Toontrack’s Classic EZX unique visualisation display’s the kit’s from the drummer’s perspective…
The Kits The main kits sampled are a Noble & Cooley five piece kit with two distinct head types, a Yamaha five piece and a Craviotto four piece. Believe me, these are all seriously high end kits which are then matched by a similarly high end selection of snares from Noble & Cooley, Craviotto and Ludwig. There are a maximum of fourteen different cymbals in the collection and we find a more than reasonable selection of hats, crashes, rides and splashes from the likes of Zildjian, Paiste and Sabian. Firing up the first multi-mic’d kit I was
immediately struck by the different tonality of the drums: Gone is the Hi-Fi sheen that normally distinguishes Toontrack libraries, but in its place is a very understated, dare I say ‘vintage’ sound. It’s easy at first listen to think that the drums sound a little unremarkable when compared to the more modern kit
libraries where the snares sound more like explosions and the cymbals can remove the enamel from your teeth, but with a bit of use you start to realise that the vintage drum samples have a real low down ballsiness that
Switching over to the four microphone kit things got even more interesting. First up, it’s actually five microphones as there is an additional ambience mic for livening things up and making the drums sound even bigger.
Classic EZX was recorded through a vintage Helios console, the same type used by The ‘ Stones, Hendrix and Led Zeppelin…
makes them perfect for any sort of classic rock. The other interesting thing I noticed was how well these drums sat in a track. You don’t always want the drums to pop out of a mix and these drums gelled with the other instruments in the track in a way that many modern drums often don’t.
What is EZdrummer?
Toontrack’s EZdrummer software is a plug-in that allows the user to create realistic sounding drum tracks using phrases and sounds recorded in world famous studios by some of the world’s most sought after and respected session drummers. There are EZdrummer libraries that cater for just about every style of music, including specialist styles like heavy metal, and each sample library includes thousands of MIDI files. The element that sets EZdrummer apart from many sound sample libraries is its skilful balance between ease of use and the high quality of the sound samples, which are all painstakingly recorded with vintage microphones through ultra-rare analogue recording consoles, often using rare drum kits or kits that are designed to deliver a specific sound related to each sound library’s specific genre. Drums are visualised in the EZdrummer interface so that the user is effectively viewing the kit from the drummer’s own perspective and a built-in virtual mixer also allows the user to adjust the levels of individual drums and cymbals in the kits, with the facility to control the amount of mic bleed to enhance the unique ambience of each kit.
The ‘EZ’ element comes from the software’s user-friendly design. Drum patters and phrases can be selected and then dragged and dropped into your DAW, which is a major part of the software’s ‘EZ’ element, whilst a ‘humanizer’ helps to inject a more realistic feeling of movement into the tempo eliminating the stiffness that is sometimes a problem with programmed drums. The speed that EZdrummer lets you assemble great sounding drum tracks is this software’s most appealing and impressive feature.
It’s nice not to have too many faders to worry about with drums and again these drums sat nicely into everything I recorded them into, although these drums can get seriously ballsy when you need it! On a personal note, I wasn’t actually too keen on the sound of the ambience mic; I would have loved something altogether huger sounding (think When the Levee Breaks by Led Zep) but what you actually get may just be more useful in an everyday setting. I would have also expected to hear more of the whole kit through the kick drum mic but in practise this does not detract from a great selection of drum sounds. PM
Should I buy one? So, whether you own Toontrack’s EZdrummer or a fully spec’d Superior kit, Classic EZX gives you a very useable collection of stunningly flexible and powerful vintage drum sounds that you probably won’t already have and at an admission price which almost makes this a no brainer. You may end up using it all of the time or just occasionally but I promise you that if you record any form of classic Rock ‘n’ Roll you’ll be very glad you’ve got it! Program it right, close your eyes and you can almost see Keith Moon or John Bonham smacking the skins through the studio glass!
38 3pickup
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