Holy bleeping jebus poop crackers! It turns out I had NOT solved the problem and spent the past hour trying to figure it out. It turns out BFD Eco just throws itself willy nilly all over the darned C drive... AND there is an issue where unless you have the latest update from august it sometimes won't show up in the host at all even if you do manage to find all the files.

So first I reinstalled BFD. Then I made sure I had the latest update (Version 1.5.1.5) from my FXpansion account. As I installed that update I wrote down every one of the install paths. Here they are... tell me if this makes ANY kind of sense...



VST Plugin Path (32 Bit) = C:\Program Files(x86)\VSTPlugins

App Path (32 Bit) = C:\Program Files(x86)\FXpansion\BFD Eco

VST Path (64 Bit) = C:\Program Files\Common Files\Steinberg\VST2

App Path (64 Bit) = C:\Program Files\FXpansion\BFD Eco


It's in completely different folders! So I added all those to the Sonar VST scan thingy, checked off the ReScan options and let it do its thing. I figure this HAS to work. Well I didn't see anything implying BFD 64 bit in my browser BUT there was a new option that simply said BFD Eco. I inserted that into the track view and clicked the little question mark options button in the BFD GUI, went to the About option and SUCCESS! It was telling me that it was the 64 bit version.

I'm pretty mad I wasted my afternoon screwing around with this but at least I know FAR more about how to use the VST scanner (of which I knew NOTHING before today) and I can use BFD 64 bit. What I DON'T get is why I could see it in X1 after a relatively easy install but it turned into this enormous screw around in X2. Obviously this isn't a Sonar issue but the help menu entry on the scanner was no help at all. You wouldn't be able to understand it unless you already knew how to use it. It IS however a really bad default installation which is on FXpansion. We're not all computer geniuses yanno?

Anyway... my anger and frustration is subsiding now and I'm glad it worked out in the end. You guys, as usual, totally saved my sorry arse and I thank you profusely. Cheers.

Thanks for that one Steve! I have the BFD ECO on my desk and waiting to get installed, which I was avoiding after reading Beepsters account. Your post makes it all clear and concise and "conquerable!" LOL!
Thanks again, I am ready now!
Michael

Thanks for the extra insight, Steve. In the light of a new day I understand it better. I still think this should be easier. Like let's say you type in the product name or a product code and then Sonar scans for those in the usual places (quick scan) or the whole system for those who put their plugs in non default locations (full scan). That way it all gets scooped up in one shot with out all this digging around for the folders. After reading all the posts in regards to missing plugs on the site I was dreading the day I actually had to go through this process. Oh well... at least I know for next time. The one thing that really threw me for a loop was the Steinberg folder. I was thinking to myself "What the heck does any of this have to do with Cubase/Nuendo?" but I remember now reading something about VST being created by them. Anyway it's another day and it all seems to be working now. I'm now typing up a list of step by step instructions to properly insert and set up BFD in X2 cobbled together from various places which is a pretty massive undertaking itself but at least it will be done and I can save the project as a template. I'll post it later today. Cheers and sorry for losing my cool. I just wanted to play around with X2 and got frustrated that I couldn't.

Okay, so after all that VST scanning mayhem I wanted to set up a project with BFD Eco. It's a little complex so I decided to keep a log of what I did for future use. I'm sure I'll have to do it again at some point and figured I might as well post the procedure here for anyone who needs it. This truly is a complete beginners guide in the sense that I wrote it so pretty much anyone can duplicate it even if they've never really used either program. Just follow each step and you should get it running. It is cobbled together from various sources like the BFD manual, BFD tuts online but mostly Seth's Master Class video "Drum Production 1" which can be viewed in the link I posted above.

