[davidge52]

Quite frankly for myself, I don’t really mind the differences in the interfaces given that interacting/designing drum tracks is VERY different from creating piano tracks which deals with scales and notes.

[davidge52]

Whether it’s deemed “good” is dependent on the style of music you intend to produce.  If you’re more into the electronic and “beats” world, it would probably be pretty useful.  For myself I’m not a big synth style sound user other than more realistic sounds from pads and such, so I wouldn’t get much use out of it after listening through some of the audio examples.  But heck, at that price if there’s a slight possibility you could use it, it might be worth the $15.  I’d just rather not spend the disk storage on it.

[davidge52]

Melborne:

I just have SD3 attached to a MIDI track in my project so it’s controlled within Ableton as a typical drum track in the same way I do with any other plugin virtual instrument I’m using in a given project.  I don’t export anything.  I do manage playback within the SD3 mixer, but it always reflects those changes accurately in my MIDI track as that’s being played directly through SD3 as a plugin.  By auditioning I meant selecting different presets, beats and such within SD3 to test them.  I don’t bounce the track to audio until it’s sounding the way I want it to sound in my DAW then I bounce it to it’s own audio track as a “frozen” track mix.  In Ableton that deactivates my MIDI track so all I hear is the drum audio track.  I occassionally apply EZMix track inserts for final polishing on the bounced audio track and I always do my mastering of all tracks using EZMix3 AI mastering which is exported to a mastered audio file.  As far as I could tell Dry EZX performed in exactly the same way as any of my other drum sample libraries or drum kits or any other plugin instrument libraries.

Generally speaking I don’t separate out the individual drums as I can pretty much get whatever I want between the mixer in SD3 or subsequent post processing work on the bounced audio track.  Once in a while I might find something I need to fix in the original mix that came from SD3 so I just eliminate the bounced audio track, fix whatever I need to fix in the SD3 mixer, and re-bounce it to a new audio track.

I hope that clarifies my process.

• The post has been modified 4 times, last modified 4 days, 4 hours ago by davidge52.

[davidge52]

Personally I wouldn’t EQ in Superior Drummer.  I have MUCH more comprehensive tools to do that sort of thing in my DAW, including EZMix3.

• This post was modified 4 days, 7 hours ago by davidge52.

[davidge52]

Okay, I’m really confused now.  I have Dry EZX but I’m running it in Ableton 11 on Windows 10.  I loaded Superior Drummer onto one of my tracks and auditioned a few different Dry EZX presets both in Superior Drummer and in Ableton and in all cases it sounded exactly the same.  What am I doing differently other than the Windows and Ableton that makes me not encounter this problem because I can’t seem to replicate it.

Reply To: Is there an easier way to render individual tracks including Bus FX in SD3? version: 3.4.4
Operating system: Windows 10

[davidge52]

Actually I often use the MIDI tracks created in EZKeys2 on all sorts of violin, cellos, full orchestras, etc. from other virtual instrument vendors.  Works GREAT!!

[davidge52]

LeanderL wrote:

Thank you! For mastering the entire song (and I have an album with e.g. 6 songs), should I put them all in the same DAW, project, pick the loudest part of these 6 songs, then apply the mastering plugin OR should I have one song only, let EZ Mix listen to it, export it…open the next song, let EZ Mix listen to it, export it etc.?

I am not sure how I can have an entire album with the exact same or very similar boost, sound etc.

I agree with John’s comments above.  For myself I’m typically dealing with songs that have a rather varied character and often have different instruments.  For example, one song may have electric guitar as the dominant supporting instrument and is supported with organ, drums, bass, and horns and is a fairly upbeat song with higher energy levels.  Another song may be a slower song primarly supported with simple piano, bass, lighter drum patterns and a string section.  In that case once the AI helper listes to each song it’s likely going to provide a different set of mastering options which is what I’d think you want in that case.  Similar styles of songs tend to get similar ranges of AI selected presets as it should.

Of course you can always use the same EZMix presets or any preset you choose yourself, but I let the AI lead me in these cases because it’s more of the expert than I am in that regard.

Dave

Reply To: EZ Mix 3, when to analyze the song? version: 3.2.2
Operating system: Windows 10

[davidge52]

Personally I just use Ableton Live in Session View on a laptop with each line populated with the mastered track created from EZMix3 at the correct BPM.  I just launch the track for any given song and it’s all perfectly coordinated.

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Thanked by: Tom

[davidge52]

I agree Toontrack does need to work on better integration of all their products together when they’re being used together in a DAW project.  It’s not a show stopper for me since I use a wide range of different instrument plugins from other companies so I’m used to coordinating them within a given project.

My approach is to start building the project with one instrument.  Typically that’s EZKeys but it can sometimes be Superior drummer.  In either case I lay out the entire song and code the individual sections as intro, verse, chorus, etc. within a project where I’ve designated the same BPM for the song project in my DAW (Ableton).  Once that’s done I’ll go back to my DAW and align the project time markers with the sections in my EZKeys or SD.  By having my DAW aligned on both BPM and markers in my DAW.  That makes it easier to align my work in the DAW with the section I’m dealing with in my plugin regardless of whether it’s a Toontrack plugin or another companies plugins.

[davidge52]

I’m relatively new to EZMix but here’s how I do things.  Using Ableton Live each song is it’s own DAW project with each instrument on it’s own track.  Once I’m happy with the overal basic mix I apply iZotope Neutron 5 to bounce each MIDI track to a ‘mastered’ track, but you could just as easily use EZMix to do the same thing.  When I’m ready to create the “Master” for each song I apply EZMix3 to my DAWs main output to master all of it using the AI mastering plugin.  That’s what I have the mastering plugin listen to to create the final mastered output.  Once it listens to the sample and gets applied it will give me the range of different ways it could be mastered and I audition them to find the one that best matches the sound I want for that song.  Once that’s complete I go back to the DAW and have it export the song to an MP3 file that’s now LUFS adjusted (which gives all songs the same LUFS volume levels) and that’s my final mix.

Operating system: Windows 10

• This post was modified 2 weeks, 1 day ago by davidge52.

[davidge52]

johncolumbo wrote:

I’m in the same boat as @IzeBMusic with tons of sounds (no need for them). I want the functionality of EZKeys and already own EZDrummer 2, so if I were to purchase only an EZKeys MIDI pack such as https://www.toontrack.com/product/hip-hop-ezkeys-midi/ would it be useless?

And yet your own documentation that comes with EZKeys refers to the EZKeys player which downloads as a part of the products and operates as a plug in VST, and yet you say this is no such thing? I know I certainly can’t find such a thing from the downloaded files.

[davidge52]

And THIS is the key reason I abandoned Toontrack products years ago.  They just don’t seem like keeping things updated or rejuvinating them in such a way that they nicely integrate into the modern DAW environments.  They seem to like to exist in their own little world doing their own little thing.  I decided to take a chance after about 10 years of abandoning my EZ Drummer stuff for more modern integratable plugins and purchased EZKeys.  Standalone it’s a great little program, but has little ability to seamlessly integrate as a common plugin such as a VST3.  Instead I’m finding out through their supplied documentation that the only integration it supports is through YFSG (Your Favorite Sound Generator) which is nowhere to be found even googling it.

I’ll hand it to them, the boys in the backroom who still live at home with their parents, wearing their Metallica t-shirts and chewing on KitKat bars can do some good work if they decide to, but certainly have no allegiance to an installed base of product owners apparently.

Reply To: New Version or Update of EZ-Keys? version: 1.2.5
Operating system: Windows 10

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Thanked by: Jens Larsen

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