Superior drummer 2 pricing

I was just having a look on their site and saw that if I wanted to buy superior drummer as a first time buyer it
would cost me £215 (approximately) which is 259 Euros or $343 
I'm not considering buying it as I have BFD2 but was just doing a price compare and showing a friend of mine.

I know I could get an upgrade from EZdrummer if I wanted to buy superior but I'm just trying to figure out how it can still be that price? 

BFD2 is £175 for first time buyers which is considerably less for considerably more (10 whole drum kits of varying styles) 
and yet so many people here insist on recommending superior drummer. 
Am I missing something?

Steve

I use Superior religously. You can find it sometimes on sale on Amazon for as little as $175 american dollars. That's where I got mine. They also sell the expansion kits. I have collected several of those. With just a few of those expansions you are set.

Can either of you two (or anyone) tell me whether you can fully automate all of superiors parameters within sonar? I did a google search and it seems like superior is anything but superior in terms of automation control.

I can automate 512 different parameters using NRPN envelopes in sonar, everything from kit piece tuning to mic placement and of course all of the 18 effects that come with  BFD2 are fully automatable. 

I'm really surprised if it's true that "superior" isn't able to do that but google searches seem to suggest that that's the case.
Who ever said BFD2 was less flexible? How much more flexible do you want? 
Even cakewalks session drummer gives me NRPN automation  

Steve

I get your point Bristol but if yorolpal is right in his claims that you can never have too many drums then surely 
you can never have "Too Much" control? :))
I mean you don't have to use it but it's always there if you want it. 

 
I don't use it often but did have some great fun messing around with them the other day (I mean I got creative) 
I made a drum loop where I automated the tuning of the kick and also the eq on BFD2's master and made some crazy 
grime/dub step/ techno or whatever you want to call it type thing. I posted them up as templates for those wanting to 
understand BFD2's routing options.

(http://forum.cakewalk.com/tm.aspx?m=2104915) 

That's the thread but the templates are here http://tiny.cc/3vn0y      

I'm not saying they are any good mind, but I had a lot a fun making them and it took me no time at all. 
The first one uses the Yamaha Cocktail kit so if you don't have that (and I recommend it very highly) it wont be any use. 
But the others are all the standard default BFD2 kits.

Steve

strikinglyhandsome1


Would it be fair to say that you are quite a vocal BFD fan and not really a Toontrack fan?

It would be madness to suggest otherwise :) 

I've given my reasons on many occasions and discovering superiors automation limitations has done nothing to make me think it has the right to call it's self, "superior"


As for the price thing I was really talking about first time buyers and how I was surprised to see BFD2 was the cheaper of the two, particularly given that, in my opinion BFD2 is clearly erm...superior :)


Steve



Another thing (and petty as it may sound) I don't like the fact that it calls its self, "superior.
It puts me off when people do stuff like that, like when George Galloway called his party "The respect party" I think it's arrogant and insulting to others.

Also something I don't really mention much as it's fairly subjective and I've mentioned before that people will prefer one to the other depending on their taste in music but superior seemed to me to be very metal/rock orientated and those are genres that usually bore me to tears.
The drums that I hear in metal sound so limp and tinny to my ears so that put me off it a lot.

Are you seriously making a comparison between the two things? 
 
If I said what it "allegedly" stood for it would be beeped by the the moderators but I've heard it goes along the lines of, 
Big Feck Off Drums" or something like that.  

 
Calling your product "Big" isn't making a claim to be better than the rest, it's simply a statement of fact. 
Perhaps if it stood for, "bigger" then you might have a point but it doesn't.

It IS bigger though, 37GB bigger for starters but sound wise? Well ears may vary of course but mine say it's the biggest by a country mile.   
 
Of course all us guys know that it's not the size of a thing, but what you do with it that matters 



Steve

Are you talking about those templates I made?
They are all standard kits with no additional pieces.
Nothing added, nothing taken away as the old advert says.
Very heavy on the effects admittedly but.....you gotta use them someday right?

Or are we not talking about those?

Seve

Oh I see
So you're offended by swearing?

Like I said, it's a petty personal thing but but I would say I find arrogance far more offensive
that swearing.

But of all the things that put me off Superior (I even hate calling it that cuz it's just an outright lie IMO) it's name was definitely the least of them.


Steve

Anyone doubting that BFD is every bit the sonic equal of SD2 need only go to the Songs forum and have a listen. I've also heard some very impressive stuff done with Steven Slate Drums. Not to mention Addictive Drums and Battery. Talent, imagination and experience trump everything.

BFD does have some technical advantages: a disk streaming option to conserve RAM, lots more effects, more velocity layers, and a simpler way to build and alter kits. OTOH, Superior is more like mixing real drums, which is a comfort factor for many of us. It's oriented around microphones rather than drums, like a real studio setup. Conversely, BFD may be less intimidating to someone more accustomed to working with sample libraries than real drums. 

