I remember that the BFD to BFD2 upgrade was a WOW!  Better sounding drums, more kits, effects, etc.  I am still scratching my head.  What is a compelling feature to justify an upgrade with BFD3?

rtucker55
I went to Ebay and JRR had 4 download licenses available for $149. I made them the $126.65 offer so I'll know within 24hrs if they accept it or not. If they do, 54GB is going to be a marathon download for me.... 

I think the actual download was 37.9 GB that extracts 54 so not quite so bad.Took me just under 8 hours but obviously they'll be a lot more traffic when it's released.
 
Steve

Actually, I'm looking forward to it!!

munmun
I remember that the BFD to BFD2 upgrade was a WOW!  Better sounding drums, more kits, effects, etc.  I am still scratching my head.  What is a compelling feature to justify an upgrade with BFD3?

I didn't own BFD1 but completely understand what you mean about the upgrade being better in just about every way.
When FXpansion were canvassing users as to what new features they wanted to see for BFD3 I really struggled to see how it could really be improved. Other than making it 64bit (we had been lead to believe we might have to wait till BFD3 for that to happen) I was pretty happy. Like most people I didn't really use the drum edit page as I already had one I understood and could work with but the new drum editor, despite not being detachable and full screen as I had hoped does have some really useful new features that you wont find in sonar, and possibly not most other sequencers though I can't say for sure.
 
The 7 new kits are undoubtedly of much higher quality than the original BFD2 kits, having more than twice the amount of velocity layers (256) and being made by arguably the most respected and popular third party drum library makers who's name I shan't mention. These alone would probably cost in the region of $200 so you can't really argue about the upgrade cost.
Having said that my favourite and probably most oft used kit is the Yamaha Cocktail kit which is one of the smallest and cheapest of their expansion kits.
 
As for the new UI, well for my eyes it's lost a lot of the sex appeal and eye candy of BFD2. But hey eye candy is frivolous and a fool would by a car on looks rather than mileage and reliability right?
But in terms of work flow and ease of access it is a huge improvement. I just wish they hadn't adopted this pale blue/grey/white wash that seems to be the fashion right across the board with music software, Sonar X1 being the worse culprit in my opinion.
The first time I saw X1 I thought Dracula had been in the dev department and sucked all the life out of sonar. It's like some cold bleak Siberian winter that makes me want to turn the heating up. Still, cools me down on a summers day
 
So yes, I think it's just about worth the upgrade though I tend to wait until the fuss and, "the price" has come down a bit.
Just makes me wonder whatever will they come up with for BFD4 ?
 
Steve

I have never used the drum editor.  Do you mean the groove page?  Is it an easier to use version of jamstix?  That would be good!

munmun
I have never used the drum editor.  Do you mean the groove page?  Is it an easier to use version of jamstix?  That would be good!

Does jamstix have a drum editor ? All I could see was This which looks like a very simple grid arranger.
BFD3's grid editor is far more advanced than what I'm looking at. It has some new features too that I don't think can be found in other drum editors or sequencers and I really think I should wean my self off the sonar piano roll and start editing in BFD3 instead.
 
Steve

Interesting.  I don't know BFD3's capabilities but Jamstix is a different beast.  It composes the midi track on the fly as it listens to the music.  You then can go in and edit and tweak stuff in the window you see.  It is a great program because I hate programming drums but it can also be difficult and cumbersome.

Yeah I do appreciate what jamstix does, it reminds me a little of band in a box, how you can have a lead guitar part play in the style of....various famous lead guitarists. Obviously you can use the supplied midi loops in BFD3 or import any other midi drum loop and then edit it how you like. But i has all the humanising features of BFD2 with a few new additions.
Like you can humanise time and velocity plus you can simplify a groove and you have swing and weight and quantise all on the fly but as I said I've not really used it enough to really say how well it works but I would really like to see some of the jamstix features in BFD3's drum/groove editor. I think together they would be a pretty powerful drum solution.
 
Steve

Looks like the release will be in 3 days.

Whoa!  To buy or not to buy?????