[Mark Styles]

I bought easy bass first, very impressed, then easy drums – not enough control, over individual sounds, not useful for some users.. Finally EZ keys..  IT HAS TO BE UPDATED!!!!!     I’m not bothering to buy anything from you anymore.

The idea to use a shared chord trak is brilliant, and saves a lot of time in making controllable and interesting bass/drums. If you completed the system, you would have a powerful tool.  which I’m sure a lot of people buy into

I understand you are going for a different, larger market – and if that’s your goal – Good luck to you,,

Superior drums is well – SUPERIOR..   I need the same especially for the keys. Packaging them all as different VI’s is JUST CHEESY.  A cheap ‘f**k you to the customer’  You’re just want the money now.

[Mark Styles]

UPGRADE EZKEYS  PLEASE

I’ve owned Superior Drums for many years.  Always appreciated the time, and effort that went into creating this.  A top-notch product.  Over Thanksgiving, I tried the trial of EZ Bass, which Seemed pretty decent, But 10 days is not enough time to learn this instrument, seeing as the manual is so minimal.  During your sale, I invested several hundred dollars into EZ BASS, EZ KEYS, EZ DRUMs.  Because you presented it as a songwriting packing stating the programs worked together to create a easy system to write songs.

When I got to EZ keys, I am shocked.  It is so far behind EZ Bass, in terms of functions, I found it very misleading (almost criminal the way you presented it).  If I had bought everything from Thoman in England, I could have returned everything..

If you updated EZEYS to the level of EZ BASS, EZDRUMS. things would be really fine. It’s like you started EZ keys as a clever inexpensive tool, Then EZ drums. Now with EZ Bass, you have brought this past the cheap 1 trick tool.  You have the foundation for a powerful suite of tools, but can’t quite decide what you want to do.  Much as Apple’s top-of-the-line Mac Pro was their crowning glory, They then discovered of iPhone, and iWatch, ipads, were much cheaper with a greater profit.   They seem to be begrudgiNG upgrade the  Mac Pro, because the profit and sales of other productions far outweigh the Pro.  Several times I have gone into Apple stores. and most of the staff is not really clear on what a Mac Pro is and some even Logic Pro.

Toontracks is in a similar position, they are straddling the fence on whether to invest the time to make.  I also feel like some customers here.  Neglected and kinda ‘RIPPED OFF’.

PLEASE UPDATE/UPGRADE EZ KEYS

[Mark Styles]

Yes you can.  Mac is notorious for putting the smallest SSD in their computers.   I bought an OWC Thunderbolt RAID system.  It houses 4 drives, that work as one FAST drive. Never had an issue with not being fast enough.  The benefit you can have is a huge amount of space (depending on the size you get) You can make aliases of data on your system drive, to move files to RAID  to free up more space.

I formatted the RAID  drive to RAID 5.. This uses one drive (of the four) as a ‘safety backup’.  You can retrieve ALL data if one of the drives goes down.  The SoftRAID system is extremely robust. It will give you plenty of time to repair any corruption.

I have two Thunderbay RAID systems for 7 years now.  Only had to replace one drive in 7 years.

Take into account your future plans.  Maybe you don’t need all that extra space.  Perhaps SSDs will come down in price in the future when a new technique is discovered.

[Mark Styles]

You can easily start with just the instrument. Play around with that for a while. Then listen to examples of different midi packages to see what you might like.

[Mark Styles]

I’ve been using SD3 with Logic Pro X for quite a few years.  I have SD3 sync to Logic and audition different drum parts, I directly drag the midi loops from SD3 into Logic Superior Drum track.   I drag in all loops I might possibly use.  I also drag in several fills from different styles, intros, endings, etc. In Logic I color each midi region – all drum intros are red, all verses are blue, fills are yellow etc. Then I string them together in the order I like, cut and paste in Logic. ETC.

You can use SD3 midi drum loops from different styles, then go back to the DAW midi drum track, and copy-paste different parts, like Hi-hat or Kick so that a different style is more consistent with the primary beat you’ve established.

This method works great for me, I much prefer to string midi together in the Logic rather than on Superior Drums 3 track. Especially on long song projects with 100-200 measures.

Just make sure your DAW allows you to drag in midi regions (I think all DAWs would have that feature by now).  It’s all in perfect sync.

• This post was modified 1 year, 5 months ago by Mark Styles.