As for the "one thing" that SD does better, the one thing I hear most often - but cannot confirm personally - is that it works better with V-drums. My drum tracks are hand-programmed or played on a keyboard, so I have no personal experience banging on pads with sticks. And I'm much too uncoordinated to use my feet!

The thing I like most about Superior is the versatility of bleed control and room mics. I can tweak them to make the drums sound either more or less realistic, more roomy, or very dry and tight. The envelope editor lets me choose between loose or tight toms. I have a lot of options for the snare, with multiple mics picking it up plus a separate 1176-compressed channel. Three separate room mics at varying distances let me simulate anything from a padded drum booth to a small or big ambient room to a Bonham-esque stairwell. I almost never need reverb. 

And I manage all this with nothing more than the stock kit that ships with SD2. I have never felt the need to buy add-ons. I don't know anybody who uses BFD without a handful of expansion packs. Take that into consideration when comparing the price of the two products.

But my questions were based on the cost and the features/flexibility of superior, 
not on how it sounded.

Had they been based on how it sounded (to my ears) then obviously my biased would have dictated my line of my questioning.

I've said many times in other posts that how it sounds to one person is to a large extent subjective and will depend on the kind of music you listen to and what you want your music to sound like.  
 
I'm teetering back and forth on the edge of buying fxpansions Tremor, but what's stopping me is that I don't really make that kind of music, but then there's a sale on until tomorrow, and I keep telling my self that it's good to expand my methods and create new (to me) sounds and that means treading on unfamiliar ground. 
Were it not for fruity loops and reason or computers full stop, none of the more experimental electronica (or whatever you want to call it) on my myspace page would have ever been written.

I felt they were honest questions and I am genuinely interested in hearing others opinions.
It's a subject I'm quite passionate about too which probably explains my, "apparent" defensiveness.


Beagle is quite right, I am defensive of BFD2 because it's something I care about
If I weren't defensive of the things I cared about I would consider my self less of a man.

And to Beagle I should apologise because looking back at my post it does have a quite critical tone which wasn't intended, 
but it does bother me sometimes when I read people posts that perpetuat things that I know not to be true.

I think this forum has a very heavy toontrack bias and perhaps I'm trying to fly the flag for BFD2 and redress the balance a little. 
I have just last week signed an NDA with fxpansion in the hope of becoming a beta tester for BFD3 as I feel there aren't enough sonar users on the BFD forum.

That may be partly due to the fact that sonar users seem to have fewer problems with the 32bit versions of Eco and BFD2 as most of them seem to be running macs with cubase, logic or protools.


Steve

Mod Bod

I think we all know what BFD stands for and that happens to be a name that offends me and I only make the reference to it to show that an offending name isn't going to be unacceptable if the product is good.

Dave I knew it was a rhetorical question I just wasn't sure what it was about the name that offended you. 
I genuinely thought it was the claim to be, "big" that bothered you and not the use of the "F" word.
You must be scared to turn your TV on for fear of being offended? 


I take it you're not a fan of rap music or punk or any music that may use foul and abusive language?


I used to work on a building site so it was just everyday language and I don't really have a problem with swearing, it's the intent behind
the words that I go on. 

Ain't what you say it's the way that you say it.




Steve

We're pretty lucky to have such great problems ;-)

I have Superior, EZ, and BFD eco...I'm glad I have each. I'm a rank amateur, but I remember the days of programming my Dr. Rhythm, and I'm glad I don't have to go back to them. The thing I remember really liking about BFD2 (at least I think I'm right about this) is the sequencer for building patterns felt fairly intuitive.

I don't do nearly enough even as a hobbyist to justify adding BFD2 to what I've already got, but it's definitely a great sounding piece of kit.

I've always thought that BFD was great.  I don't own it, but my impression is that it has more tweakability than any other drum program.

I think Superior has a greater market share - I don't know for sure.  And I think that is more of a result of better marketing and product decisions from Toontrack.  EZDrummer is a great and inexpensive drum program that captured a huge market share.  I would never have spent $300 or more on a big program like Superior or BFD.  But a few years after I bought EZD, the $99 crossgrade to SD2 offer came out.  I jumped on that.  I think a lot of people jumped on that too. 

The bottom line is that Toontrack provides a less expensive path to SD2, where BFD is a larger investment.  Had BFD had a little brother like EZD, things may have been different.

Interesting.  You're right - it's all a matter of timing, and the EZD timing was perfect.  I honestly had no idea Eco even existed - I'll have to check that out. 

I couldn't really use EZD because of some of it's shortcomings and moved on to AD which at the time was very groundbreaking and very tweakable.  But SD2 is a giant step ahead of AD so I was happy to go back to the Toontrack folks.