I just don't get the concept of purchasing a tool, any tool, with the expectation that the tool maker will continuously keep charging me to "improve" the tool! Only software companies breed this mentality. Product "development cycle" is a marketing term not a programming concept. As in, "What can we add to the software, incrementally, to keep the users forking over more cash, so that marketing and upper management can keep their jobs."
Has EZD done exactly what TT said it would when you purchased it? Did it meet YOUR expectations and justify the price you paid for it? Does it STILL do the job for which it was purchased? Then shut up about not having any major updates in 8 years. IT STILL WORKS.
IMHO CW could have postponed the entire "X" series until it was REALLY finished baking. There really was no reason for X1,X2,and X3. Management knew all along where X was going years in advance and decided to piece it out to us incrementally. The ONLY reason for this is "mo money, mo money, mo money". This idea of adding a couple of "new" features, bundle a few more "goodies", introduce some new bugs, and whack our users each year just stinks. I personally would love for my software to just work. I would then wait years for the next paradigm shift.
Just my $.02.
 
P.S. I will be upgrading to EZD2. I love working with EZD1, and think the new features are worth the price. Kudo's Toontrack for not falling into the Microsoft, Intuit, Cakewalk upgrade forever cycle.

Not sure I follow your logic there Larry. As with ST3 you rail against the length of time between updates...which would seem to imply that if the updates had been sooner and more regular you would've availed yourself of them. But then you say that to avail ones self of them when they finally do come out is a hasty, rash decision solely based on GAS. How does that cake taste anyways:-)

I've gotten burned on sales. I bought Waves REDD for 149. (I'm a Beatles freak and Waves has my number). Six months later it was on sale for 89. I bought Slate's VCC 149, now it is 99. I admit that I didn't need those products at the time. But here's the thing. I have limited time in the studio due to work and family. I get a few hours a week. If you came to my door and said, "John, I can build you a grove search tool so you can build drum tracks in less than half the time," I would gladly pay you $89. just for that alone. That is how important it is to me. Not because it is the latest thing. I'm am sure there are other Sonarians in the same boat. Also, EZ Drummer held it's price for years before I saw it less than 149. Last year, after being out for 7 years, it was as low as 29. My gut feeling is you will be waiting a while for a real good sale price. But, maybe Toontrack will offer owners of EZD 1 a one time intro price.

 I see no logic in the expectation that having bought a product that works as advertised that the company in question is then obliged to provide a new version within a certain amount of time. If it's broken in some way, then yeah it should be fixed quickly, but if it works you have what you paid for, so where is the problem ? I can imagine the same people would also be moaning that a new version was out when the old one had only been out 5 minutes and calling people fools for falling for the cynical marketing.
 
On the other hand, some software companies close to our hearts rugularly bring out new versions without properly fixing the old one at which point the old one is just abandoned (sounds like "eggs too") and ask you to pay again for something which still has some of those same faults. I know which I prefer.

For me personally my gripe about ST3 is not so much that they haven't continuously improved it via updates over lo these many years...it's that they continually and on a regular basis said they would...and then didn't. I'm not mad at them at all. They just lost all credibility with me. Toontrack, on the other hand has continued to release new and improved content as well as bug fixes on an ongoing basis. And every new product or update has been delivered on the date promised.

I'm hanging on to an Audiodeluxe coupon for $10 and I'm expecting the actual sale price to be $79 to $89. cclarry is right that it will be cheaper someday. I paid $149 for X3 and could get it for $99 now. Everything by IK needs to be half off before I'll even look at it, but EZD2 is going to save me several hours with every song...that's big. I've got a job and family and spend about 10 hours a week on this stuff.

clintmartin
I'm hanging on to an Audiodeluxe coupon for $10 and I'm expecting the actual sale price to be $79 to $89. 

+1 ya me two

bapu
{tongueInCheek}
According to twaddle there is no point in any other drompler. BFD/ECO/3 does it all.
{/tongueInCheek}
 
 
I just could not wrap my head around BFD2 or Eco (own them both) to make them my go to drompler. AD is fairly easy to and I've owned it for several years now. I wish I could really get into Jamstix3 since I own that too. I like Slate's sounds as well as all my NI Abbey Road kits (own them all)......
 
But again, as a hobbyist I find EZDrummer my go to while constructing a song and now EZD2 looks to be a step up for my purposes.
 
Like Dave says, after all is said and done I can always route the MIDI in SD2 (and one day SD3 I'll presume) when I want more control.
 
All in all I have used all my dropmlers in songs except Eco and Jamstix(2 or 3).
 

Hmm, I wouldn't go quite that far but I will argue till the cows come home that for less money BFD Eco is almost as easy to use, far more flexible and sounds a whole lot better than EZdrummer but that's just my opinion according to my ears and my experience.
I used to think BFD2 was better than superior drummer and still do but BFD3 has raised the bar by quite some way I think.
 

I just could not wrap my head around BFD2 or Eco

 
You mean you found it hard to learn ? I can't wrap my head around that, particularly Eco, it is extremely easy to learn and BFD2 is certainly no harder to learn than superior drummer.
 
I do sometimes think that the less inclined you are to learn how to mix drums and create different sounds for your self then the more you are forced into buying more and more expansion kits just because you haven't got the time or inclination to learn how to do it your self when it really isn't that hard.
Most recording studios I've been in don't have more than 4 or 5 kits, but what they do have is engineers who know how shape those kits and get the sound you're looking for (in theory) and so if you know what you're doing you really shouldn't need so many expansion kits and different drums. I have slate, EZdrummer and Addictive drums as well as some Battery and kontakt kits and if I wanted to I could waste days trying them all out to see which one works within my songs but I have way more than I need with BFD3 and all my expansion kits and so now that's all I ever use and if I can't get the sound I want the problem is more down to me and not that I'm in need of another expansion kit.
 
Like a lot of EZdrummer fans who've posted on here I too am a singer song/writer guitarist but it's really a hobby and so I don't feel need to get something down quickly and I never use midi loops.
 
In the last few years the most valuable and indispensable tool in my "creative process" that gets my ideas down quickly before I forget them has been the voice recorder on my mobile phone as I sleep with my guitar by my bed and often get ideas for songs around bed time.
 
Still whatever floats your boat.
 
 
Steve

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.


Not long after that, I received an email and a midnight visit from a van full of Viking descendants where they threw a blanket over me, hog tied me, tossed me into a VW Microbus and carried me out into the wilderness where they forced me to drink strong ale, sing songs of Valhalla and beat on all manner of strange animal skin drums.  They made me swear to never speak of hidden secrets that I discovered again and I would be told of wondrous things that the future held.  That is, if I kept my big mouth shut in their forum.   Hehe.
 
The cool thing was I was at the time the first betatester that they had using SONAR.  Evidently, they couldn't imagine anyone not wanting to use Cubase or Logic.  And because of my allegiances with other mystical groups (that I cannot speak of) in the past, I was able to stave off various niggles between the two products. 

And now you know...

......the rest of the story. Good day!