Sound Quality of Sonar X1 is excellent!!!
Sound Quality of Sonar X1 is excellent!!!
Sound Quality of Sonar X1 is excellent!!!
Sound Quality of Sonar X1 is excellent!!!
Sound Quality of Sonar X1 is excellent!!!
Sound Quality of Sonar X1 is excellent!!!
Sound Quality of Sonar X1 is excellent!!!
Sound Quality of Sonar X1 is excellent!!!
Sound Quality of Sonar X1 is excellent!!!
Sound Quality of Sonar X1 is excellent!!!
Sound Quality of Sonar X1 is excellent!!!

bobguitkillerleft


I realised ya orl wundering about my hassle with BFD2 [yeah of course yoo are]

Got it sussed,weirdly interprative instructions in email with links......they obviously cater to the mac crowd,Waaaay more than us W-peeple.

So 50GB.........50GB of .wav's

59.6 MB of grooves........F.LAME.

Most definitely should have upgraded SSD4 EX to Deluxe or whatever its called.

The program tries really hard,but it's patently obvious its from 5 years ago.

Stop dissing it Bob - your experience with BFD is quite out of the ordinary, and by your own admission, you didn't read the install instructions <doh>

Since you started complaining about BFD, I have completely installed BFD2, downloaded & applied all updates to both the 32 and 64 bit versions, installed the Jazz & Funk Expansion pack, Percussion Pack, DT Dunnet kit, Karcher Snare and reimported all my old drum maps.

I love me my BFD2.

BFD2 stood up for truth and justice when nobody else would.

bobguitkillerleft


I realised ya orl wundering about my hassle with BFD2 [yeah of course yoo are]

Got it sussed,weirdly interprative instructions in email with links......they obviously cater to the mac crowd,Waaaay more than us W-peeple.

So 50GB.........50GB of .wav's

59.6 MB of grooves........F.LAME.

Most definitely should have upgraded SSD4 EX to Deluxe or whatever its called.

The program tries really hard,but it's patently obvious its from 5 years ago.

I dunno Bob...not sure what your issues were, but to me, it's the most realistic piece of drum kit ever made. With a little tweaking, it's simply unbelievable in my opinion. I've hated their authorization method as well as the errors it would give me all the time, but there were simple work-arounds for that. They have since fixed all that stuff with the latest version which had quite a bit of old code removed from it.
 
See man, keeping the problem side out of it for a second, if most people on this forum attempted to mic up a drum kit in real life, they'd get something along the lines of BFD. Slate, Superior and a few others come out of the box sounding all processed and pretty. For someone to mic up a kit and get those sounds....you'd have to really know your stuff and spend some time. BFD is as close to a real kit as we'll ever see at this moment in time. Take away the room sounds and effects the others use, you are left with a very synthetic sounding drum. Remove the room effects from bfd and you have a drum sitting there on your lap.
 
To work a real drum kit in real life is tedious. When you work with BFD, it's tedious. It's not magical right out of the box like the others...just like a real kit isn't. You have to work it, compress it, eq it, and work it as well as the rooms and over-heads just like a real kit. The others are for the lazy man or the man that doesn't have the time nor the desire to completely work/tweak a drum kit. Don't get me wrong, BFD 2 out of the box is very cool...but it's not like the others. It's way more realistic.
 
As for Slate, if you have Slate Plat already, in my opinion SSD 4 isn't needed. It's a good drum module, but to me it wasn't totally ready to be released. I have issues with it while loading kit pieces when audio is playing. It will crash every 5th load, the toms do not sound very good to me, (the same as every version of Slate that I own since the Drumagog days...weak toms) their tech support is too busy working on other Slate products to respond to my legit problem on their forum, and all the sounds I hear on that are very similar/close to what I already had in the last version as well as the Drumagog samples I purchased years ago.
 
Again, take away the room effects and some of these drum sounds do not sound realistic to me. The same with Superior and others. I'm not knocking them, I'm just saying they rely so much on rooms and processing, they no longer sound remotely close to what I would consider a real drum when you remove that stuff. I may be a guitar player, but I was/am a drummer first...so I know quite a bit about this stuff. :)
 
At the end of the day, when I hear EZDrummer....I hear the exact same drum sound every person in the world has that could afford it. When I hear Superior, Slate or Addictive, I hear the same thing...all sounds quite a few use. When I hear BFD used by someone that knows what they are doing....I can't tell if the kit is real or BFD. Because they give you so much power and made it so realistic, it's rare you'll hear a kit and instantly say "ah, that's BFD" unless you own it and are super familiar with all the kit pieces or just use an out of the box kit with no tweaking. To me it's the most powerful and flexible DAW within a DAW drum software ever created. It's loaded with features and options....it's not super user friendly, it has a learning curve, it's not out of the box perfection, it's real drums in a room that you have to work on if you want to get close to major label quality....squeaks, imperfections and all.
 
