Until today, I had not upgraded BFD3 since a little prior to v3.4, but now I’ve migrated and 3.4.5.28 seems to be running well and it was a pretty painless process (waiting this long at least helped to ensure the kinks have been ironed out). I’ve got just the BFD3 main library.
However, I must’ve searched for an hour on this thinking it’s not possible for it to have gone unmentioned, but I’ve found almost nothing…
I’m seeing four new hihat zones as well as some new effects (mostly AIR) and Envelope knobs in the Model panel. Since I’m an edrummer, the extra hihat zones could be a pretty big deal. But the link to the PDF manual is broken, and the online manual is apparently not new enough to cover the 3.4 update. Is there info or forum discussion on this somewhere and I’m missing it? To get more specific…
Is there an updated manual since InMusic took over?
Were these features all introduced in v3.4 as part of the InMusic migration?
Do the extra hihat zones have no function if the original hihat samples only have 5 artics (rather than the new 9)?
What expansion packs have 9 hihat artics?
Are the AIR effects discussed anywhere?
On ‘Model/Envelope’, what do Attack and Sustain Boost Times do? How do you all like to use these four knobs? It seems Sustain does nothing if its Boost Time knob is all the way to the right, correct?
I haven’t seen an updated Manual/User Guide as of this post…
The Articulations for the BFD3 Core Library are still the same.
The 1/8 Articulations I have only seen in Dark Farm…which is the most recent expansion.
The AIR Plugins are New…(Well…“New” for BFD3)
The Plugins are from the Creative FX Collection] which has been around since Pro Tools 8 or so…
I still have an old link for the Creative Collection and created a Download for the more current version which is both Create FX and Creative FX Plus.
The change from 5-9 is CC4 upgrade for the Variable Hi Hat…
under the Hi Hat Edit menu…adding more MIDI Notes to recordings without having to deal with CC4 as much during Editing/Moving to DAW…(I haven’t much experience with that so can’t say for sure)
But as mentioned previously,I only see the 1/8 Articulations in Dark Farm…
Thanks Fender and Steve,
yes, the online manual works. I just wanted to make sure I knew of whatever the most recent version of it is. Since I just installed BFD3.4 yesterday, I know that it still installs a link to the PDF manual (which is broken on the start menu), which is what I was referring to.
Thanks, Chaser. Lots of good info and I didn’t know most of that.
It was actually my expectation that only new expansion packs would have hihats with extra zones, but I still wanted to know for sure. In fact, when I go to the Dark Farm sales page, it doesn’t say anything about it, so there’s no way to know without asking. Apparently, there are other VSTis that use some sort of modelling to help blend the hihat zone transitions, but I only own BFD3. I can remember telling people in the past that, IMO, the jarring change between hihat zones is the most annoying thing about being an edrummer (compared to acoustic). Especially if the zones were recorded to literally correspond to their labels (such that 1/4 artic is literally 1/4 * 128 = 32 midi signal out of 128 for how open the hihat pedal is) rather than what they should do, which is to heavily favor the closed portion of the range such that the closed, 1/4, & 1/2 artics all occur well within the bottom of the of the hihat pedal’s midi range…since that’s where the sound changes the most. But this seems like a really important addition, although it means buying some additional samples.
I see in the “more current version” of the Creative Collection PDF you posted about that it has fairly verbose descriptions of at least some of the AIR effects (e.g., Compressor, Maximizer, Tube drive), so that’s a big help, thanks. And maybe some of the others are the same but have different names.
The new (to me) Envelope feature that applies dynamic shaping to the entire kit piece rather than just one mic also seems potentially very useful, and at the least, a nice ‘quality of life’ addition, though I haven’t had the chance to play around with it yet. But I should probably go to the general topics forum to talk about that.
There isn’t much info available for Dark Farm.
BFDDrums has a Youtube Channel…currently only 2 Videos and both are for Dark Farm , but about the Creation and Behind The Scenes
There isn’t anything in the Knowledge Base as there is for the other Expansion/Groove Packs…
There are Instrument/Kit Piece Demo’s on SoundCloud…but other than that …as far as the expansion and the Hi Hat …we are in the “Dark”
Previously the BFDengine only supported a few open states. We’ve expanded the number of supported open states in the engine to be able to support better and more detailed hihats. Dark Farm is the first pack to benefit from this, but actually we do have additional content for Vintage Recording Techniques and BFD Crush, but just haven’t put them out as an update yet. We will at some point, but too much going on right now.