I highly recommend that video series however there are a few problems with it for what I'm doing here. The biggest problem is he is obviously not using BFD in that vid. He is using Session Drummer 3 but the process is pretty similar for both programs. The other big issue is he is using a pre X1 version of Sonar in it so lots of the steps within Sonar he shows look and are performed very differently. At the bottom of the screen though there is text that pops up detailing how to do the same procedure using X1 and all those procedures seem to be exactly the same in X2 as well. The other "problems" aren't really problems but more of a time waster. He's showing features and functions in Session Drummer which takes up some time and are obviously unnecessary if you are using BFD. Also pausing and starting a video when you are trying to do something can be a pain and personally I like having text on hand. However it is the most concise and easiest to understand guide I've seen so far on how to route a drum synth and I hope Seth updates it for X2. Every other video, guide or manual just confused the beeping heck out of me so if you see this Seth thanks mucho, dude. You rock.

I'll also point out there are probably many ways to go about this but this just worked... so seeing as how my dumb arse managed to make it happen it should be safe to say it's fool proof. Now to the meat...


In Browser click "PlugIns" tab > Instruments

Locate BFD Eco in list and drag to "Track View"

"Insert Soft Synth" dialogue should appear

In dialogue check:

"All Synth Audio Outputs: Stereo"

"MIDI Source"

"Synth Track Folder"

"Synth Property Page" (shows BFD GUI)

"Recall Assignable Controls"

"Ask This Every Time"

"First Synth Audio Track" will appear in drop down menu. Leave it.

Uncheck the rest (however Synth Rack View being enabled doesn't seem to screw anything up but I don't know what it does and it's not in the vid).

Click "OK"

Sonar will create a folder containing 12 tracks. The first eleven tracks are for individual kit pieces (not sure what type of track... it is a MIDI plus Keyboard icon. Probably soft synth Icon.) and the 12th track is a regular MIDI track.

Gain Staging:

Click "Quick Group" button on track folder (it is between the +/- Expand/Collapse button and the Folder Icon). This should light up all the track select buttons on all the tracks in the folder (they'll turn blue).

Select "Mix" from the "Track View" dropdown (top right corner in the gray area just above the tracks... other options are All, Custom, FX, I/O. Selecting "Mix" should put small blue faders on each track for Volume, Pan and Gain)

Press and hold Ctrl key and lower "Gain" fader to appropriate level (Seth sets his to -6.2 in SD3 Drum Production Master Class... UPDATE: That level was perfect for the grooves but I had to turn it back up when I wanted to use my padKontrol with the Fixed Velocity setting turned OFF). This should lower all of the gain levels of every track in the folder (double check the tracks to make sure it did).

Click the folder's "Quick Group" button again to deselect the tracks (all the blue buttons on the tracks should revert back to gray).


Now bring BFDs GUI into focus. In the top right corner click on the "Kit" menu and select a kit. Wait for it to load. (At this point load or change any extra kit pieces you want for the session by Right Clicking on the kit piece icons in the Mixer section, select "Load Kit Piece" and choose the sound you want from the pop up window then press the "Load" button at the bottom right of the screen.)

Routing the kit pieces to the appropriate tracks:

In the "Mixer" section of BFD click the dropdown menu underneath the "Kick" fader (they should currently say "Master"). You should see the following options:

"Kick [Direct, out 11+12]"
"Aux1 [Aux1 buss]"
"Aux2 [Aux2 buss]"
"Master [Main, out 1+2]"

Select "Kick [Direct, out 11+12]". It will automatically send the kick to the "Kick" track in Sonar. Now if you click on the kick drum in BFDs GUI you should see the "Kick" track in Sonar register the signal.

Repeat this for each of the kit pieces and percussion slots.

When you get to the "Overhead (OH)" and "Room Mic (Room)" channels in BFD select "OH [Ambient, out 3+4]" and "Room, [Ambient, out 5+6]".

Then finally send "Aux 1" and "Aux 2" out to where you like. Either to the "Master" in BFD or like we did with all the kit pieces directly out to Sonar (for "Aux 1" select "Aux 1 [Out 7+8]" and for "Aux 2" select "Aux 2 [Out 9+10]). You can also send "Aux 1" out to "Aux 2" but not vice versa.

