The fact that the product owner has little sway in decisions seems bonkers to me. It certainly seems like inMusic’s way of doing things is a little bit… unusual.
I wouldn’t describe it as little sway. It’s just not entirely up to me. I wish it was. As I said before, I will post more when I know more.
It makes little sense to me either tbh, but Im not here to understand corporate structure or contracts that were signed by whoever whenever. Knowledge of that is not part of the EULA, for now at least.
I just want BFD to not be a time limited demo for me come the end of June. Because at that point its on a self destruct sequence and will just become dead data. I’ll either delete it all and install whatever competitors product I’ve got my hands on, or move to pure drum machines and banging rocks together.
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Enjoy your FAQ responses Dembo.
Heard back from Sweetwater, they have no reference on their systems that BFD needs the internet to run. Clearly its something they normally keep on file for products they sell. I would suspect it helps cover them for returns and angry customers, and purely for giving info out.
Again, nothing may change but there is a least a slim chance that new customers may get a heads up prior to purchase instead of finding out the hard way. At least Sweetwater replied and sound interested. Might come to nothing. Whatever. This is something that should already have been done a year ago.
Could be lunchmeat*, could be peaches.
*Not spam.
- No Internet access (for whatever reason) after A + 90 days => BFD3 customer temporarily screwed.
- InMusic goes teats up => all BFD3 customers permanently screwed.
Due to point (2), no one should purchase BFD3 unless: (a) before purchasing they are explicitly informed by InMusic of the requirement for the periodic license validation check; (b) they are willing to assume the risk that the InMusic licensing process entails.
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Not sure how plugged into the Steinberg/Yamaha world you are, but when they were coming up with their new licensing system, they started to go this route and the backlash made them change their proposed policy. Don’t know if you’ve shared this with U.M. but if not, it would be a good leverage data point.
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The Steinberg thing already has a thread or two here, if it was going to make any difference it would have done by now, I suspect.
According to InMusic CS that I spoke to on the phone, this is an across the board policy that InMusic do with ALL their software lines.
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Oh, and I looked into SD3 last night. I have no money to replace BFD, but if I was going to, if I could find the cash, I’d have bought it last night.
The interface looks great, has incredible features, machine learning, auto audio to MIDI conversion, and has a Steve Albini expansion. Nuff said.
Its FAQ says the authorisation is just a challenge/response with no need for the net on the install machine. I can only hope thats correct and its not been posted erroneously and just left for idiots like me to stumble into and make huge mistakes by 
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I went the other way, from SD3 (with many expansions) to BFD3, a few months ago. Because of a chronic dissatisfaction with how SD3 sounds. It’s difficult to describe and largely a matter of personal taste, and it’s not as if SD3 sounds bad or anything, but from the moment I began using BFD3, all the problems I had been struggling with for ages, trying to get my drumtracks to sound as if played with conviction and having them sit well in a mix, disappeared immediately. And, most amazingly, I don’t have to do anything special. With SD3, I always seem to need several additional plugins before the drums show promise of begin able to sit well in a mix — and eventually, they never quite do — whereas with BFD3, “sitting well in a mix” is, I find, these drums’ natural state. Really quite remarkable.
(Might have something to do with the fact that, to my ears, all of Toontrack’s material, no matter where and by whom it was recorded, has a sort of same-ish processed sound. Even its supposedly raw and natural-sounding stuff has a kind of processed aroma, I find.)
Other important differences: BFD3’s cymbals and hi-hats sound, to my ear, much better than anything in SD3 or its many expansions. My favourite sampled hi-hats have always been the ones from Mixosaurus, that no-longer-available 120gig Rolls Royce of Kontakt drum libraries. Since getting BFD3, some of the hi-hats in that package, instantly became go-to’s as well. Which, believe me, is saying something because the Mixosaurus hi-hat is amazingly good and expressive.
I never understood the reasoning behind it, but all of Toontrack’s drum libraries have these wimpy, weak and thin-sounding hi-hats. Which is disastrous for a good drumtrack, I find. (And it doesn’t help raising their level, because that doesn’t solve their thin “tin foil”-y sound.)
The best snares in BFD3 also sound way better than anything in SD3, for my taste. Crispier, more focused, tighter, … ’hit with a lot more conviction” about sums it up. My sampled snare of choice is now the sensationally good Fidock from the ”Modern Drummer Snare Selects” expansion. There’s nothing in SD3 that compares.
It’s that “played with conviction”-feeling I always get from BFD3 (and never got from SD3) which makes me put up with everything in BFD3 that is either buggy or which irritates me. Yes, there’s quite a bit of that too, sadly.
In SD3 there is nothing that irritates me. But there is also nothing that really excites me. In BFD3, on the other hand, irritations lurk in just about every corner, but once you’ve learned to work your way past those, I find it a fantastically exciting, inspirational and musically satisfying instrument. 100% my kind of drumsound.
I do hope, deeply hope, that BFD3 has a bright future cause I’d hate to see the day when, for whatever reason, I can longer work with it. (In a few weeks time I’ll be switching to a MacStudio, in other words: M1 and Monterey, and my biggest music-related worry at the moment is that there’s a chance that BFD3, and/or it Licenser, won’t like that switch.)
