BFD soft drums -- anyone using them? Other drum solutions?

[theblue1]

I'm leaning hard into making some kind of drum upgrade and, so far, the most intriguing solution I've found is fxpansion's BFD library/soft instrument/thang.

 

Although the Tascam Gigastudio 3.0 Larry Seyer Acoustic Drum Library looks pretty cool -- but the minimum requirement is just over the head of my 1.4 gHz Pentium M (Centrino) notebook (official min. req. is 2.4 gHz P4 but they recommend higher).

 

Even the BFD, which requires 512 MB RAM and suggests more, might force me to double up the memory in my machine (from 512).

 

 

Is anyone using BFD? (I think Boosh mentioned it.) Have you had problems? What's the impact on your system? How about running as a v.i. under Sonar or other DAW hosts?

 

 

And if anyone is using alternatives (including the aforementioned GS3), what are your experiences, etc?

 

 

Thanks in advance.

[mattzen]

BFD and DFH superior are by far the best drum tools avaliable today. you should have at least 1 gig for bfd. i don't think your system will handle DFH because it's RAM only...no streaming. my kits in DFH will sometimes use 1.3 gig of physical ram.

 

BFD is great. You really can't go wrong with it. I've used it in scores for plenty of network TV shows and film projects over the last couple years. if programmed well it will fool drummers. i do all the time!

[Sylver]

Drum kit From Hell Superior looks great. A Buddy has the first DKFH and and we've done some VERY convincing drums with it.

 

I've heard great things about BFD, but haven't used them. I own DR008 and it's pretty well written and supported. I would think that BFD would be pretty good too.

[ryst]

I have BFD and I love it. I would also like to get DKFH Superior. BFD gives you so much control over how you can mix the drum sounds. Me like.

[Felix_dup1]

Anyone using DrumCore?

[mattzen]

drumcore is cool but it's basically loop based. BFD and DFHS are what you want if you want to perform your own parts.

 

keep in mind guys....i love DFHS but it is NOT a streaming sampler like BFD. therefore it requires LOTS of ram.

 

i farm my plugs out ot other pcs using FX-Teleport to keep my main machine happy. So when i use DFHS, it's running on it's own machine using 1gig + of ram and streams the audio back to the main machine via FX-Teleport/ethernet. point is, it takes a whole machine's resources to run DFHS to its fullest.

 

also, BFD's gui is much easier to learn and use.

[theblue1]

Thanks for the tips so far.

 

I was just researching upping my notebook's RAM from the current 512. Looks like it's about $130 to go to 1 GB and about $270 [make that $300 w/ tax) to max it out to 2GB. That was direct from Kingston, which oddly enough is the cheapest I've seen so far.

 

Of course, if I got BFD I could try limping along at the min mem req but that seems to run counter to what everyone who has it recommends...

 

 

And, then, there's the harddrive real estate question. My 7200 rpm 60 GB is already getting a might crowded, although much of that is superfluous fluff. I'm thinking I might need to minimize the number of BFD kits I actually installed or perhaps keep them on my 7200 rpm 160 GB ouboard USB 2 drive. Wonder if I could get away with streaming directly from the USB drive? I'm thinking the answer lies in the "Are you kidding?" range...

 

Anyhow, thanks for the responses so far! It's great to have collecting user experience and opinions as a little decision buffer... 'cause I do have that hop-on-the-free-way-drive-to-the-soulless-music-superstore urge pretty big.

[Sylver]

I hear ya Mattzen. We ran into the same problem with DFH. We got around it (my idea) by using scratch drum sounds until we were ready mix the drums down to audio.

[theblue1]

Especial thanks to mattzen! I'd let a video of a tradeshow product demo almost convince me against BFD, even though I started out with a very favorable attitude. (I knew it was an unfortunate presentation rather than a bad product -- but you know what they say, one vid is worth a thousand well-reasoned, well-written, properly backgrounded posts...

 

Anyhow, right at this instant, I'm thinking I'll probably head out that long lonesome ribbon of highway that leads to that quaint establishment, Sam Ash... after the long lonesome ribbon of highway unclogs from midweek OC traffic, anyhow.

