LIST PRICE: $179.00
WEBSITE: Toontrack

While I wouldn’t recommend firing your drummer, I do recommend you check out Toontrack’s EZDrummer. With all of the potential this virtual drum kit offers, it will definitely have you re-thinking the way you do drums on your next song. Imagine the ability to have your next song sound like you hired a real drummer-or if you are a drummer, the ability to play any kit you want. Sound too good to be true? Read on to find out.

EZDrummer is a virtual instrument that needs a “host” program, so if you have something that works with VST, Audio Units or RTAS, you are in business. Once everything is installed, navigating the user interface is as easy as point and click. The loading of different drum kits is based on which EZX drum kits you have installed. From there, you can also customize the drum kits on a per instrument basis. Each EZX “virtual drum kit” is loaded with professionally recorded sounds and span all genres of music, from electronica and hip-hop to rock and country-with everything else in between. This is where things get really interesting. Each EZX kit comes with a MIDI mapping chart (making external MIDI triggering a breeze), and with the built-in mixer, you can get a rough mix going or use the multi-track outputs for mixing and effects in your favorite host program.

Toontracks has totally re-thought the way virtual drums on a computer should be done, and with this in mind, they have implemented their second version of the acclaimed Toontrack Percussive Compression (which means you don’t need a “super-computer” to run EZDrummer). That’s a major plus for a lot of us. Since it only requires a modest amount of computing power, you could easily load this up on an older laptop outfitted with an external MIDI triggering interface, get yourself an external hard drive to hold all of the EZX sound libraries, and you are ready to rock! What more could you want in a virtual drum kit?