John


Those that are old hands with BFD 2 if you have any tips I for one would appreciate hearing them. 

If it's running fine without drop outs and pops and crackles on your C drive then I guess there's no reason to move it.
If however you do start to notice problems it's very easy to just move the adio/data folder to another drive and then tell BFD2 where to find it, then trash and rebuild your databases.


I have a drive dedicated solely to drums, 330GB is BFD contents including Eco and the rest is Battery & EZdrummer.
Eco being lighter can sit quite happily on your C-drive particularly on more up to date DAWS. 

Also should maybe mention an internal 7200rpm drive or firewire drive would be preferable to external usb


Steve

Thanks Steve, Great tip.

In terms of best practices I have three drives I use:

C:\ Program files/Operating System
D:\ Cakewalk Audio Files
E:\ Samples

This way, no one drive is getting overtaxed regardless of what I"m doing.

Just when I start to get my head around Superior Drummer this comes along...(LOL)

Funkybot

guitartrek


John - I'm a Superior user and am entrigued with your comment about drum names showing up without a drum map.  How does that occur?  And can you alter the order of the drum piece names so that you can put all the toms together, all the hihats together, etc.?

There's something in BFD2 that tells Sonar the note names. How it works is beyond me, but it does. 


Can you change it? Yes, if you adjust the keymap in BFD2, those changes will be reflected in Sonar's PRV.

Doesn't that adjust the actual  note assignments as well?  In a drum map you can move things around while keeping their assignments which is VERY handy.

So, just another update... I believe that BFD3 is on the horizon (its been discussed for months on the BFD forum).

I think it is great that you can load more or less velocity layers at will if RAM is an issue.  I think a lot of the drum kit pieces have as many as 256 different layers of velocities but.... if BFD2 is missing one thing that I find required is that they don't have many articulations for their kit pieces (I hope that they address this in BFD3).

Now, I am not complaining because just a few years ago when must of us were in the 32 bit world, they had to make a choice between articulations vs velocity layers (they choose the later).  This is the one area (at least for me) that holds BFD2 back from being my goto drum sampler.

Also, I have every add-on pack for BFD2 that they offer and having all these kit pieces is amazing.

I am not overly fond of the ROOM where they tracked the drums for the ambient mics... and there is no way to control the pan of a kit piece in the OH mics (which you couldn't do in the real world) but this limits you on where in the sound stage your kit pieces can be.... (in the real world if a drummer had a china on the right side of this kit, then the OHs would have the CHINA on the right side but in BFD2, you are stuck with wherever the CHINA was when tracked).  I know, this sounds like nick picking but other drum kits give some control of the panning in the OH mics (i have had many a discussion on the BFD forum over this).

Also, the add on packs from PLATINUM samples are quite good as well.  BUt just like the BFD2 kits, I want more articulations, especially on the toms. 

Oh well, I have quite a big investment in BFD2 platform and I haven't abandoned them just don't use them as much as I thought I would.

Jim

Thats funny I was thinking how nice the articulations are.

I've only had BFD2 a few months now, could not resist the upgrade path from BFD Eco.
It's true that it works within Sonar flawlessly, when set up properly.

Thanks guys . . . this thread has helped clarify a few conceptual things I was struggling about in my learning of BFD2.
Especially the concept that Fxpansion have tried to duplicate a full studio microphoned kit, as opposed to my previous drum
plugins, where they merely played samples with simple velocity layers.
The BFD2 mixer therefore responds differently, because each kit piece is affected by microphone bleed, just a real kit would.

I have very little "studio" experience with drum kit miking, so that makes the learning curve a little steeper.

What attracted me most to getting BFD2 (apart from loving Fxpansion's old DR008 module) was the fact that you can edit and create grooves (looks + works similar to Music Lab Slicy Drummer ?), and also that it can all be powerfully pre-mixed onto 1 Sonar channel. Previously I was using track templates, and mapping kit pieces to many channels, room buses,  etc . . .
Having a drum module that does all that, well it's simple, clean and efficiently realistic.

Does anyone else read BFD as Big Friendly Drums? I really gotta grow up....

EDIT: Apparently that's what it actually stands for. +1000 to meeeeeee!

sharke


Does anyone else read BFD as Big Friendly Drums? I really gotta grow up....

EDIT: Apparently that's what it actually stands for. +1000 to meeeeeee!

  It doesn't stand for "Friendly" but it is an "F" word.  So says Angus the developer and head of the company.