[Prime Mover]

I think they’re about as different as two drum VIs can be, and they’re both great at their respective roles. Battery, IMO, is almost exclusively designed as an electronic and beat making synth. No, it’s not quite Maschine, but it’s strengths lie in heavy processing, extreme customizability, and a library FULL of all kinds of varying samples. It’s strengths in that area are also it’s weakness in the area of more traditional, realistic drums. It’s almost TOO customizable to the point that it’s hard to get a kit that sounds like a kit. Sure, there are a few stock ones, but they’re a few out of a hundred, and you can tell they didn’t spend a huge amount of time on them. They also suffer in terms of velocity layers and the types of control that real drum sets require. For that, you need something that’s a little more focused, and that’s where EZDrummer comes in. I’ll lay it out right now: if you’re interested in mixing dozens of instruments and samples, EZD may not be for you. Sure, the up coming EZD2 will feature kit mixing, but it’s still a focused assortment (albeit high quality) of traditional drum samples, except for the few libraries of electronic kits. Each kit is meant to have its own unified sound and it does that extremely well. Lots of velocity layers and expression controls for people like me who are using e-drum kits. But in terms of internal mixing and tweaking, there’s practically next to none. The nice thing is that it’s not really that far from mixing a normal kit. EZD is sort of like your dry mic feed. You can route each channel into your DAW and add whatever kind of processing you need there, but aside from that, EZD has almost no tweakability. To me, EZD and its assorted kits are sort of like a good compressor. The best ones don’t have a whole lot of nobs, they just sound good. If you don’t like it you use a different one.

[Prime Mover]

That’s it! Thank you. Of all things the DM10 does NOT allow you to remap the HiHat (it does everything else but Hat, Crash, and Ride). HOWEVER, I was able to find a slick little workaround in Digital Performer. I created a Custom MIDI Map and used a midi insert plugin on the MIDI track to remap Bb1 to F#-1. So the drum track may contain Bb1 (what the DM10 puts out), but by the time it’s received by EZD it’s been remapped to F#-1 (EZDs hatsTrig), and it does this in real time so it works if I’m playing live or playing back the track. Neat! Thanks again, this solves all my problems. I was originally under the impression that the EZD Plugin simply didn’t read the CC4, glad I was wrong.

[Prime Mover]

It’s not that I’m having trouble with the response curve or any of the settings. At least within Toontrack Solo, it feels great. But in EZD plugin, CC4 flat out doesn’t work AT ALL. The DM10 has a internal response curve settings that are very customizable and realistic (so not necessary for me to have those settings in EZD or SD). Maybe I’ll wait till May 6th and caught up $100 for EZD2. I definitely want to get SD2 some day, but I can’t budget for that right now. If there’s any work arounds to get the EZD plugin to map CC4 to hi hat, I’m not afraid to write a Max/MSP plugin, or do some programing to do some manual remapping, but I don’t know what the mappings currently are so that I can translate to them. What exactly is the process that Toontrack Solo is doing? I may be able to simply use a remapping plugin within DP8. However, it strikes me that EZD Plugin only can receive individual notes, which means that it doesn’t have a wide range of samples. But strangely, inside Toontrack Solo, CC4 seems to be able to trigger a nice gradation of open/close samples… How can I trigger those samples within the EZD Plugin? They must be there!

[Prime Mover]

Yes, but only through the standalone “Toontrack Solo” app. Since I primarily work out of a DAW (MOTU DP8), this is more than a little problematic. I’d like to be able to process drum outputs separately, and have the benefit of working all in one environment, I can’t do that through the standalone. I’ve currently got “Toontrack Solo” setup so that I can use eDrums, but the workflow is stilted at best (no fault of Toontrack). I have to use Soundflower to return the audio to DP8, and so far I’ve only gotten it to work with one stereo audio track, and not on independent busses. If there’s some way of gaining eDrum control within the plugin version of EZD, then PLEASE let me know, but all the literature and posts I’ve read so far suggest otherwise.

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