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Where Superior Drummer does come out on top, though, is in its extensive mixer, which matches most DAWs for scope, and its unparalleled level of detail.
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It contains as many kits, nearly as many drums, and almost a few hundred more preset loops and fills. Glancing through these specs will show you how good EZDrummer 3 is. It also offers all of the user options that EZ Drummer 3 does but doesn’t include the Band Mate feature. Superior Drummer 3 offers seven kits too, but, by contrast, includes twenty-five snares, sixteen kicks, thirty-two cymbals, extra percussion, and 350+ electronic samples. It weighs in at a streamlined, hard drive-friendly 15GB. Each kit is processed with a base level of simple effects, and those can’t be removed-however, it does sound great out-of-the-box. It isn’t as flexible as Superior Drummer 3. It includes three live rooms and comes with the intuitive Grid Editor, Bandmate, and Tap to Find features (more on later). It includes some exciting percussion options, too, with various shaker, tambourine, handclap, and stomp samples. Comparing SpecsĮZ Drummer 3 contains seven kits, as well as twenty-four snares, fourteen kicks, and thirty-three cymbals of different kinds. With this in mind, you probably see why it might be over-simplistic to assume that one is wholly for pros and one is only for hobbyists. If you’re good to go, grab a coffee, and we’ll jump in. This is a comparison between the two, and, to save on repetition, I’ll skip over some finer details discussed in the previous reviews. If you haven’t looked at the previous reviews of Superior Drummer 3 and EZDrummer 3, I recommend it.
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It’s probably best to spend some time considering the pros and cons of each library to see which one hits the sweet spot for you. Anyway, no one wants to fall into the ‘buy cheap, buy twice’ pitfall, right? If you’re anything like me, you might feel torn between a desire to save some cash and a temptation to go all-in, almost for the sake of it.
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It feels as though it’d be wrong to skip over this part: both libraries are fantastic-and both are a clear upgrade on their previous incarnations – but they offer different things and come in at very different price points. If you’ve checked out our recent reviews on Toontrack’s EZDrummer 3 and Superior Drummer 3, you’ll know that we’ve been building towards comparing both drum libraries.
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