It looks like BFD Eco lumps all of the "Toms" onto one track, all of the "Percussion" slots to one track and all of the "Cymbals" (not including the Hi Hat) to one track. I'd prefer to have that stuff seperate but I'm guessing that is a limitation of the Eco version. The full version may allow full kit routing but I'm not sure. If there are certain kit pieces in these groups you would like to have their own track like the "Ride" cymbal you can route that kit piece in the BFD mixer to one of the "Aux" channels and send that channel out to the Aux track in Sonar. Just open the routing menu of the kit piece and select "Aux 1" or "Aux 2". Be aware though that if you route any other pieces to that Aux channel they will play in the Aux track in Sonar as well... at least I'm assuming that's how it works.

Now your tracks are set up and you can Save as track template as described at 7:30 in the Drum Production Master Class Part 1 I linked above.

Drum Busses:

There are different ways to approach this. You can have multiple busses that control specific groups of kit pieces (group toms, cymbals, etc). Having busses for individual pieces like the kick and snare gives you an extra place to apply effects. Also it makes it easier to mix alongside other stems like your guitar, bass, vocal, etc busses. However you can obviously just route the whole kit to one buss and leave it at that. Also you can use the "Sends" function on each Sonar track which gives some more control parameters than the regular output option. Also with "Sends" you can send the kit pieces to multiple busses as you can insert as many sends as you want onto one track. That's all quite a bit more complex though so for now I'm just going to send the whole kit to one buss because I want to get playing.

Simple Drum Buss:

In the "Track View" go to the "Buss Pane" at the bottom. If you can't see it (you should see "Master" and "Metronome" busses which look just like tracks... but they are busses) then place your cursor over the bottom edge of "Track View" until it turns into two little lines with arrows pointing up and down then Click and Drag upward. Drag it up far enough that you see a blank area. Right click in that area and Select "Insert Stereo Buss" then click on the text (Bus C, Bus D, whatever the new bus is called) until you can type into the field and rename it "Drums" or whatever you want.

Now you have to route all the drum tracks to this buss. Click the BFD track folder "Quick Group" button again like we did earlier to select all the tracks (the space between the +/- button and the little folder icon). All the track numbers should now be blue. Click the "Track View" view options dropdown again (the drop down in the gray area above the tracks) and select I/O. Now your tracks should be showing multiple dropdown menus (default should be: "Clips", the input dropdown which is a little letter I and in this case should say "BFDEc..." and finally your output dropdown that has a little letter O and says "Master". Press and hold the Ctrl key on your keyboard and Click the dropdown that says "Master" and select the drum bus you just created from the menu. This should change the output from all the tracks in the folder to the Drum Bus. Double check to make sure it did.

And now BFD is setup in X2. There are lots of other things that can be done with sends and routing in both programs but this seems to be the simplest way to get started. You can always insert more busses and create sends later on. Make sure to save the project as a template so you don't have to do this everytime or at the very least save the track template.

Now test it out. Go to the "Grooves" button in the BFD interface and select a groove to play by pressing the play button. Check to see if anything is clipping in the BFD Mixer. If so adjust the levels (the Overhead mic was clipping a bit so a turned it down but everything else was fine).

Then check to see if anything is clipping in the Sonar "Console View". I see that my Master Bus and my Drum Bus were clipping a bit. I didn't want to turn down the Master so I turned down the Drum Bus. All of the tracks were fine. If I hadn't done the Gain Staging earlier (when I Quick Grouped the tracks and turned down the Gain fader to -6.2) I would have been clipping all over the place and I may even have to turn it down more if I start applying effects. I checked to make sure that all the channels in the Sonar console were corresponding with the channels in BFD and all was where it should be. Now everything is set up and I think I'm gonna hook up my padKontrol and play around with it for a bit. Hooray!

Hope this helps someone. Cheers.

