I'm driven to make music because I love it, and that entails getting it done when the moment strikes, somewhere between full time work and full time family. I find I have to work in 15 min. spurts sometimes. You must see how a time saving piece of software like EZ2 would benefit someone like me, right?

 
Exactly!  Almost all of my songs have been written and recorded in 15-20 min. windows of time that open up in my day.  I have a very busy work and family life.  I often get up at 5am just to lay down a track before I have to go to work.  I set small goals, so that I don't get frustrated that everything is moving so slowly.  My goal in a 15 min. sitting might be to get 1 good chorus vocal take.  Shut it down and then wait until I can steal some more time.  I am sometimes really amazed at how well things can turn out, with such little time put into my craft.  I also often wonder what I could actually do, if time was my own.
 
If I had the attitude of "I'm a hobbiest and I have all the time in the world", I honestly fear that I would never actually accomplish anything.  If EZD2 helps me to get a really descent drum track down quickly; then it may be worth the $99 to me.  As mentioned several times above, I can always use the midi track in another drum software and tweak to my hearts desire, if I feel it isn't realistic enough.  For me, the hard part is actually writing the music, not tweaking everything later.

 "I am sometimes really amazed at how well things can turn out, with such little time put into my craft.  I also often wonder what I could actually do, if time was my own."
 
Ha!  I think this too.  How good could this be if I had unbroken hours to work?  What if I warmed up my voice BEFORE I sang that chorus?  What if I spent an hour or two really honing that bass part? Maybe one day....
 

strikinglyhandsome1
Imagine how far this thread would have got on TT's forum? They delete virtually everything or move it to where no one on earth can find it.

At least here, the Coffee House comes in handy for unwanted threads.

I sometimes imagine what the world would be like if people in the Coffee House were real and walking among us. Shudder shudder!

I never go in the coffee house but then being English I'm genetically wired to tea.
Now if they had a tea house I'd be there like a shot.
 
Steve

twaddle
 
I don't quite see how time would be of any great importance for a hobbiest ?
Yes I know if you're in full time employment, have children (or other distractions ) then obviously you don't have the time to spare but you're under no pressure to get projects finished and so in reality you have all the time you need.
 
Steve

True there is no external pressure to get things finished in a given time. But one still wants to get things done in the limited time available.
Tools like EZ Keys and the features that will be included in EZ Drummer 2 can help. As I am a (bad) keyboard player I will not entertain EZKeys, but something that helps with the drums I may go for, look at it like using a real drummer, you probably would not give him a score to play note for note, but rather indicate the groove and let him develop the part. It seems that EZDrummer2 may have that facility.
 
Much of my stuff is proggy instrumentals that do not conform to standard song structures so the song builder bit will probably be if limited use to me.
 
I totally get where Toontrack is going with this and I may have a use for some of it but the devil is in the detail.

Another sample of EZD2 released for your evaluation.  This is one of the new libraries that comes with the upgrade or new purchase.
 
https://soundcloud.com/to...drummer-2-modern-setup

Excitement builds!

Mod Bod
I'd like to remind (or inform) everyone that I was a customer before I was a betatester.  EZdrummer was the program that I wished FXpansion would have developed.  But they were into the Cadillac class drum sampler and I only wanted to pay for a Chevy at the time.  So when EZdrummer dropped into the market, I paid street price at (IIRC) Florida Music Co. and I think that was about $150.00.  It was almost a dream come true.

But unfortunately, when the grooves were dragged into SONAR the naming convention of the grooves was lost because of how TT placed that information into their grooves which (once again IIRC) were midi type 0 and Cakewalk was based on midi Type 1.  So I discovered what you had to do to get the format into a Midi type 1 format and that involved manually importing every groove into SONAR and then exporting it back into a very obtuse form of folder hierarchy that TT was using.  I hooked up with a programmer in on of their forums and he wrote a little program that would convert all of the Midi 0 files into Midi 1 and put the groove name where SONAR wanted to find it and then place it back into the Toontrack folder without EZdrummer being the wiser about it.

In the meantime, I also discovered, living in the very lowest keyboard keys, something curious.  The high hats were affected by my modulation wheel.  I could get the high hat to open on any given closed high hat but as soon as I stopped modifying the high hat values, the high hat would close.  I posted questions about this curiosity in the TT forums.  
 
Eventually, I got a message through back channels that this was because of something that hadn't been roped off and was not an intended feature so they (the staff) didn't speak of it publicly because EZdrummer was not intended or advertised as a live play VST instrument.  They told me which lower keys would act as I wanted so that I could achieve a varying sloppy hihat with my mod wheel.

