EQ
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EZ vs Eco...?
I was reading the thread on here that beepster did (very, VERY helpful :) ). I got to wondering and thought Id just ask my sonar brothers (and sisters, lol), between the two (EZdrummer and BFD eco) which would you choose and why.?
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jb101
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Re:EZ vs Eco...?
2012/08/09 12:01:08
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Purely personal, but I'd go with EZ.
I like the sounds, interface and the MIDI files. They sound incredibly realistic. Some people don't like the snares, but they can be improved with processing. If you add the expansion packs (I particularly like the Nashville - don't be fooled by the name, it is NOT just Country) it's even better.
You can also upgrade to Superior at a later date, if you feel the need. I can't recommend them highly enough.
Just my opinion...
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yorolpal
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Re:EZ vs Eco...?
2012/08/09 12:03:55
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Have both...use EZD more. Much more. Just personal preference.
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Glyn Barnes
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Re:EZ vs Eco...?
2012/08/09 12:50:37
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Both are excellent, you get a lot more variety your money with Eco, but still prefer EZ drummer. I think Eco has a more "modern" sound, which is probably why I lean towards EZ Drummer.
Eco is only 64 bit on Windows 7. Vista users are stuck with the 32 bit version and on my system it need JBridge.
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twaddle
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Re:EZ vs Eco...?
2012/08/09 13:06:33
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I'm not going to go on about which I think is best or why but I will say that till the end of this month you can buy BFD Eco + Platinum samples rock legends for a mere $49. Platinum samples rock legends normally retails at $59 whilst Eco would normally set you back around $79. So I'd say financially there's only one choice right now. I'm a huge fan of Fxpansion because I love the sound of raw unprocessed drums that are extremely well recorded. It has far more scope for tweaking and creating your own sounds in my opinion. And the sounds are much less processed which may not be what you want of course. Oh sorry, I wasn't going to go on about it  Here's a link to their special offer BFD Eco sale Steve Also as has been pointed out if you have anything that pre-dates windows 7 you can only run it in 32bit. I think this is a bit of a misnomer to be honest as the only (or main) reason people were needing 64bit was to take advantage of the extra ram that could be used. BFD Eco was created for slower machines with less ram so the 64 bit thing is no big deal. It runs perfectly for me on windows 7 32 bit and has no issues with bitbridge.
post edited by twaddle - 2012/08/09 13:13:25
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EQ
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Re:EZ vs Eco...?
2012/08/09 13:49:28
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Thank you guys for all your input. @twaddle: the sale is why this questions got bouncing around in my head.
Do both have effect processing? (not that its totally needed with X1/2, but nice to have)
Do both use a track type layout to org. there grooves?
(sorry, I know a lot of my questions can be answered with the demos, but I dont have net at home currently. And DLn @ work is a no-no right...lol)
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twaddle
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Re:EZ vs Eco...?
2012/08/09 14:13:55
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EQ
Thank you guys for all your input. @twaddle: the sale is why this questions got bouncing around in my head.
Do both have effect processing? (not that its totally needed with X1/2, but nice to have)
Do both use a track type layout to org. there grooves?
(sorry, I know a lot of my questions can be answered with the demos, but I dont have net at home currently. And DLn @ work is a no-no right...lol)
Hi EQ Sadly there is no demo for either Eco or Ezdrummer. There is a demo for Eco's big brother BFD2, There is no demo/trial version for superior drummer though. Ezdrummer is very limited in terms of features compared to Eco, there are no built in effects. You can't arrange your midi grooves in ezdrummer but you can in BFD Eco. I think you can arrange midi tracks in ezplayer which is a separate program. I have EZdrummer but it's full of cobwebs and I haven't looked at it for a long time. I just loaded it up in to sonar and unless I'm wrong it seems there are no separate outputs for cymbals which seems really bad to me. Steve
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Glyn Barnes
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Re:EZ vs Eco...?
2012/08/09 14:14:53
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EQ
Do both have effect processing? (not that its totally needed with X1/2, but nice to have)
Do both use a track type layout to org. there grooves?