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That’s nice and all, but if the hurdles of using BFD surmount your ability to create due to frustration of use, then it doesn’t matter how great the drum track would have sounded if you lose you muse to technical issues and end up putting nothing down. That’s where many of us are at.
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I recall someone on this forum mentioning the fact that there’s no consistency between BFD expansions and it being a detriment. There may be some truth to that stance (when mix and matching different expansions), however I actually believe that the inconsistency in mics, outboard gear and rooms is what makes the BFD kits so unique and not have that same cookie cutter sound to them and give them their own vibe.
Sure, it may take a little extra work to tweak them, as they all require different mixing/processing approaches, but the end result is a drum sound all its own. Not being a fanboy, just how I feel when actually thinking about the inconsistency with the expansions and core library.
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Could also be interpreted as ‘large range of sounds’ 
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TBF, this is mixing and producing anyway. If one isnt doing this, per song, making it right for that song, in that context, any comparison is facacta.
Learning new software takes time. A lot of us here have spent years learning BFD, and getting used to it. This makes any comparison of other software kinda redundant without spending at least a month to six months solidly writing with the new tool and learning its intricacies and finding which drum expansions offer the most immediate rewards to our own particular likes/dislikes.
This goes for this software and others. The forum posted here the other day with everyone saying BFD never sounded quite right… It seems like a strangely backward approach considering the history of music, what was achieved with next to nothing and what we all have access to and what we’re doing with it.
There is a strange brand loyalty that comes with most purchases we as humans are happy with, an instant bias, which is understandable, and obviously after years of getting used to an app its going to be unavoidable that it becomes wrapped up in our psyches, workflow and an essential tool. And different interfaces are going to work differently for different people. Same with synths and most hardware, mixing desks etc.
But its just a tool. At a certain point the quality is on par, and just familiarity rather than explicit differences. Its us bringing the differences.
Any producer worth their salt can get great results in similar time frames with any of these products, given the familiarity is on par with each.
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True and I understand, but I can’t begin to tell you how much time I’ve lost and wasted trying to get a SD3 drumtrack sit well in the mix. Or how many tracks I shelved for the only reason that I couldn’t get the drums to sound right for it. And how that is much more frustrating than battling the bugs and inconveniences in BFD3. Or finding, hours into a mix featuring SD3, that I want to start changing things in the kit again, things which I thought sounded good an hour or two before. Now, that is a momentum killer. Or being sure you’ve finished a piece and then hearing it a week later only to be struck by how dead the drums sound. Things like that.
Okay, the fault for all these mishaps and disappointments is always partially mine and never entirely SD3’s, I know that, but the thing is: I haven’t had that happening with BFD3 at all.
Also: I can work MUCH faster with BFD3 than I ever could with SD3. Quite often, with BFD3, I’m quite satisfied with the software’s stereo output — which connects back to what I said earlier about BFD3’s kits sliding almost effortlessly into an arrangement or production — which is hardly ever the case with SD3.
Not sure if this makes sense, but to my ears, Toontrack drums often are too greedy for space in a mix. They want and claim more space than is good for them and for the production. They enter a mix and immediately start elbowing everything else out of the way, it sometimes seems.
And with SD3 I also always have the feeling of working with samples, while during my happiest sessions with BFD3 I occasionaly have had that exhilarating sensation of actually working with (and listening to) well-played, well-recorded drums. I’m not exaggerating.
That said, my wish-list for things I like to see improved in BFD3 is not empty. Better brushes, for starters. The brushes in BFD, even in its dedicated expansion packs such as “Jazz Noir” are, in my view, ridiculously bad. Painfully impotent. They can’t swing, they can’t swish or stir, they’ve got, in short, not a single percentage of jazz in them. Incomprehensible.
Another thing that bothers me big time is that the moment my Logic document gets a bit heavier due to a more complex arrangement or a more taxing amount of processing, BFD3’s plugin window starts to behave increasingly sluggishly and erratically.
On the whole though I’m insanely pleased with BFD3, crippled as it may be in so many areas. But again, that’s just my experience and opinion of course. Strictly personal thing. I fully understand and appreciate that other people have totally different experiences. It’s not without reason why Toontrack’s user base is as large and loyal as it is.
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Same. Tho I havent tried any of the competition until this last two days or so.
In your opinion, which areas are BFD3 crippled in? Not being argumentative, genuinely interested. I could see SD3’s audio to midi becoming an essential part of my workflow, for instance, but obviously BFD not having that doesnt really stop BFD from being great at what it does. Whats missing/broken for you?
Least surprising of all, I think: the licensing/authorization/installation systems are pretty abysmal. I’ve got everything more or less sorted out by now, but until that was the case, there were times when I never knew which expansion packs would load, or how many times I would have to initiate a rescan of my BFD locations before a newly installed pack would become available. (And often, such a scan would seem to go on forever, until I force-quit the application and had to start all over again. Irritating and tedious in the extreme.) And to this day, I still open the License Manager and the Content Location with some trepidation never entirely sure if everything will still work after I close them again.