And that's when I put two and two together and realized that the same engine driving EZdrummer was the same engine driving Superior.

 

Dave I remember all of this. I got EZD on your recommendation. Bought it from same place as you. Paid the same price, which I thought was high, but compared to the alternatives at the time, it was a great deal. And I remember the midi 0 /midi 1 thing. I can't remember but I think I got that conversion program from you? Or did TT give it out? But damn I had forgotten all about that stuff!!

Will ez2 consume much more memory compared to ez1? I was shopping for my first drum program and narrowed it down to ez1 or sd. I almost bought sd then I read a couple reviews saying that sd won't run on older computers because of high memory consumption and that beats will skip and the program will freeze. I decided I should buy ez because I'm running an xp with a p2 but I'm wondering now if all these new features on ez2 are going to lock up my xp box. I take song writing serious. I just don't have money to buy a new computer.

spmm
Will ez2 consume much more memory compared to ez1? I was shopping for my first drum program and narrowed it down to ez1 or sd. I almost bought sd then I read a couple reviews saying that sd won't run on older computers because of high memory consumption and that beats will skip and the program will freeze. I decided I should buy ez because I'm running an xp with a p2 but I'm wondering now if all these new features on ez2 are going to lock up my xp box. I take song writing serious. I just don't have money to buy a new computer.

 
As I would have thought, XP is not supported
 
http://www.toontrack.com/...1&key=&#139777
 
Think it's time you upgraded windows to at least windows 7 although if you're running a P2
it's really time you got yourself a complete new system.
I'm amazed that anyone is still running P2's but well done for sticking with one for so long
 
Steve

sven450
 "I am sometimes really amazed at how well things can turn out, with such little time put into my craft.  I also often wonder what I could actually do, if time was my own."
 
Ha!  I think this too.  How good could this be if I had unbroken hours to work?  What if I warmed up my voice BEFORE I sang that chorus?  What if I spent an hour or two really honing that bass part? Maybe one day....

 
I think you speak for many of us!!  Hear Hear!  

smallstonefan
Not sure if it was mentioned before, but you can get the upgrade at Sweetwater for $89.99
 
http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/EZdrum2up1/
 

 
Good news!

It seems there is way too much going on in the vst drum market all at about the same time.
 
Addicitve just announced Addictve Drums 2 and not too long ago BFD2 went to version 3...Now last evening I read about EZD 2 . It's a lot to take in when you already have a ton of drum programs.
 
I would like to take some time to sort this out and compare. I will say that this is the first time I have been tempted to look more seriously at EZ Drummer,mainly because of how they have their metadata sorted for midi loops. The fact that you can add an  entire songs worth of drums layed out in a way that makes it seem easier than cut and pasting...granted BFD2 has had a similar thing out for some time as you can construct  long loop sections in the control GUI and move or record it.
 
What I really wish some genius would do is come up with a program that can take a midi drum track and adapt it to any drum program I own. Interchangable loops would be a big step forward. Generic midi drums, yeah I guess most of them do that ok.
 
I'm not a drummer but I have no problem working with midi or playing in other parts with my midi controller....still I think we all like things to be EZ and if it really makes it EZier and saves some time, great! If this is the strong point, then they are selling a workflow primarily.
 
At this point I have too much on my plate to make an educated decision.I want to look at all the new stuff coming out. I don't really think I need any more drums. What I want to do is look at what makes EZD2 stand out from the others because they are all getting so similar.Buried under 24 tracks in a mix  will it really matter in the end?  I might be able to talk myself into a program that doesn't break the bank and that has found a way to improve my workflow...then again I used the other programs before so why change? Where does it end? EZD3,AD3,BFD4.....this isn't the end you know.
 
If the program is killer"as is" without any more add on "paks" I am more sold. OTOH if it is just the beginning of a marketing strategy to sell more paks...I'm not even remotely into that.
 
The samples in EZD2 go as far up as 18bit. I have been running BFD 2 in 24 bit samples for years...not impressed that they did this.

What I really wish some genius would do is come up with a program that can take a midi drum track and adapt it to any drum program I own. Interchangable loops would be a big step forward. Generic midi drums, yeah I guess most of them do that ok.
 
Hi Starise
that's already available from Toontrack - its called Ezplayer Pro
https://www.toontrack.com/products.asp?item=27
 
Cheers
Nigel