Jesse G
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.
Yeah, cool. As I noted earlier in this thread the Session Drummer 3/Drum Production videos Seth Perlstein did for Sonar on how to route drum synths totally works for BFD Eco as well. They were still in the Cakewalk University section of the site last time I checked.
Basically the only real difference in setting up BFD (as opposed to Session Drummer) is... well you are setting up your ouputs from BFD's mixer instead of from SD3's mixer.
However what I have been doing lately is manually inserting my drum samplers into the Synth rack (BFD, AD2, SD3) and inserting all the tracks I need manually in Sonar (so one MIDI track to drag/record my MIDI parts into and as many audio/instrument tracks I need).
Then I manually route the MIDI track and Audio tracks as needed (the MIDI track outputs to the drum synth in the rack and I set up the audio tracks to accept the appropriate inputs from the drum synth... of course I gotta make sure the drum synth is set up to ouput to those tracks as well).
I find this works much better because I can treat the drum synth outputs more like a real drum kit that has been mic'd and recorded.
Using the Insert Softsynth option in Sonar does some confusing and unnecessary stuff for drum synths.
For example I want all my close mic'd kit peices to be Mono inputs but want things like the Aux bus or even overheads to ouput as stereo (not much point sepearating overheads and rooms because you want them in stereo pairs anyway and that's how drum synths output them).
So for all the naturally Mono kit pieces I create a track and choose the mono signal from the drum synth as the input.
For the Stereo outputs like Aux busses or Overheads/Rooms/etc I can choose the stereo ouputs from the track input.
Using the Sonar Insert synth auto dialog you only have two options that create either more work or an unrealistic track setup. It either sets up everything as stereo (which you don't want for close mics) or you end up with a bunch of doubled tracks (two kicks, two snares, etc) and you have to delete all the doubles.
Of course once it's all setup properly you can save a track template but I don't bother. I just set it up each time based on the project. It forces me to really think about what I want in the project as far as drums and how I want it all set up.
It takes far less time than setting up mics and a mixer and recording but still forces you to make the types of thoughtful decisions you would if you WERE tracking a live drum kit.
Of course I'm a spazz though and that's to emulate a true live recording scenario. For crazy "not so live" type work it really doesn't matter much. Still probably good to pay attention to/understand the details.
It results it better and more thoughtful productions IME. Feels good too... like you worked for it.
;-)
Cheers.