BFD2 is awesome. Worth every penny. As you've noted, even the Eco version is very impressive. The full thing is astounding, and once you get to grips with how to use it well, you can get fantastic results. I've been asked who the drummer was and could I pass on his number on stuff I made with BFD.

Myself, I'd always rather have a real drummer recorded in a good room whenever I can. But BFD beats the hell out of most other compromises you could make, AND gives the real drummer in a good room a serious run for their money.

John T
(and others here)

How do you compare the REALISM of the drum sounds for

EZDRUMMER  -vs-  BFD ECO   ?

Once I master these versions,  I may upgrade in the future ----  but I come from the old school of miking real drums, real marshall amps and real ampeg bass rigs ............ and recording thru an Allen Heath console and rack gear to Otari, Teac or Studer multitrack tape machines.

I only switched to DAW about 5 years ago

For these past 5 years, I have basically still been recording real musicians , so DAW has been basically a Digital Multitrack Tape machine (with great editing) for me.

These drums will be my first step into CREATING music inside the DAW with MIDI

To my ears ...... the big giveaway for all the DEMOS I have heard on the company websites are the CYMBALS and CRASHES

I don't know why they sound "fake" since they are supposedly miked just like the drums --------- but for some reason most of the cymbals have a fake SHHHHHIIIIIIIIISSSSSSHHHHHH  tone to them

Thanks for your opinions on each software based on experience

I've only dabbled with EZDrumer, so can't really compare the two.

However, regarding cymbals and hi hats in BFD2, I think they're excellent. There are two factors at play here; partly they're just very well recorded. The other factor is that BFD has excellent mixing capabilities, whether you use the internal mixer, or whether you route each virtual mic (including direct, room, overheads and ambient mics) out to your DAW. You can even set amounts of bleed between the mics, which can really glue things together.

I find that BFD, mixing-wise, is almost exactly like mixing a real drum kit, and almost entirely unlike mixing a bunch of samples.If you're at all used to messing with real kit recordings to get them sounding smooth and agreeable, you'll be right at home.

The other thing about BFD is that it's "anti-machine-gun mode" (it's really called that) is the best I've heard. You'l never hear repeats of exactly the same sample, but at the same time, it doesn't seem entirely random either. It's got a very pleasing ability to make your drum programming sound more impressive and natural than it probably is.

I just installed BFD ECO
I was able to get everything to work EXCEPT  Drum Map
None of the existing drum maps work for BFD Eco Dry DW Kit

They have all types of BFD2 drum maps, but when I try them I lose all sound ----- so apparently the full BFD2 is mapped different than BFD Eco

Any ideas
Thanks

Try creating your own drum map from scratch.

Once you've built your kit, and assigned the various hits to the diferent keys in the Midi assignment page, it's quite straightforward from that point to build your map - and you only ever have to build it once!
Save it down as a named preset and you can use it again and again in all future projects (unless you change your kit, in which case you tweak your existing map, re-name & save it to reflect your changes).

Mike,
 You probably need to set the output ports for your the maps that aren't making sound.

 Look at the bottom of this page in the Drum Map Manager section:

 http://www.harmoniccycle....13-drum_maps_SONAR.htm

 best regards,
mike

Another reason for drum maps, is that you can have ALL your drum sounds in ONE midi track instead of many (one for each sound), then each note gets ported out the way you would like :)

You can also use the same, single drum map to control more than one drum synth, if you're that way inclined.

Old thread alert!