 

So, keep them opinions, musings, and idle rumors coming. Every minute you delay me here is another minute I have an extra 300 clams in my pocket -- not to mention another minute I avoid what is usually called "the 91 Parking Lot" by so cal travellers.

 

 

[PS... I'm now thinking about maybe just getting a single GB of RAM, which would give me 1.25 GB with one of the cards that's in there now. I realize that still seems light for the task by most accounts. We'll see. Maybe my not-so-local Fry's will have some bargains. And there is a Guitar Center right there... hmmm.]

[mattzen]

blue,

 

i'd put the superfluous fluff on the usb drive. maybe the BFD streaming would work from the usb drive but i've never done it so i don't know.

 

oh, and i'm not so sure it's that easy to pick and choose which kit to load on your HD. You might have to load them all first and delete manually afterwards. don't remember if the installer gives you a choice of only certain kits.

 

one of the beauties is to have a bunch of kits avaliable. so i recommend that if you are going to fork over the $$ you should make room for all the nice sounds you paid for. i'm sure they're more important than the superfluous fluff anyways.

 

1.25 will probably be OK to run BFD. BFD streams from the hard drive so the trade off goes to some CPU usage and hard drive activity. i find that easier to give up than huge amounts of ram. as always more RAM the better. It actually seems kind of cheap (relatively) to bump your machine up to 2gig.

 

-matt

[John Sayers]

I wonder if you could stream BFD off a 1 gig USB memory stick to save disc load??

 

cheers

john

[theblue1]

Thanks for all the info, mattzen! I was somewhere between kiddin' and wishful thinking on the USB 2 drive thing. But you can bet I'll probably try it, anyhow!

 

And big, big thanks to everybody else, too!

 

I just got back from buying BFD at the local GC (and thank heaven for that ASCAP discount! I knew being a songwriter would pay off some day.)

 

John, that's a wild idea!

 

 

I'll be seeing just how the 1/2 GB min. requirement works out for at least a few days. The local Fry's wanted $200 for 1 GB namebrand and $150 for "the cheap stuff." Kingston seems to have two modules that fit the specs -- one of them with a "Dell" co-branding ($168 delivered) or, seemingly, a generic module for $150. Makes me wonder if I understand the memory spec properly... I'll ask one of my sys admin pals tomorrow who's always cobbling together stuff.

 

 

Again, thanks so very much to everyone for their help in this decision.

[theblue1]

UPDATE:

 

BFD is installed. The libraries installed on my outboard 7200 RPM drive USB 2 drive with no apparent problem -- which was a huge relief since my laptop's 7200 rpm drive is only 60 GB and the complete library is, like, nine. (But I did make a point of clearing off about 9 GB from the laptop before I realized I didn't need to -- so that was a win-win.)

 

And, amazingly, Sonar's CPU meter isn't slamming the pegs, which is, of course, also a huge relief.

 

But it's no surprise that my puny 512 MB of RAM is no match at all for the mighty BFD drum libraries. I can run but there's no headroom. In fact there was negative headroom when I plugged it into one project that already had an 85 MB soundfont file in it.

 

Fortunately, the nice folks at Kingston are sending me a 1 GB module for a sum that probably ought to seem cheap. I'll have to set 256 MB aside but that'll still give me 1.25 GB and I'll pick up another GB when it's cheap.

 

 

The sounds are almost all really good and really usable for that toughest of all drum machine jobs: not sounding like a drum machine.

 

I'm just getting the feel of it but I'm liking it so far. But I'll feel better when that RAM gets here...

[ryst]

After a while, you might be like me and want to get the XFL expansion dvd. I love BFD but it's not enough. I want more! I find the velocity layers to be very good and realistic but the some of the XFL snares, for instance, have around 90+ velocity layers. They are also coming out with an upgrade to the software (version 1.5) that will allow you to do much more. If you go to fxpansions forum at http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=13

you can read all about it.

[BOOKUMDANO]

I run bfd and xfl on a couple of machines. 1 of them is only 1gb with no problems. I don't do the stream feature and I keep the bfd mode in 16 bit to cut the cpu demand in half....I can't tell one iota of sound diff between bfd running in 24 or 16 bit mode...none.