Eco has effects, EZ Drummer does not. I am not clear what you mean by the second question, both have an effective system for organising grooves.
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twaddle
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Re:EZ vs Eco...?
2012/08/09 14:20:09
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Glyn Barnes
EQ
Do both have effect processing? (not that its totally needed with X1/2, but nice to have)
Do both use a track type layout to org. there grooves?
Eco has effects, EZ Drummer does not. I am not clear what you mean by the second question, both have an effective system for organising grooves.
I don't know how you do it in EZdrummer but in Eco there is what's called a drum lane/track in to which you can drag the grooves you like and arrange them from there. To be honest I think it's far better to drag them in to your midi track in sonar anyway. You can arange them how you like just as easily but obviously you can edit them properly too. I don't think any of the drumplers provide a drum editor that will take the place of your host sequencer. I'm waiting to see what fxpansion do in that department with BFD3. Steve
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twaddle
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Re:EZ vs Eco...?
2012/08/09 14:36:58
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If money were no object I guess I'd say get them both. Actually, if money were no object and you were ready for the learning curve I'd say to hell with it and get BFD2. As well as can I borrow a million quid please  Steve
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Glyn Barnes
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Re:EZ vs Eco...?
2012/08/09 14:43:03
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twaddle
I don't know how you do it in EZdrummer but in Eco there is what's called a drum lane/track in to which you can drag the grooves you like and arrange them from there.
To be honest I think it's far better to drag them in to your midi track in sonar anyway. You can arange them how you like just as easily but obviously you can edit them properly too.
If that was the OP question there is no function to chain grooves together in EZ Drummer like there is in Eco but as you say its probably best to drag them into Sonar and work there. I have Toontrack's EZ Player Pro which has this functionality but I never use it , It does however add the ability to drag kit pices in a groove into a track, like you can in Superior Drummer. You are correct that there are no individulal cymbal mikes in EZ Drummer (Or Superior Drummer for that matter) but its not something I have ever missed. I just had a play in Eco and to me the cymbal channels don't sound any different to the overhead channel. Having seperate channels does add to the mixing options though, particulary if you want to put effects on a single cymbal.
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twaddle
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Re:EZ vs Eco...?
2012/08/09 14:57:14
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But you can't pan your cymbals without panning the room and overheads. You can't have dry cymbals and you cant apply any effects to them?
I quite often use a flanger on the cymbals as well as a delay on choked cymbals. I can't see how I could do that in EZdrummer.
Steve
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Platinum Samples
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Re:EZ vs Eco...?
2012/08/09 15:01:52
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twaddle
But you can't pan your cymbals without panning the room and overheads. You can't have dry cymbals and you cant apply any effects to them?
I quite often use a flanger on the cymbals as well as a delay on choked cymbals. I can't see how I could do that in EZdrummer.
Steve
You run a separate instance of EZDrummer just for the cymbals. Rail
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EQ
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Re:EZ vs Eco...?
2012/08/09 15:03:51
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Again guys thank you for the input. Hearing what your peers think and feel about software helps loads....
@twaddle: Brotha if I had a million, +1 equipment/software issues wouldnt be, well an issue...lol. And we meet at a bar and rounds on me, so by the end of the night we'd probably start a music house and Id give you more then a few quids... ;)
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cclarry
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Re:EZ vs Eco...?
2012/08/09 15:06:35
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EQ.....take my advice...get Eco and get the Rock Legend kit free...
Right now ...this IS the deal....
EZD is on sale all the time too..but not like this....
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cclarry
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Re:EZ vs Eco...?
2012/08/09 15:08:11
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twaddle
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Re:EZ vs Eco...?
2012/08/09 15:18:00
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twaddle
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Re:EZ vs Eco...?
2012/08/09 15:20:13
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EQ
Again guys thank you for the input. Hearing what your peers think and feel about software helps loads....
@twaddle: Brotha if I had a million, +1 equipment/software issues wouldnt be, well an issue...lol. And we meet at a bar and rounds on me, so by the end of the night we'd probably start a music house and Id give you more then a few quids... ;)
That'll do me just fine. Steve +1000 what CClary said.
