Toontrack Jazz EZX Expansion Reviews

To sum up this EZX - extremely well sampled kits with plenty of extra articulations that are essential to authentic jazz drumming. This is also one of only 3 EZXs that I'm aware of to have extensive dedicated brush swirl & drag articulations (the other 2 being Big Band & Custom Shop).
The drums chosen for this EZX aren't plentiful but work perfectly for this genre. Besides the drums, the real magic is in the huge collection of included MIDI files. Unlike other EZXs, the grooves aren't in song part order; they're organized by instrument type sampled with sticks, improvisational jams, and parts sampled with brushes. The brush grooves are impressively detailed with plenty of swirls & drags, and they also work great with the Big Band & Custom Shop EZX brush samples. If you find need for additional jazz grooves, the Basic Jazz, Roots, & Jazz MIDI packs sound great with this EZX.
The drum samples & MIDI files from Jazz EZX have been very useful for many projects and I highly recommend it.

I love all the Toontrack expansions each one is specialized for certain genre, but yet can still be used in other genre's when slighty tweaked!

This expansion pack provides plenty of scope to add genuine jazz not just twisted rock to your virtual rhythm section. The essential; choices provide the basics, the tweaks create originality so its then left to you to generate uniqueness. Low cost added breadth - and super simple to install and get up and going.

The preset is good

Like all of the EZXs, the samples are uniformly fantastic and work great with the EZDrummer's sound engine. You'd have to put some work in to perfectly mimic a live performer for jazz but even with the quick-compose tools you can get pretty close. Good variety in the included MIDI (not always the case in some EZXs) and there are three available separate MIDI packs with a jazz focus that expand it.

A couple of reviews mentioned lacking a sizzle cymbal; the Americana EZX has a 19" Zildjian Armand “Beautiful Baby" Sizzle Ride that sounds great. The other drums in that EZX go very well with the jazz MIDI.

I just spent most of a day on the Toontrack website compiling a spreadsheet matrix of every EZX sample and kit combo to plan out my next buy and avoid duplicating (good news, out of over 1650 samples Toontrack only reused about 70 pieces among their whole EZX range).

There is an 18" Pearl Reference kick included in the Jazz EZX, but none of the EZXs have a Gretsch Catalina or any kind of Flat ride (my best drummer 25 years ago had one I loved and have been chasing a digital version of).

This collection is a great value for the money. The sounds are great and it has some usable loops but is not cut out for people who really play jazz. Fusion yes but I could not find any basic bop loops with brushes for project I needed that for. I ended up taking hours constructing it myself which is what I bought this collection to avoid doing. If you are not a hard core jazz performer though I am sure there is enough there to use. It is a great value.

You can't beat this in terms of bang for your buck. I got this as my first expansion after purchasing EZ Drummer, and I was blown away in terms of sample sound quality and the included midi library. I remember my friends commenting how my drums no longer sounded like a drum machine. The original EZ Drummer midi files were too bland and just didn't have the subtle variations that a real drummer would have even after humanizing, etc. That's not the case here. It's so easy to get up and running on a new song, and the mixer presets for this expansion are very useful. Useful for more than just jazz. If you play coffee-shop style pop/rock/jazz you will find this invaluable!

I love using the midi files to set up a quick groove and jam on it. I use this in Superior Drummer without any issues. The Jazz EZX sounds great, and is a great change from the normal Metal music I normally compose.

I was really impressed by the complexity of midi files and tone of the drums. I would have liked to have seen more atypical time signatures however such as 5/4

lots of useful sounds and beats

I expected to find some subtle brush work on snare and cymbals. The ones saying brushes don't achieve the sound I'm looking for. I am not a drummer, so to be fair, it could be me.

The rating guide says 4 stars means "Great!" so that's what I'm going with -- these are not unequivocally the best drum samples I've ever heard, but they're very good and I'm quite satisfied.

I've had the software for about a month now, and I'm very impressed with this sample library. I will admit that I was a little skeptical of it because I thought that there might have been a better choice of jazz drummer to record/sample, but what I've heard and used so far has put that issue far from my mind. The brush samples are outstanding especially the swirls you need for ballads. This is a great tool to have especially if you are a composer/arranger. I've been using it to create rough drafts of my compositions for my trio, because we live in different parts of the country and rehearsals are few and far in between. This makes things so much easier, because now they have actual tracks to reference along with the charts so when we do get to play, we aren't starting from zero.

So why not a 5? As a jazz musician there were somethings I was expecting that weren't there. For example: Mallets, they are on the Indie kit, but not the Jazz kit? C'mon man that's a must have along with a sizzle cymbal and a flat K ride cymbal. Having an 18in bass drum would be cool too. I'm thinking of the Gretsch Catalina Club kit. I realize this probably makes me sound like a jazz snob/purist, but hey, I don't think those things would be out of reach considering what they've already got in this library. Hopefully Toontrack will add them when they do an update of this library. However, what they have is enough for now. Solid product.

I purchased this Jazz expansion pack for a jazz combo project that required me to do MIDI arrangements. I was blown away. The sound sparkles. When I was done with my demos, the drums sounded so good that my client wanted to keep them for the original mix! The articulations allow you to do quiet delicate jazz ballad drums--which you may know are virtually impossible on most standard drum kit samples. It also includes brush snare swirls, which have been a life saver for my on some projects.

The ONLY missing thing--and I stress ONLY missing sample is that of a sizzle cymbal. That is the single sample addition that would have been most helpful for ballads--or at lease a sizzle element that can be triggered along with a desired cymbal. So if Toontrack ever does an update, I can't recommend sizzle cymbal loud enough!

I thought the original EZ Drummer samples and grooves were good, but I was blown away by the Jazz EZX expansion. The samples are so much better and have a lot more variation in response to the MIDI note velocities.
And the grooves are just simply outstanding! They've got a nice realistic quality that makes it sound less like a high-quality drum machine and more like a real drummer. The grooves are organized a bit differently than I was used to in the original - with similar/complimentary beats grouped into songs.

Expanded my creativity! Thanks

Love it Smooth Jazz Beats. works good with Superior Drummer

Great! Good sound!

I bought the Jazz EZX when it was first released (I was waiting patiently for it) and I've been using it ever since. I play jazz guitar and this has been incredibly useful for recording jazz tracks. Nothing else like it that I know of.