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New Toontrack Action! EZX expansion

Time+Space

Senior Member


Toontrack has announced the release of one of its most diverse, yet versatile EZX expansions to date. The Action! EZX presents a fusion of orchestral percussion, sound effects, custom foley and classic drum machine sounds, designed for use in any creative context where beat, groove and tone are allowed to transcend the traditional confines.

In addition to classic orchestral instruments like timpani, tamtam and timbale, it also captures one-of-a-kind foley, risers, claps, snaps, drops and layered textures of sound never before heard – all intuitively blended, mixed, matched and saturated with various effects in creative hybrid kits.

All in all, in excess of 250 individual percussive sounds are presented and used in the more than 15 mix-ready kit configurations included.

Whether you’re creating ambient soundscapes, sound designing or producing cutting-edge music, the Action! EZX puts you in the director’s chair enabling you to create any percussive motif you can imagine.


FEATURE SPOTLIGHT
  • Orchestral and traditional percussion
  • Acoustic drums and classic drum machine sounds
  • Percussive foley sampled from a rich variety of elements
  • Ideal for soundtracks and creative sound design
  • More than 450 individual instruments in total
  • 21 mix-ready presets
  • A selection of MIDI grooves included
  • Requires EZdrummer 2 or Superior Drummer

For full details, videos, demos and to buy visit: https://www.timespace.com/products/toontrack-action-ezx
 
Ah wait, it says in the video that they've separated out the midi that's usually included and have put it in a separate midi pack. The Electronic Arts approach to products... :(
 
Ah wait, it says in the video that they've separated out the midi that's usually included and have put it in a separate midi pack. ...
I always look for this information in the text, not the videos. I hope Toontrack will try to be more consistent about how they communicate about this.
 
Bought this and the midi pack earlier from Time and Space (which was painless and cheap as I discovered I had some of their loyalty points, yay). My assessment from the product page demos was spot on with my anticipated pros and cons. So FWIW:

CONS
Some very strange mixer choices (horrible swampy reverb in particular)
Won't rival the big hitters (if you will) for detailed orchestral or ethnic percussion
Some ghastly articulations - those risers should in fact be sunk.

Now that lot may sound terminal. But...

PROS
Electronic / design elements pretty useful, especially smaller stuff
Stunning to be able to use with SD3 in particular

It's the last point that made me buy it. As a rhythm engine, SD3 is simply leagues ahead of Kontakt, Battery or RMX libraries IMO. The pattern stuff is pure joy - get a basic groove going (there are some included in the EZX), put it into song creator and generate endless variations. It's very quick to swap elements and manipulate in the mixer. I'm big on Toontrack so I have lots of other elements and midi grooves to play with too. Fast and incredible fun to work with. And on that score, it doesn't really have a rival imo.

So I'm going to be using it not perhaps for action in fact, but really as a ticky / tension groove machine.
 
I'm looking forward to seeing how it works in the EZD editor as I really like how that works (similar to the SD3 one I think). Can you turn the reverb off at all? It sounded awful in the demos but a bit of Valhalla Room may be nice instead.
 
I'm looking forward to seeing how it works in the EZD editor as I really like how that works (similar to the SD3 one I think). Can you turn the reverb off at all? It sounded awful in the demos but a bit of Valhalla Room may be nice instead.

Yes, even in EZD it's muteable. Inexplicably awful reverb, and I'm no reverb connoisseur. I think with EZD, the best bet will be to use sep outs and just apply reverb where you need.
 
aaahhhhiiiiiIII don't know... I'm a big Toontrack fan, but this sounds kinda out of touch. Not sure who thought this was a good idea. It's like a vanilla version of Percussive Adventures which was what, like 20 years ago? I guess one can make lemonade out of anything!
 
Bought this and the midi pack earlier from Time and Space (which was painless and cheap as I discovered I had some of their loyalty points, yay). My assessment from the product page demos was spot on with my anticipated pros and cons. So FWIW:

CONS
Some very strange mixer choices (horrible swampy reverb in particular)
Won't rival the big hitters (if you will) for detailed orchestral or ethnic percussion
Some ghastly articulations - those risers should in fact be sunk.