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Rain
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Re:EZ vs Eco...?
2012/08/09 15:20:19
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I still haven't had much time to put Eco to test. I did, however, check out the incredible libraries that Platinum Samples put out for it and Joe Barresi's kit is simply jaw dropping. Since I didn't want to upgrade to BFD full for the moment, I checked the Eco Kit. The one thing that kept me from grabbing it is the machine gun snare at 18 seconds in the first demo. I suspect this might be due to some limitation in the BFD engine - I didn't hear anything similar in the BFD full version. http://www.platinumsample...coKits/EvilEcoKit1.php Maybe someone can shed some light on this... Otherwise, I've been a fan of EZ and now SD even since I've first tried EZ. Overall, the BFD kits seem to sound more natural. If I were a drummer, I'd probably be inclined to use BFD. EZ and SD kits seem a bit more "prepared" - not as excessively as Steven Slate's SSD kits, but kinda half-way. As a songwriter and "aspiring engineer", EZ and SD puts me a few steps further on the way to a good drum sound for the song w/o being as processed as SSD, so I can still polish them a bit and make them work in the song myself.
TCB - Tea, Cats, Books...
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twaddle
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Re:EZ vs Eco...?
2012/08/09 15:50:03
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Rain
I still haven't had much time to put Eco to test. I did, however, check out the incredible libraries that Platinum Samples put out for it and Joe Barresi's kit is simply jaw dropping.
Since I didn't want to upgrade to BFD full for the moment, I checked the Eco Kit. The one thing that kept me from grabbing it is the machine gun snare at 18 seconds in the first demo. I suspect this might be due to some limitation in the BFD engine - I didn't hear anything similar in the BFD full version.
http://www.platinumsample...coKits/EvilEcoKit1.php
Maybe someone can shed some light on this...
Otherwise, I've been a fan of EZ and now SD even since I've first tried EZ. Overall, the BFD kits seem to sound more natural. If I were a drummer, I'd probably be inclined to use BFD.
EZ and SD kits seem a bit more "prepared" - not as excessively as Steven Slate's SSD kits, but kinda half-way.
As a songwriter and "aspiring engineer", EZ and SD puts me a few steps further on the way to a good drum sound for the song w/o being as processed as SSD, so I can still polish them a bit and make them work in the song myself.
I've never been entirely sure what machine gunning is. To my ears what you described as machine gunning sounds like a badly programmed drum roll where the velocities are all the same. I'm not sure how old this add is but I notice that it's advertising BFD 2.1 (it's currently at 2.3) so that dates it to over a year old. Since then both Eco & BFD2 have gone 64bit. BFD Eco now has an "anti machine gun" tick box which may well have been added since the demo was made. I know there were a number of posts I'd seen on the fx forum a while back about it so it may well be a thing of the past now ? Steve By the way, BFD Eco has just had an update as of today.
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Rain
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Re:EZ vs Eco...?
2012/08/09 15:57:41
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TCB - Tea, Cats, Books...
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Platinum Samples
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Re:EZ vs Eco...?
2012/08/09 18:38:24
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Rain
I still haven't had much time to put Eco to test. I did, however, check out the incredible libraries that Platinum Samples put out for it and Joe Barresi's kit is simply jaw dropping.
Since I didn't want to upgrade to BFD full for the moment, I checked the Eco Kit. The one thing that kept me from grabbing it is the machine gun snare at 18 seconds in the first demo. I suspect this might be due to some limitation in the BFD engine - I didn't hear anything similar in the BFD full version.
http://www.platinumsample...coKits/EvilEcoKit1.php
Maybe someone can shed some light on this...
Otherwise, I've been a fan of EZ and now SD even since I've first tried EZ. Overall, the BFD kits seem to sound more natural. If I were a drummer, I'd probably be inclined to use BFD.
EZ and SD kits seem a bit more "prepared" - not as excessively as Steven Slate's SSD kits, but kinda half-way.
