How in the hell do you get ezDrummer to sound any good?

[psycho_monkey]

Some of the stuff that doesn't sound great on it's own works just right in a mix.

[MikeTSH]

I'm aware of that, but in my genre (powerpop to punk pop ish) nothing in the ezDrummer line sounds good - especially when the samples sound AMAZING on the official site but cack in my DAW

[gardinen]

Check my Myspace MySpace.com - Martin Klem - Trollhättan, SE - Pop / Blues / Rock - www.myspace.com/martinklem The first song on the list "dagens truddelutt" is made with the Nashville expansion, played live on my keyboard.
For this song it worked really really well...IMO.

[donsolo]

I'm not 100% familiar with EZdrummer as I'm not a user but I'll tell you this.

I use Battery 1 2 and 3, Kontakt 1, 2 and 3, I've used BFD and DFH, all of them still needed treatment to make them sound good in the mix.

I say you find the one that's closest to the sound you're looking to acheive, program your drums and then start mixing them as if it were a real-live player (IE separate tracks, EQ, little verb if you want on the snare/toms, multiband comp across the bus etc etc etc)

Sounds like you wanted a plug n play experience and IME, it never exists.

[psycho_monkey]

Originally Posted by MikeTSH

I'm aware of that, but in my genre (powerpop to punk pop ish) nothing in the ezDrummer line sounds good - especially when the samples sound AMAZING on the official site but cack in my DAW

Well, a lot of "raw" drum tracks would sound cack in a mix, without further processing. Have you ever heard a real close mic on a snare? doesn't sound like a mixed snare drum!

You just need to treat the individual elements of ezDrummer as one might a regular miked up kit. Chances are the demos on the site have been mixed by a top engineer. Keep practicing, reading and experimenting, and eventually you'll get the idea of how to make it sound like you want. As with most of these things, it's usually down to practice and hard work.

[gearaddict]

Originally Posted by psycho_monkey

Well, a lot of "raw" drum tracks would sound cack in a mix, without further processing. Have you ever heard a real close mic on a snare? doesn't sound like a mixed snare drum!

You just need to treat the individual elements of ezDrummer as one might a regular miked up kit. Chances are the demos on the site have been mixed by a top engineer. Keep practicing, reading and experimenting, and eventually you'll get the idea of how to make it sound like you want. As with most of these things, it's usually down to practice and hard work.

+1..you can seperate all the drum tracks with ez and process them...parallel compress the shit out of the NV snare and add a little verb and it is gold!!

[donsolo]

+1 for extrapolating on my originally, poorly worded thought.

[MikeTSH]

What part of the snare should I parallel compress, the top or the bottom. Also, which one should I add the verb to, the uncompressed snare? I separate all the tracks out evenly atm, should I put top and bottom together or leave them separate?

[MikeTSH]

EDIT: Please delete

[psycho_monkey]

Originally Posted by MikeTSH

What part of the snare should I parallel compress, the top or the bottom. Also, which one should I add the verb to, the uncompressed snare? I separate all the tracks out evenly atm, should I put top and bottom together or leave them separate?

what software sequencer are you on?

Anyway...try sending all the drums to a "dry" bus/auxillary channel, then just the close mics (ie no cymbals) to a "compressed" buss - and compress heavily - fast attack, fast release, high ratio - and blend a little of that underneath the dry buss.

experiment with which mics to keep in or out of the compression buss - you may find it's better with only the top snare, inside kick sound etc.

Bear in mind though, that these are getting into more advanced techniques - if you're still quite new to things, you could be trying to pole vault before you can walk.

You can also try heavily compressing the room mics.

[donsolo]

One of my favorite drum sounds is from this indie band called Mice Parade, the Tales of Las Negras...

It's like far away stereo overheads but slammed with compression.

But that's an indie sort of sound...

A lot of these parallel compression techniques are so subjective that the responce is "use your ears, try a few options"

Also, gated reverb can work on toms if you dig that sound...

[MikeTSH]

I love gated reverb but I'm sure many will agree it's all to be done in good taste - we can see the nightmare of tom recording the 80s created

I understand now, putting all the close mics to a bus and then compress the cr&p out of it.

[nospam]

I use sonar as my DAW and i have a really cool Pop-Rock/Ballad/Fat Snare sound.

Follow these steps:

Open Drumkitfrom Hell expansion

change the snare to 14" Sonor 1

at the bottom of the EZD window there is a button called humanize - turn it off (it slightly alters the sound every time to make it sound more 'human' but some of the humanized snares sound tinny and crap).

go into the EZD mixer and choose the preset : dry

Then add some reverb in your DAW,

[MikeTSH]

Cheers man. However, in this time, I've bought SD 2.0 and Drumagog - does everything I need it to. Yummy.