OT: NO LONGER disappointed with BFD :)

i got BFD a few months back cos of all the good reviews in the Sonar forum. previously i was using battery, and mostly the ns-kit.

now, while i am very happy with the bass drum, snare and toms, the hi hats and cymbals i thought were poor so i continued using the ns-kit hihats and cymbals. then BFD-XL and _DLX came out, with greatly improved hihats and cymbals. the answer to my problems? no.

maybe its due to my PC being old and not running SSE (BFD wont run standalone and i have had to run at 16 bit and 64 levels so that the -DLX will run smoothly), but . . . the hihats and cymbals are so SHORT. maybe less than a second, with a quite noticeable truncation (slightly faded). is this correct? the cymbals on ns-kit (free) last seconds and fade naturally and so are usable in all situations. BFD and -DLX (over 500€) seem so stunted that they can only be used where the other instruments can hide the lost tail.

i must be doing something wrong - is there a setting in BFD that needs changing? i havent tweaked much, but maybe ive mucked something up? in the meantime im back to using BFD and battery together.

OOPS - sorry, this should have gone in another forum (not sure id get an unbiased reply in the BFD/KVR forum)

Yes- don't just assume BFD is crap, cuz it's not. It's an incredible sounding piece of software. The cymbals aren't meant to sound like that.
But it's complex and memory hungry and it takes some tweaking (at least it did on my system- and I'm still learning)
Make sure you have the recommended minimum 768mb ram.

Tomham is right though- you will get answers on the KVR FXpansion forum.

Your problem may be this though: change your "max cache buffers" to 64.

VOJX: could you use a lesser app to sequence your drums then render to audio using BFD and just a few sounds? This has got me through a few tight spots when my system was not fast enough to run big apps.

i was wondering that because the Athlon (pre-XP) doesnt run SSE (so i understand) then that was causing the problems. BFD doesnt run standalone, and only runs in ONE project (and String Theory must be running alongside) which i thus use as a template for new tracks. the original driver from the BFD DVD worked better, version 1.5.37 or so seemed to break it (grooves dont work, audition of drums crashes the engine). rewinding the driver didnt help.

as it is, i solo and bounce each drum one at a time, but the cymbals still dont render properly.

so either the chip is too old (cant upgrade till next year) or i need to experiment with settings.

thanks for the suggestions , ill reply once ive sorted it.

Recommended:
Wait right after July ends. This is the BEST point to get a new DAW. The Intels and AMD pricings are cutting in half. You can get a dual core for almost half of what today's price are listed. If you need it NOW, then start researching. Just letting you know.