 

Regarding ram, I bought 2gb of Rosewill from Newegg to add into one of the bfd machines. Each 1gb stick was only $60.00 a month ago. A fraction of Crucial or Kingston prices. Works great after almost 24/7 work for at least a month. I'm convinced that most inexpensive ram will do just fine in these types of uses.

[BOOKUMDANO]

I also recommend getting xfl.

 

The 1.5 upgrade has no projected release date but I played with the beta at Namm. The upgrade (free to registered owners whenever it eventually comes out) does a few new things including giving you the ability to load almost twice as many drums in order to create really large sets. I just do that now by having bfd installed on 2 pcs driven by midi from a third.

 

Using 1.5 to load lots of drums at a time will obviously involve more ram considerations.

[ryst]

Originally posted by BOOKUMDANO:

I also recommend getting xfl.

 

The 1.5 upgrade has no projected release date but I played with the beta at Namm. The upgrade (free to registered owners whenever it eventually comes out) does a few new things including giving you the ability to load almost twice as many drums in order to create really large sets. I just do that now by having bfd installed on 2 pcs driven by midi from a third.

 

Using 1.5 to load lots of drums at a time will obviously involve more ram considerations.

I usually open 2 instances in Live 4. One will have the main kit loaded and the other will have extra cymbals (2 splashes at different pitches, china, and more crashes). I also can't hear much of a difference, if any, between the 16 24 modes.

[boosh]

I run Bfd Xfl on a pentium 4, 3.2ghertz 1gig ram and I must say sometimes it's a pain in the ass when I have a lot of tracks going on with plug ins etc.

 

Bfd and Guitarrig are cpu killers but they sound awesome.....

[theblue1]

Well, I'm figuring I'll be using plug/track freeze quite a bit.

 

 

One thing -- and I haven't RFM'd completely so don't feel obliged to take time to respond -- when I play the drum samples from my keyboard I get a pop/click if I don't hold the note 'til it's done... any insight on that phenom?

[theblue1]

Quick update:

 

I got my 1 GB of RAM two days ago. I just left the house for the first time this a.m. since then. Lotsa fun.

 

I'd previously switched to 16 bit mode which made things workable, even with only 512 MB. The sound wasn't bad but was noticeably a bit duller and less defined than the 24; noticed it most on cymbals, of course, but surprisingly I really felt the loss of definition on the overtones of the toms... switching down to 16 bit -- and I did it back and forth a bunch of times because I was surprised at how much I noticed the diff -- made the toms sound much simpler and less characterful.

 

I suppose what little mid and high frequency info there is on toms is just that much more crucial at capturing its character.

 

 

Anyhow, it's now running at 24 bit quite smoothly in 1.25 GB of RAM off the libraries on my USB2 drive.

 

I ran some tests with just BFD loaded and running and was getting a figure of 8-14% or so on Sonar's built-in 'CPU meter' -- which is what I go by when I'm working. Since it uses Sonar at rest as its 0% baseline, it doesn't match the Task Manager CPU meter. But I know when it gets into the 70-80% range I'd better start thinking about freezing tracks or otherwise streamlining.

 

The additional RAM doesn't reflect too much in those meters, but does allow me to load lots of big soundfont banks while I'm running BFD, too. I don't think I've run much above 800 MB of usage, so far, but I haven't been paying that much attention. And that's a nice change.

 

 

Anyhow, I've really found that the key to using BFD with my preexisting MIDI tracks is using BFD's own dynamics settings. (Although I've gone into a couple of sequences and tinkered individual hi hat compnents' velocities a little to get them to sit right with the other hi hat elements.

 

I haven't split everything into outputs yet, but clearly that's how to get an individual stamp and, let's face it, a little hype into BFD's essentially naturalistic drum samples.

 

(And naturalistic is how I wanted it. I don't want to paint on a canvas someone else has already painted on... or something.)

 

Anyhow, I'm looking forward to being able to slap compressors and EQs across some of those drum groups and, you know, make it sound a little less like, you know, real drums...