I'm sorry to hear you had issues with it...that's never fun. I did at first myself. But my issues were my own fault. I just was hell-bent on using WDM drivers at the time because I could run multiple sound cards at once...and with ASIO, I lost that ability. But after I switched and learned/read about how to configure BFD the right way, it's become one of the most powerful drum modules I own. Definitely spend some time with it before you abandon ship or buy the Slate rig. Or heck, if you can afford the Slate rig, you can never have too many drum tools in your tool box. It is a good module as are the others I've mentioned...but BFD to me is just in a class by itself for *different* reasons. :)
 
-Danny

It's a good point about BFD being like working with real drum recordings, with all the pros and cons that implies.

bobguitkillerleft

Bristol_Jonesey


And yet another classic piece of writing from Danny!

You have a way with words my friend.

Too true,Ok I'm the dickhead.


BFD is possibly going to work out fine,it's just there was weirdness right from the word go, and I could tell our relationship was gonna be rough.

I'm still less than a year using any computer,at all, so there's bound to be car crashes,but this wasn't a fun one.


As far as the sound,definitely more options,starting with a more dry type tone.



As far as cymbals......SSD4 wins hands down,I shouldn't have dissed BFD,but it was 3 days of WTF,way too much HDD space,too little grooves,but obviously it is a way deep software,and I'm not sure thats what I need still being a digital noob.


Mistakes happen when youv'e been up too long,and your internet connection is slow as..... 


Sometimes relationships start that way.

Hahaha, no you're not. You're the furthest from that. Hey, frustration is understood. I been there myself and still get that way from time to time. The only person in the world that I don't think we could pay to get mad or frustrated is Jim Roseberry. LOL! The dude has the patience of Job I tell ya! I bet ya we can't pay him to get mad or say a cuss word. Hahahaha! (luv ya Jim!)
 
Yeah, spend some time with it Bob. It's really powerful once you get it going. I also agree with you on the SSD cyms...some nice rides and crashes. But...again, you gotta mess with BFD. There's a Paiste ride in there and a few other stock sounds that are just...pure bliss. And, if you go on their site right now...you can buy one of the Zildjian cymbal packs for $79 and get the other free! Quite a deal I couldn't pass up. Then again, I am a sample junkie. :) Anyway, good luck with BFD...and don't be too hard on yourself. There's quite a learning curve with computers as is...add in software with that same learning curve, a few crashes and issues, and man, it makes you wish you never got involved at all. We've all been there...and for most of us, it was during a time when things were really flawed, operating systems and internal hardware was super slow...we could wait 5 minutes just to see a crash. LOL! So you got it easier today. Crash, restart app in 2 seconds, restart pc or whatever. We used to wait minutes just for a boot up. LOL! So hang in there brother and just try to enjoy it all. :)
 
Jonesey: Thanks man! :) I recently got asked to write for a really cool online music page due to the stuff I've shared on here. I'll have to pm you a link when my column is up if you're interested. :)
 
-Danny 

Yes, please do Danny!

Same here!! Same here!!!

Jimbo 88


Hey this thread is slippin'

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_H-LY4Jb2M

Summary please

I'm glad we kept this on topic otherwise it would have been locked.

Wow, I just looked at the Fxpansion brief on the cymbals deal and what a deal.

21 cymbals for £50.00

How am I going to persuade her that this is a necessary purchase (having just paid £2K for my new DAW)

Bristol_Jonesey


Wow, I just looked at the Fxpansion brief on the cymbals deal and what a deal.

21 cymbals for £50.00

How am I going to persuade her that this is a necessary purchase (having just paid £2K for my new DAW)

Lie through your teeth Bristol, it's the honourable thing to do I'm told  

Big + to Danny.
I'm afraid I was becoming a little impatient with Mr Bob. I don't like to assume that some people here are completely 
new to computers let alone music software but Bobs comments on file size left me thinking he most probably was.
It's just that I know some people understandably feel patronised when we do make those assumptions.
I'm absolutely 100% with Danny (in case some hadn't noticed) in his suggestions that BFD2 is in a class of it's own 
and the most realistic drum software on the market.
There's an interesting interview with fxpansions creator Angus Hewlett about the company, BFD2 and future 
development.
I saw on youtube last year another interview in which Angus and his colleagues proudly claimed that BFD2 was the only drum product that had been used on hit records where they had replaced the original drums but they weren't at liberty to say as the original drummers had not been told.

How ever did a topic on Sonars sound quality get to be about drums? 

Steve