Do you compress and EQ Ezdrummer tracks?

[tobbenos]

Hi, everyone!

I have got the Ezdrummer plug-in, but my question is about drum plug-ins in general:

How "finished" are the samples and grooves that come within these plugs? Do you always split the drums into separate tracks and treat them with compressor/EQ individually, or do you only do this when going for special effects?

Restated: Shall I treat the ezdrummer output as what I would have turned opp in Pro Tools if I miced up a drumset, or shall I treat it as a drumsound tweaked and fixed by professionals (with EQ-ing and so on)?

[Stig Eliassen]

You shall treat drums as any other source in the mix. How can I make this sound good? How can I make the drums work with the rest of the mix? Personally, I don't like EZDrummer. Too much eq and compression right out of the box, and I have a hard time making it sound decent. For some things, EZD can work as is.

So, you must do what sounds good. That's just how it is. How to react to what we hear - that's what we need to practice every day on every song.

[albee1952]

I have gravitated to SD2, but I have ezdrummer as well. In all cases, I still add EQ, compression, buss compression and a touch of room reverb. I just get better results(and faster) than trying to do it all inside the plugin(which could also be a factor of old habits). I usually split out the drum sounds to separate AUX tracks, and sometimes will print to audio tracks(especially if the project may go to another studio).

[DonaldM]

Following up on Albee, I ALWAYS split my drum tracks into sep tracks, and then print out to audio as dry as possible (within the limits of the samples themselves). Then EQ, compress each part to taste as I would using a live drums. Takes more time, but I think the results are worth it.

[Julia B]

Originally Posted by DonaldM

Following up on Albee, I ALWAYS split my drum tracks into sep tracks, and then print out to audio as dry as possible (within the limits of the samples themselves). Then EQ, compress each part to taste as I would using a live drums. Takes more time, but I think the results are worth it.

Definitely. I'm not as detailed, but I do split toms, cymbals, snare, kick, and cowbell or whatever. EQ, compress, sidechain whatever. It does take more time but the results are definitely worthy the effort.

[EGS]

Originally Posted by tobbenos

...Do you always split the drums into separate tracks and treat them with compressor/EQ individually...

Yes.