and whistles.
EZD3 gets you good sounding drums without any fuzz.
SD3 users “in general” tend to create their own MIDI or record people creating the drum MIDI live with other musicians.
EZD3 lets the user explore the existing MIDI and creatively modify it with Edit Play Style, the Grid Editor and of course Bandmate.

IMHO they are both premium products. Different target groups.

BR,
John

I don’t think they are two totally different target groups that you can easily separate. I think there is quite a potential or actual overlap of use cases and requirements. I am also a producer using SD3 because of the added flexibility etc., but I would highly appreciate the addition of the Bandmate feature. It would make a nice, natural, and useful (more powerful) extension to already existing features in SD3 like Edit Play Style and Song Creator. Adding Bandmate would make SD3 even more superior instead of kind of falling behind EZD3 with regard to intelligent features.

 

[Kevin Evans]

I;ve been using Toontrack since Drumkit From Hell and so I’m kind of locked into the Superior upgrade path, but dammit Bandmate sounds like something that would be incredibly helpful. Come on Toontrack, bring it to Superior, paid upgrade if necessary.

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Thanked by: Haaga and Stilli

[Galllo]

I couldn’t agree more, its literally in the name “Superior” it feels misleading then to know you lose out on certain game changing features while paying a lot more money. EZ (in my opinon) is marketed to look like the introductory version, the foundations for Artist AND Producers. Superior to me is suppose to be all the bells and whistles, which means having  the ability to go under the hood and tweak things (as it does) but not at the penalty of losing out on really great feature that can immensely help in the overall creative process of song writing.

When I decided to buy SD3 from the research I had done, I thought it was the right choice for me, and even though my drums sound great, I find I don’t write as much because I desperately need something like Bandmate to help me get over that hump. I use to write with Logic but in the last 5+ years I have migrated to Pro Tools.

PLEASE Toontrack, give us this feature, the doors this would open for I’m sure so many people would be gigantic! Update it in pleeeeaseeeeee!

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Thanked by: Rene Lavoie

[Oscar Stern]

Superior Drummer needs another update to where it has Bandmate. What would also rock is to relaunch the Cocktail EZX as a new download, & also relaunch the Evil Drums SDX in a Digital version

[Harold van Dijk]

I’ve use both ezdrummer 3 and superior drummer 3 on 1 track. Ezdrummer for creating midi in bandmate. And then move the midifile to superior drummer 3 for mixing.

[Rene Lavoie]

“SD3 users “in general” tend to create their own MIDI or record people creating the drum MIDI live with other musicians.”

I disagree with your statement because including MIDI libraries with the expansions of SD3 would indicate that you also expect that users will be assembling their own midi tracks as well within the software itself.

As many users have pointed out, the decision to purchase SD2/SD3 is driven by the desire to have the best Toontrack drum software available and while that might be true from a sound option standpoint, its clearly not the case from a utility standpoint where you require us to purchase both software to have complete features.

Fortunately, while less productive and more complex, there are other ways of achieving what bandmate does,

I mean come on, when you have 2 drum products and one is named “Superior”, do you really expect your customers to not think “It’s like Easy Drummer, but better” ?

• This post was modified 1 month ago by Rene Lavoie.

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Thanked by: darrens

[Galllo]

Well said Rene, couldn’t agree more!

[0604reg333]

This is a valid question, especially considering why Toontrack has introduced new features in EZdrummer 3 (ED3) but hasn’t updated Superior Drummer (SD). It might lead one to speculate if Toontrack is pushing users to purchase both products, despite the premium price of SD. As a songwriter myself, I can see the potential benefits of Bandmate, although I’ve only recently become aware of it. Now, when writing a song, I’m faced with the dilemma of choosing between ED3 and SD tracks. While ED3 offers Bandmate, SD does not. Although SD sounded great and was superior to EZdrummer 2 (ED2), it now seems to be falling behind. This seems like poor product planning on Toontrack’s part, and I expected better from them. I reached out to them about this issue and received a disappointing corporate response.

[Author]

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