As a songwriter and "aspiring engineer", EZ and SD puts me a few steps further on the way to a good drum sound for the song w/o being as processed as SSD, so I can still polish them a bit and make them work in the song myself.
Here's a real quick video showing the Snare playing a roll and that section of the demo using the latest build of BFD Eco http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sitQVaClMSc Cheers, Rail
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cclarry
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Re:EZ vs Eco...?
2012/08/09 18:48:47
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twaddle
cclarry
And get this before it's over....
Great value...
http://www.audiomidi.com/Gen16-Digital-Vault-Z-Pack-No-Brainer/dp/B00439GVLQ
Larry
This isn't downloadable is it? I really wanted this but it seems it's not for us folk in the UK 
Steve
Upon registering at Fxpansion there is a major update application installer version 1.0.1.27 download available in my Fxpansion online account...don't really know if that's the whole sha-bang or not... I doubt it since it comes on 2 DVD's ...it's a pretty good size library just for the Cymbals... And is has Eco DV..... Nope ...it's only 49 MB in size....and says you must install the 2 DVD's before running it...
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Rain
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Re:EZ vs Eco...?
2012/08/09 18:50:52
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Where's my wallet?!
Amazing. :)
TCB - Tea, Cats, Books...
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cclarry
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Re:EZ vs Eco...?
2012/08/09 18:51:58
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It's just an update to the the Eco DV applcation...
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twaddle
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Re:EZ vs Eco...?
2012/08/09 19:09:38
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cclarry
twaddle
cclarry
And get this before it's over....
Great value...
http://www.audiomidi.com/Gen16-Digital-Vault-Z-Pack-No-Brainer/dp/B00439GVLQ
Larry
This isn't downloadable is it? I really wanted this but it seems it's not for us folk in the UK
Steve
Upon registering at Fxpansion there is a major update application installer version 1.0.1.27 download available in my
Fxpansion online account...don't really know if that's the whole sha-bang or not...
I doubt it since it comes on 2 DVD's ...it's a pretty good size library just for the Cymbals...
And is has Eco DV.....
Nope ...it's only 49 MB in size....and says you must install the 2 DVD's before running it...
It's the two DVD's that are the problem. I don't think audiomidi ship to the UK. Having said that I haven't actually checked. Steve
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Rain
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Re:EZ vs Eco...?
2012/08/10 01:12:03
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This probably isn't the right place to ask, but it's worth a try... When I try to route BFD Eco individual outputs, I get a drop down menu starting w/ outputs 11-12 and giving me only 3 other options (2 busses or main)... Like it skips the first 11 outputs. :s 
TCB - Tea, Cats, Books...
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Rain
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Re:EZ vs Eco...?
2012/08/10 01:18:38
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Nevermind - found the answer. The routing is a bit odd but I'll get used to it.
TCB - Tea, Cats, Books...
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twaddle
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Re:EZ vs Eco...?
2012/08/10 04:50:09
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It is a little odd but basically your outputs within sonar (or any other host) are predetermined.
I think this is how sonar is able to name tracks for you which is something I really like about Eco.
Not a big deal but it saves a little time I guess.
Steve
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scook
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Re:EZ vs Eco...?
2012/08/10 06:17:05
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twaddle
cclarry
twaddle
cclarry
And get this before it's over....
Great value...
http://www.audiomidi.com/Gen16-Digital-Vault-Z-Pack-No-Brainer/dp/B00439GVLQ
Larry
This isn't downloadable is it? I really wanted this but it seems it's not for us folk in the UK
Steve
Upon registering at Fxpansion there is a major update application installer version 1.0.1.27 download available in my
Fxpansion online account...don't really know if that's the whole sha-bang or not...
I doubt it since it comes on 2 DVD's ...it's a pretty good size library just for the Cymbals...
And is has Eco DV.....
Nope ...it's only 49 MB in size....and says you must install the 2 DVD's before running it...
It's the two DVD's that are the problem. I don't think audiomidi ship to the UK.
Having said that I haven't actually checked.
Steve
You can purchase and download directly from fxpansion no need to use a third party vendor.
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