And talking about the BFD locations: the installation of the software is also a bit of mess, I find: you end up with BFD3 folders, BFD2 folders, BFD folders, BFD Drums folders (and, if I’m not mistaken, an fxpansion folder as well) … which also meant a substantial amount of duplicates in the preset listings. Maybe all these different folders are required to guarantee backwards compatibility, but to a new user like myself and one who likes to keep his HD’s and folders well-organized, installing BFD3 was far from a pleasant experience and one that required hours of very careful reorganization before everything worked as it should and before my preset/kits/instruments listings were pruned of all the doubles and everything I wasn’t interested in.
But I got there in the end.
As for the problems inside BFD3 itself: I’m a bit hesitant to talk about this as I am, for the time being, still working on a pretty old MacPro running High Sierra. (Hence the new Mac which I’ve ordered.) And I use BFD as an AU in LogicPro 10.4 which is also old (I can’t run anything more recent.) I don’t know to what extent this old hard- and software has an influence on BFD3 — apart from, as I already mentioned earlier, it behaving annoyingly sluggishly in any Logic document that requires more than average resources — meaning that things which don’t quite work as I think they should, might well be caused by factors outside of BFD3. I don’t know.
In BFD3 itself, one feature I still can’t get to work is the editing of velocity ranges and the import of samples. I’ve no real need to import samples as there is more than enough to work with among BFD3’s content, but I was curious to try it anyway, and what I found was a convoluted and unnecessarily complicated routine that never resulted in anything useful. (Samples of different velocities invariably ended up in a different order as I had lined them up for import, and I couldn’t find a way to edit the import afterwards.) So I gave up on that. (The whole velocity mapping thing could do with a revision, I feel.)
There’s also a few big features of BFD3 I have little or no use for. So I don’t know if and to what extent these are flawed. The grooves and their Editor, for example. I prefer to create my drumtracks inside Logic, using a method I’ve fine-tuned over many years and have no intention to change, so I have no need for BFD3 built-in midi-creation and -playback functionality. (I never used similar features in SD3 either.)
And exploring the available grooves that come with BFD3, I can’t say I was impressed anyway. (Which also quickened my abandoning the idea of investigating the Groove Editor further.) On the whole, the midi-content of BFD3 strikes me as very generic, dated-sounding, uninteresting and, as far as I’m concerned, of no use whatsoever.
As far as standard operation is concerned — assembling a kit and setting up its environment, and then triggering it from the DAW — I can’t say I have encountered all that much that I would qualify as a bug. Quite a few things which I think could be implemented much more elegantly, yes, and also several things in the GUI which I would design differently (I don’t quite get, for example, why the central ‘wireframe’ pane needs to be so large and the far more important mixer area so small and cramped), but nothing of nature that spoils my enjoyment of working with this strangely enchanting software. Besides, for every single thing in BFD3 that bothers or distracts me at the moment, there are at least two or three features which I consider brilliant and fantastic, making my final verdict a much, much, much more positive than a negative one.
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Not being in the Mac world, how old is this? Just wondering, I’m using a decade old PC, i5. No problems, so I’m wondering if something could be done in your system to help. Tbh, I had BFD3 running an RPi just fine, effects were a no go but just streaming drum files was fine.
Loading my own samples I’ve never done. Reaper has its own sample app so I think I’d use that if needed. Seems like it would be a hassle telling BFD how to be react to the samples, tho for live use, I can see how this would be really useful, having samples set to react to a drum pad etc. This seems like a must have feature for live use, negating the need for a sample playing dedicated drum pad. I love the concept of a full e-drum set up but just with a tiny RPi being the drum brain, with just BFD or similar installed.
Yes, fully dedicated to the DAW MIDI editor here, anything smaller and more fiddly is a pain in the arse. I’m also a fan of notes as drum midi data, I dont like the tiny triangles or diamond shapes. My hooves need big chunks of data I can see and grab with my mouse/fist, and simple easy to see and use velocity handles etc. The disabled struggle is real, yo Doesnt help that my arm/hand often do moves I wasnt asking them to do, mouse clicks/arm jerks. I used to be able to play CS/FPS games but now Im just firing random shots and my arm jerks at random times, impossible to play CS but damn funny when I do.
MIDI grooves Im finding a problem in all apps Im trying. Everyone plays like theyre smashing the kit to pieces and in some heavy metal band I def recommend grooves by jazz players meant for brushes, there is a lot more variation in playing, a lot more dynamic range. But I find all grooves are either best used as a starting point, or ignored completely and built from the ground up to fit a song. Rarely do I find grooves that fit mid song writing, but that I think that would be the case in any app.
I’ve never understood this. All that screen real estate taken up for something that provides little to no functionality as far as I can tell.
Good point: Does anyone use the wire frame kit image for anything? Does anyone have a use for it that I might be missing out on that makes its a part of your workflow? I’d be intrigued to hear it.
I don’t understand why you have to zoom fully out to see the micropghone info in there either (together with the kit), there a few football fields worth of space between the kit and the mic info.
What for? all that land going to waste?
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Yeah, I never understood that either. The interface is so cramped in some places, yet that takes up enough space to house a holiday camp and a theme park.
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