1. Logic has more kits and sonic versatility, but are the Drummer engines identical?
2. Will they provide the same level of groove selection that is based on the tracks at hand?
3. How does Drummer compare to EZDrummer 3 for A.I.-type drum assistance?
4. Is there a better alternative than Apple and Toontrack?

 

they all have good and bad aspects to them, i just never use any of them because they basically have never become a part of my workflow. i use midi files and drum hits in drum machines or samplers (UVI Falcon or Kontakt). i like having each individual drum (or loop) on it's own audio channel strip with it's own effects, and then controlled together as a group channel by creating a Track Stack (Summing, not Folder). In my Logic 10.4, I still have Ultrabeat. In 10.5 and later, Logic's Drum Machine Designer is really nice, especially if you like to chop up and re-sequence drum breaks with Midi to trigger the individual hits.

Your DAW is your "virtual band", but just like in a studio with live players and hardware. If a song would not call for a live drummer, then I do not use one. If I was making a straight forward rock style song, I wouldn't get out the drum machines... The plugin or programs are just better suited to their different styles of music. After that it is just a matter of individual drum hit samples and how they live in your mix.

 

ive never used Logic, but most people gush over how awesome ezdrummer3's ability is to analyze your tracks and provide several beats for you to choose.

 

Couldn't tell you about logic or G-band. I don't use pre-done midi "grooves" much at all (even for edm). Most all my stuff is done with EZD or SD3 being triggered by a midi drum kit with myself at the helm. For edm I piece together beats from scratch - usually in reason.

 

I wonder if GBs Drummer groove gen ability (not sound) is the same as Logic's

 

The Apple Drummer feature is designed to "play along" with a track that the user designates. I haven't noticed a difference between the Drummer in Garageband and the one in Logic. I dislike the sound of the Drummer tracks,* however, and deal with that as I further describe here. I have used EZ Drummer, but abandoned it in favor of IK Multimedia Modo Drum, which is a better fit for me. How I use Logic's Drummer is to use it to draft MIDI patterns that play along with a particular instrument in the basic arrangement, then to export its track to MIDI, which I re-import into a new track in Logic, assigning Modo Drum to it, and tweaking the "performance" of the kit to fit the arrangement as I expand it. Modo Drum, like EZ Drum, and Native Instruments' drum libraries, has a "groove" library of MIDI patterns browsable per style and segment, but the Apple Drummer is interactive and produces no MIDI except that which one can export from its track.

(*) There is something about the sound of the Apple Loops and samples that sounds "off" to me, but it's more that I dislike how they make me feel. It's a weird sort of emotion, between disgust and anxiety, that they cause me. They're nice to have when nothing else is available, or for sketching things, but I almost always replace them somehow.

 

I don't know about "off" or "anxiety" - interesting choice of descriptors - but to me Drummer is just too "grid-ed" or "grid-y" for some genres of music, where the drummer plays a little ahead here, a little behind there, and just breathes life into the music.

As such, it's not a matter of "off" but a matter of too much "on" - ironically enough. Oddly, it's not something I'd ever experienced with older gen drum machines (CR78, TR707, R8, Linn Drum), or even with my own programming back when I couldn't afford to hire drummers and relied on my Atari (and Notator, then Notator Logic, etc). That puppy grooved. Those were the days.

 

Toontrack Superior drummer is my favourite. Much more customisable then the 3 you mentioned.

 

When you have a Logic Drummer inside your project, and on that channel it shows a waveform-style representation of the content on that track; if you grab that region of Drummer content and drag it down into an empty space, it will create a new generic Software Instrument Track and populate it with the Midi data automatically. Then you can assign it to whatever you want; but you do not need to export it and reimport it. It can all be done within the project without ever leaving Logic.

The part I dislike about the Apple Loops and other sounds in the Library, is that it takes a very big amount of storage space up for how much use you are going to get from it. You can move it off to an external, but I prefer to just completely get rid of it.

The Logic Library takes up approximately 72 gb of storage space (sites vary about this number, but it's pretty close to accurate!) , and by default it puts it on the internal SSD. No thanks!

 

I have installed and deleted Logic countless times. Each time I say to myself, "I have an Apple computer. This is made for it. Logic is one of the best. I'm going to stick with it and make it work." I go round-n-round is a seemingly endless spiral of nothingness . . . bouncing from DAW to DAW. ;-0 Note: I currently have it installed with all the GB on an external SSD, linked with aliases. I'm not sure if I will take the next step forward or continue to spiral.

 

The three I mentioned have automatic groove generators. I'm not concerned about customizable sounds or sound quality as I can easily swap-out with my own drum samples. I need some A.I.-ish help with writing the drum parts.

 

Logic is something like 50% of why I even use Macs for music, probably more. Other than a short spell of Cubase/FL, I have been using Logic since it was available on both pc and mac. I prefer Logic to Cubase mostly because it is more streamlined and there are less problems with bugs and with 3rd party plugins. It does not hurt to use Apple's own AU format plugins. Not to mention, the price of Logic is probably more bang for the buck than any other computer application that I can think of. Protools might be a money pit, but Midi has always been a weak spot for it and that's largely what I use a DAW for. I do not need it, or MOTU Performer; at home.

There is no "best" but there are certainly ones which are not best suited to your purposes. People compare stuff to race cars, but Logic is like an armored vehicle. If there is something you can't do; it's almost always just because you haven't figured out how to do it yet. Or you haven't asked David Nahmani about it yet.

 

Eletronic too or acoustic only ?

As metalhead, EZX is well balanced between sound/features/price/simplicity.
SDX for more advanced studio work ... but some metal albums were made on EZX too.

Some reading :
https://www.reddit.com/r/musicproduction/comments/nm3ujt/any_commercial_releases_using_ezdrummer_or/

 

I have my sample libraries on an external SSD, myself. I presently have the luxury of a 1TB system SSD, so I can accommodate the Logic library content on it, but have in the past moved it to the external libraries SSD. I did discover that I could just drag the Drummer regions to an empty space to create an instant MIDI instrument track.