I've been purchasing my audio gear and software through Jeff Law at Sweetwater for many years. I'm always very happy with the results. Jeff and the team at Sweetwater are great to deal with...always knowledgeable, friendly and helpful.

There are so many kicks & snares in this pack, purchasing K&S felt like walking out of a music store with half their drum inventory; I couldn't wait to hear & compare them all. On the positive, the single set of toms & cymbals sound great. MIDI, while extremely lacking compared to other EZXs, has some cool beats. Now for the negative:
After listening to these samples on my system, they aren't nearly as well produced as the many expansion packs I already own. It's painfully obvious that they don't have the same depth & clarity when comparing these samples to other expansion packs. For instance, while other EZD snares have as many as 9 articulations, K&S is limited to 4, and many only have 2 (center & sidestick), making these snares sound one-dimensional. Also, each sample has its own baked-in sound (room reverberation, mic placement, etc.) which makes them stand out like a sore thumb when trying to insert them into other EZX kits. And being sampled at 8 different studios over many years doesn't help with consistency. Maybe that's why this EZX relies heavily on presets but doesn't include original mix samples.
The Mixer tab has 7 sliders for the kick and 6 sliders for the snare. While this seems impressive, it's still not enough to make the samples sound as good as other expansion packs. And keep in mind these sliders ONLY work within this expansion pack and don't show up when using these samples with other EZXs.
Out of 74 snare samples, there are no brushes, rods or mallets, and only 5 samples are dampened & 4 are sampled with snares off. This EZX could've been so much better if the 24 snare & 16 kick 'alternate voices' were sampled with different heads, sticks, muting, etc., but all alternates appear to just be tuned slightly up or down with some so close to the original tuning, I can't hear the difference. And since tuning is already available in EZD, these samples are somewhat redundant.
This EZX just doesn't seem to be well thought out. There are a lot of strange anomalies like including kicks & snares sampled in a silo & tiled room but not the rest of the kit, and then adding digitized 'big old silo' & tiled room presets. Why have silo & tile samples at all? Then there's the problem of trying to find a sample - for instance, there are 11 Ludwig Black Beauty samples but they're scattered throughout the list. Makes me wonder why Toontrack decided not to list them alphabetically.
My advice is to skip this one and invest in 2 or 3 other packs that are better suited for your style of music.

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This is a great set of grooves If you want to dial in to some GREAT grooves, this is the sound set and MIDI package for you! The sounds/samples themselves are nothing short of awesome!

Gordy Fritch

The video is misleading about the kits I thought this was going to be better than they talked about.

I did read other reviews for this pack....and they're right........the snare's don't have enough of a rim-shot on attack on them. They're rather dull sounding. I did find a few good kicks that I tend to use adding them to the Nashville pack that I bought too.

As title indicates, I'm not using these for song writing. I was disappointed in a few things. One is that some snares are simply not tuned in a manner which I prefer. That is strictly personal preference so do not let that deter you. Over all this is a nice collection and I'm sure beneficial to many people. My biggest beef is that many snares have little to no rim shot sounds, being a drummer and using them to trigger edrums, that is simply unacceptable to me! Another issue I have is that although this comes with a complete kit, the toms on every single preset are substantially louder than the kick and snare, meaning that with every kit I have to go in and adjust volume. Again that is unacceptable and I'm not spending the time to go through and adjust every one so I can save them all. Many times I import them into other ezxs I have. Sometimes it works , sometimes you completely lose the intended sound because now they are in different presets without all the control over the kicks and snares that you have in the kicks & snare ezx. This ezx does not include original mix sounds, if so then maybe I could find this more useful. I rated this a 4 because this is a nice collection I just feel They focused on presets way more than the drums themselves. I will only ever use a few of these sample because for my use it is just not my cup of tea !!

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