[Mark Styles]

I agree.  I downloaded the EZ Bass trial..  10 days is not enough, considering my job, house chores, etc.  I needed to try it with EZ keys.  It took several days to get EZ keys trial to work, because the trial would not let me install an AUDIO UNIT (which Logic Pro needs).  We went back/for quite a # of times until you gave me a 2nd Terminal command to enter on mac. Finally EZ keys would install a audio unit.

All that wasted time left me with 2 days to try to get EZ Keys, EZ Bass, and Logic Pro working together.  Then EZ bass stopped.  You guys told me it was impossible to reset EZ Bass, unless I went thru this complicated procedure with the 2nd computer with a DAW in it. Then you would merge it, and I could get an EZ Bass trial again..   Seeing as it took me 7 days to get EZ keys going.  This would have been a useless procedure because my EZ Keys trial would have ended.

You really have nothing to lose by giving a longer trial period.  Sure some people with wring out a project or two for free.  But if your software is WORTH it, they will want it and PURCHASE it.

Logic (the DAW) was purchased by Apple from EMAGIC in Germany.  It was more expensive then, When Apple made a lot of changes to Logic and released version 10. They let a flood of download links exist where you could ‘steal’ it for free.  Everyone I knew had a cracked copy of Logic.  They did this on purpose.  Then lowered the price to $200, because it would only run on Mac computers (which were more expensive)  After a short while I bought it legit, and so did all my friends.  The benefit was now I got free tech support (really worth it).

I’m not suggesting you do any of the above. But the main thing is you want to get as many people as possible to try it.  Also let anyone read the forums. You are losing customers, because people interested can’t learn enough about it, or what people are complaining about.

[Mark Styles]

He most likely wants to record the midi into his DAW, and use a different instrument.  I personally don’t care for most of the EZ keys sounds, others may.

Getting the mdi out is of prime importance.  Compare the sound it outputs to UVI, Kontakt, Pianoteq libraries – I would suspect there should  be a way to do it.  I’m playing with trial version, and haven’t found a way yet.

[Mark Styles]

Email, forum, and sometimes just googling your question or situation has become the new norm for users.  For many companies cutting out real person tech  support has become the way of life..  So I don’t expect to purchase new software, to use on a session 4 hours from now..

More and more companies, are rapidly moving toward this business model.  I look at that an voice my opinion and experiences to potential new companies that have software, I want to purchase. I’ve had good luck with UVI. stuff.. downloads, ILOK crap, purchasing, Paypal work pretty well.. But UVI does the same thing, email support is it.  They respond back usually a day..

Very worse, and I now HATE them is ‘IK Multimedia’..  They have 5 head offices around the world, but no phone.  Hell, many of these companies, won’t even  provide their email, only a support ticket. IK Multimedia make pretty decent software, but, a few times now getting something to work is gonna be serveral days up to 2 weeks.  And if you lose (or in my case sound data got corrupted) they demand $150 to download your own product again off their servers. I went on a several day rant, showing them I had posted in Craigslists all over the US, pointed out their rip off policies,  told them I had collected 200 names, and was going to find some lawyers to start a class action lawsuit against them.

Bad publicity and $$$$ are the only motivations to these companies now.

I believe Toontracks is a dedicated company, products are top-notch, thought out.  definitely not out to rip  people off.  And having knowledgeable people to man tech support, does get expensive. I have a few Toontrack products.  Just today, I had to use up another authorization, because Apple wiped my SSD in order to fix it, and re-loading a cloned image, some how thinks most copy protected software, that is is being illegally used.. I have on occasion, emailed companies, explained, the ILOK or E-license (which I HATE MORE) gets un-authorized, and they give me another authorization to make up for it

So at this point,  it’s going to be the way more and more companies go..  Best to state your situation/problem as calmly as you can, include, serial#’s, invoices, computer platform, OS, DAW, etc. and hope you can resolve it quickly..

• This post was modified 5 years, 7 months ago by Mark Styles.

[Mark Styles]

Product manager wants to delete the original download block (each pretty sizable).. Once the SD3 drums are installed you don’t need the original downloads. (they state you you can download them later if you have to re-install.. (of course that takes time)..

I’m going to ask this as a separate post.. Drive space is tight.. and I would rather have the 250 gig drive space, if I can always re-download the data again..

IK Multimedia has this really slimmed policy, which they down’ make real clear.. you’re supposed to keep your downloads cause after 6 months they are going to charge you $150 to download the data again.. Every other website, I own software too, lets me log on, and retrieve the sound data again (not authorizations though).. Which is more than fair, and allows us to have backups of our virtual instrument sounds (in the cloud)..

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