Yamaha EAD10 Review

What’s up gear mortals! Alex Nasla here with another edition of Gear Gods Quality Control! Today we will be checking out the EAD10 by Yamaha.

The EAD10 is a trigger, stereo microphone, and drum sounds module combo that allows you to record your entire kit from just one unit that is mounted to your drum hoop. The microphone/trigger unit attaches to the kick drum, and the EAD10 has the ability to add 3 more triggers to go with it. We had an additional Yamaha Snare trigger added which I think is the most ideal way to go about using the EAD10. You can record the drums as they are being picked up by the stereo mics on the unit, or you also have the option of applying a number of effects to the sound. My favorite one was called “compressor” and as you might expect, it gets a little more punch out of the kick and snare.

If you are into recording drum covers with video, Yamaha has a really cool app you can download into your smartphone or tablet that goes along with the EAD10 called Rec’n’Share. It lets you set up your playback track, click and record all in one go and it will even automatically sync up your audio and video together and you can just upload right from your phone. Really cool! But even if you aren’t into making drum covers, you can just use the app to practice and learn your drum parts. The software also has the ability to analyze tempo in your audio. So if you receive a song from someone to demo and they forgot to tell you the tempo, it’s not a problem, the app can figure it out for you. Then when you feel like you’re ready, record demos of the music with your drums for others to listen to. This is probably the most convenient method of demoing with acoustic drums I have come across. You can have it record to either a USB drive or to your laptop as 16bit 44.1Khz .wav files. Sure, the recording quality isn’t gonna be as good as going into a professional studio and throwing 16 microphones on the kit. But its great for pre-production and demoing! 

That being said, something that I personally would have liked to have on the unit is a MIDI out so I could connect the triggers to my interface to record them into my DAW. It also would have been nice to have a little more control over the Kick and Snare trigger samples. It would also be really cool if down the line they were able to add the ability to import your own drum samples to use with the module. 

Overall I think the EAD10 is a solid piece of gear that drummers will find of great use, whether it be for practicing, recording drum covers with their devices, or pre-production demos before they go into the studio. The asking price of $499 USD I think is reasonable, and if you have a little extra money to spare, I would grab the snare trigger to the package as it makes a worthwhile addition. 

That’s it for this review guys! Let me know what you think in the comments below. If you haven’t already, please hit the subscribe button, click on that notification bell and I will see you guys again soon!