Message for Beepster
 

Beepster
Now bring BFDs GUI into focus. In the top right corner click on the "Kit" menu and select a kit. Wait for it to load. (At this point load or change any extra kit pieces you want for the session by Right Clicking on the kit piece icons in the Mixer section, select "Load Kit Piece" and choose the sound you want from the pop up window then press the "Load" button at the bottom right of the screen.)

Routing the kit pieces to the appropriate tracks:

In the "Mixer" section of BFD click the dropdown menu underneath the "Kick" fader (they should currently say "Master"). You should see the following options:

"Kick [Direct, out 11+12]"
"Aux1 [Aux1 buss]"
"Aux2 [Aux2 buss]"
"Master [Main, out 1+2]"

Select "Kick [Direct, out 11+12]". It will automatically send the kick to the "Kick" track in Sonar. Now if you click on the kick drum in BFDs GUI you should see the "Kick" track in Sonar register the signal.

Repeat this for each of the kit pieces and percussion slots.

When you get to the "Overhead (OH)" and "Room Mic (Room)" channels in BFD select "OH [Ambient, out 3+4]" and "Room, [Ambient, out 5+6]".

Then finally send "Aux 1" and "Aux 2" out to where you like. Either to the "Master" in BFD or like we did with all the kit pieces directly out to Sonar (for "Aux 1" select "Aux 1 [Out 7+8]" and for "Aux 2" select "Aux 2 [Out 9+10]). You can also send "Aux 1" out to "Aux 2" but not vice versa.

It looks like BFD Eco lumps all of the "Toms" onto one track, all of the "Percussion" slots to one track and all of the "Cymbals" (not including the Hi Hat) to one track. I'd prefer to have that stuff seperate but I'm guessing that is a limitation of the Eco version. The full version may allow full kit routing but I'm not sure. If there are certain kit pieces in these groups you would like to have their own track like the "Ride" cymbal you can route that kit piece in the BFD mixer to one of the "Aux" channels and send that channel out to the Aux track in Sonar. Just open the routing menu of the kit piece and select "Aux 1" or "Aux 2". Be aware though that if you route any other pieces to that Aux channel they will play in the Aux track in Sonar as well... at least I'm assuming that's how it works.

Now your tracks are set up and you can Save as track template as described at 7:30 in the Drum Production Master Class Part 1 I linked above.

 
Beepster,
 
Thanks for the information you wrote about BFD Eco and getting it to work properly.  I like the product, however, I don't like the fact that I can't route ALL of the channels to their own individual tracks. several to the Toms and Cymbals have to be routed in groups as you noted. So, I only wind up haven one track for Toms and one track for Cymbals so that I can receive the sound on the track if any one of them is hit.
 
Overall, I find it to be great and has the quality of BFD to some extent, but some of the limitations are a real hassle
 
Have you found anything new about the routing and is there anyway to make it simpler?  I've decided to remove the Aux, OH, Room, tracks from the BFD Eco tracks in Sonar.  I use the Sonar buses for for my Over Heads and room adding a room reverb plate.   I am still trying to figure this ECO out, but I like it much
 
Again, thanks for your contribution to us Sonar users with BFD Eco.

Thanks Beepster for your assistance. 
 
I purchased BFD Eco a while ago during a fantastic sale for $30.00 or $35.00 but never really did anything with it.   After I build a new computer and installed Windows 10, I decided to install a lot of soft synths I never took the time to learn because the instruments in Sonar X1 - X3e were fine.  I figured I'd get the free updates and try to learn them.  Groove 3 sent me a 50 percent off coupon for tutorial videos and I saw BFD Eco, Waves, and some others, so I purchased them at half of the price and watched then while learning a great deal. The problem was that the BDF Eco tutorial on sending outs to your DAW was for Pro Tools and the process is a bit different. 
 
Any way, I thank you much for you narrating your experience with figuring out BFD Eco and with your recent information about separating the drum parts in Sonar.
 
Have a great day.