Now that lot may sound terminal. But...

PROS
Electronic / design elements pretty useful, especially smaller stuff
Stunning to be able to use with SD3 in particular

It's the last point that made me buy it. As a rhythm engine, SD3 is simply leagues ahead of Kontakt, Battery or RMX libraries IMO. The pattern stuff is pure joy - get a basic groove going (there are some included in the EZX), put it into song creator and generate endless variations. It's very quick to swap elements and manipulate in the mixer. I'm big on Toontrack so I have lots of other elements and midi grooves to play with too. Fast and incredible fun to work with. And on that score, it doesn't really have a rival imo.

So I'm going to be using it not perhaps for action in fact, but really as a ticky / tension groove machine.

Useful feedback, thanks for sharing your thoughts Guy!
 
...as a brief addendum, I went through (most of) the individual samples. There's actually a lot of good non-electronic stuff too, esp metals, claps, some found sounds and so on - lots to build great tension stuff out of. I think people will be disappointed at the big in-your-face stuff which is a bit underwhelming and lacks depth / layers etc. Snares are a little weak.
 
I don't want to be a downer on a commercial announcement, but I am very disappointed by what I heard on the product page. Was really looking forward to this as been hassling Toontrack for years to do something in the Cinematic vein.

Many of the sounds are pretty ropey and there is not enough of the bombastic or pulsy stuff and the risers sound like cheap analog filter sweeps.

After what they have done with sampling the drum kit, was expecting so much better.

Then there is the "Action" midi, mostly a rock drummer bashing out rhythms that sound like they are already available in all the other Midi packs they have done.

Too bad as even though its cheap, cannot see much value in it. I would have paid 3-4 times more if it had been as detailed and quality as their drumkit SDX/EZX libraries.
 
Some EZX products have turned out to be subsets of a much larger SDX released months later. I wonder whether this is one of those. If so, the comments here make me think it would a good idea to wait.
 
When I listen to the audio demos I definitely hear a lot more ticky tacky type of examples. Even their "The Chase" video wasn't Action but suspense/horror? Sounds like the marketing should have been more focused on suspense or something along those lines instead of "Action" which would make the response to this EZX more favorable. Toontrack knows how to record drums so why they didn't focus on quality Action style sounding drums confuses me. Guy is correct in pointing out how their rhythm engine is light years ahead of anyone else right now so it would be nice to see them get this right. I just fear that poor response will dissuade them from giving it a better shot.
Having said that it does look excellent for those tension type sounds.
 
When I listen to the audio demos I definitely hear a lot more ticky tacky type of examples. Even their "The Chase" video wasn't Action but suspense/horror? Sounds like the marketing should have been more focused on suspense or something along those lines instead of "Action" which would make the response to this EZX more favorable. Toontrack knows how to record drums so why they didn't focus on quality Action style sounding drums confuses me. Guy is correct in pointing out how their rhythm engine is light years ahead of anyone else right now so it would be nice to see them get this right. I just fear that poor response will dissuade them from giving it a better shot.
Having said that it does look excellent for those tension type sounds.

I think you're misinterpreting the use of the word "Action!" in this library's title.

It's not intended to be specifically aimed at scoring action films, per se. Instead, it's a library of percussive and foley sounds, suitable for scoring in general—across various genres. They named it "Action!" to connote the idea of writing to picture in general; not to suggest that it's intended primarily for the action genre.

You may or may not like the library's sounds, and that's fine. But understanding this distinction is important. :)
 
I think you're misinterpreting the use of the word "Action!" in this library's title.

It's not intended to be specifically aimed at scoring action films, per se. Instead, it's a library of percussive and foley sounds, suitable for scoring in general—across various genres. They named it "Action!" to connote the idea of writing to picture in general; not to suggest that it's intended primarily for the action genre.

You may or may not like the library's sounds, and that's fine. But understanding this distinction is important. :)
Which is exactly my point. Most people will interpret the name "Action EZX" the way I did. A different name like "scoring drums" or something along those lines would eliminate a preconceived notion about the library and in return make people less critical and more likely to take a closer look at what it does have to offer. I guess it could be worse. They could have called it "Epic EZX" :grin:
 
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