I see that there is currently a sale on BFD, and I’m checking with any BFD users who use it e-drums on experiences with it. Does everything work well with your kit, such as hi-hat control? I have a TD-17KVX kit, which works well with SD3. I don’t know if BFD will allow for setting a MIDI CC range of 0-90 for hi-hat control, which is what the TD-17 module puts out, where more expensive modules put out 0-127.
Reading around the net I’m seeing a lot of complaints about authorization happening at every launch that causes a time delay before opening BFD. Is that still the case? If it matters I’m running Windows.
I’m also seeing complaints of bugginess and crashing. Has that been addressed recently?
BFD looks like an interesting option, especially at the sale price, but less so if it’s a hassle to use.
Hey there! I’m not the most expert opinion here but, For $39 It’s a no brainer.
I own a lot of drum software but BFD is the only oke i use and i use it everyday with my edrums. There are some issues once in a while but it’s the best sounding software.
As i said before, i use it everyday and i like it a lot.
People at the forum are always helping users to fix any problem.
I’m not totally sure I understand the question, but on page 144 of the BFD3.5 user manual there is this:
• Input (Input Range) This control defines the MIDI note velocity range to which the selected articulation responds. The primary use for this control is for creating velocity-based splits for keys with multiple articulations, so that different velocity ranges can trigger different articulations.
Regarding your other questions. Yes, there is authorization that happens when you first open up. I’ve seen other people complain about it, but in my experience there isn’t too much time involved so I view it as a non-issue.
I’ve had a few crashes, but not too many. Certainly not an over irritating amount. Maybe a little less than Cubase, but more than Arturia. In general.
I’ve got three other drum programs: Battery 4, Groove Agent 6, and Addictive Drums 2. They are all good. I initially tried to spread my time evenly among them, but I found myself using BFD more and more. Ultimately I bought 25 expansion packs. And now I hardly use the other drum programs. I greatly like the versatility of BFD and I’m finally past most of the steep learning curve. And they’ve finally modernized the downloading and activation with the InMusic software center, which is a step up from before, now that the bugs are out.
I think it has been helpful to keep everything on an SSD drive with about 30% free space.
@ratskins The hi-hat settings question (for e-drums) that I’m talking about is being able to set a range for a CC (control change) that affects hi-hat openness when using a hi-hat controller. Some drum modules put out a range of 0-127 and some put out 0-90. Some drum samplers don’t provide for changing that range, expecting 0-127 only, so hi-hat control doesn’t work as it should.
Thanks ratskins. That looks like it could be what I was asking about, but that could be about velocity rather than control change. I can’t tell which it is within those screen captures.
On the other issues I mentioned, I read around more since last posting, and there are a lot of complaints around about bugs/stability, settings being scattered about, and having to wait around for the authorization at every launch, with a lot of users saying to avoid BFD. BFD sounds nice, and the sale price is sure attractive. But I don’t need a drum sampler that will be a headache to use. Maybe the BFD team will get things ironed out for the next release, and I suppose I’ll check back then. Until then, I’ll just stick with SD3, which is easy enough to use, rock solid stable, with no authorization issues to deal with.
Also, it would be good if a lite trial version of BFD were offered so that potential buyers can poke around and try things out for ensuring that needed functionality is in place and stability is good.
I’ve been using the software for years, though not for your sort of use case. I use it to program drum tracks. From my perspective, it is still the best and most focused tool out there for creating drum tracks that sound great. The ability to tweak the kit pieces and the modeling is fantastic, the editors are all very focused and functional, the mixer is great, the selection of effects is great, and the various expansions they have for sale sound the best of any of the products I’ve used. That’s all the good news.
The bad news is that the current version 3.5 is much more unstable than the previous version. I don’t think I had a handful of crashes with the previous version in all the years I used it. But I upgraded a while ago to 3.5 and regularly have multiple crashes each week. I have reported them all and the support team always nicely tells me how sorry they are and that they’ll log the issue. But I have no evidence that they’re actually working on any fixes and we have no ETA on when any of those issues may be resolved.
Worse, the rotten thing authenticates every expansion I own every time I open the plug-in or standalone software. And because I own a lot of the expansions, that means I sit there for 3 to 5 minutes every single time I load it. That is absolutely ridiculous. And just like the bugs, we have no ETA for when they might fix it or if they’re even working on changing it. I can’t imagine why anyone thought that was a smart change to make from the way the older software worked beautifully, requiring that kind of authorization only once every 90 days.
Since upgrading, I have gradually gone from a BFD advocate to somebody who’s looking for another solution. I’m sorry to do that after all the time and money and effort I’ve spent on BFD, but without any indication whatsoever from the new owners what they’re going to do about it, that’s where I’m at. Take that for what you will.
