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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