What do people want from a BFD4? Let’s get some ideas going!
Linux support 
(and if I’m truly dreaming, Raspberry Pi 4 (and its successors) 64bit OS support )
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I’d like to see a REX2 instrument slot that can load multiple REX2 files as separate articulations. This would enable canned grooves to be triggered, time sync’d, and chopped within the groove editor.
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1.Bit transparency for loaded .wav files at unity gain and the ease for user created kits. Bit transparency one thing that DR-008 had trouble with, but was always there in Kontakt 2/3/Battery.
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A copy protection system that is not DRM.
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A cleanup program capable of searching the hard drives for all BFD2 / BFD 3 related files and relocating everything to a central user defined folder.
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A very tidied up GUI… at the least it would be good to know what kit you’ve loaded, for instance… all the menu items are a rambling mess.
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Yes please, minimal DRM. This is essential.
Everything gets cracked (Im not exaggerating) and stringent DRM does little but make life a hassle for legitimate users.
I’m looking at some of the feedback today from the update, and its not exactly complimentary. Licensing and servers and all that stuff is just another layer for things to go wrong and it does little to protect the software so why make it more difficult and more precarious for us legit users?
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I recall Rail from Platinum Samples saying back in the day that the reason he didn’t do more Superior Drummer content was because the library he did put out for it was cracked very shortly after release and adversely impacted sales whereas the BFD C/R system worked to prevent that. I mean don’t get me wrong, DRM sucks, but that was a developer who was able to see both sides of that first hand.
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Yeah, I was thinking I should probably delete my comment, so we dont get bogged down in a pro/anti DRM thing
It does seems like an uproveable argument tho, that a crack prevented sales. Its just as likely people just didnt want to buy it. Everything is cracked, sales still happen. People will support what they use/like. Its not like the biggest money making films on the planet dont have torrents available everywhere.
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I’d like to see a standalone Groove Editor that I can use on my Android tablet, so I can write grooves while I’m on the subway. It could have a minimal, fixed sound set, such as the 8-bit kit. But, it has to be a standalone app, and not a web app, because I’d want to use it on the subway. Or on an airplane. Or maybe even a ship at sea.
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A BFD that works like it used to, before migration?
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- I dot a lot of drum programming around jazz. Although BFD3 is a great tool for this, it still lacks a convincing approach regarding brushed snare techniques. There is even a certain chaos regarding the mapping of articulations (of things like swirls etc.) within the different expansion libraries. I would love improvements around this topic.
- The programming of grooves from scratch is often a very time consuming process if you aim for realistic sounding grooves. What I will do quite often is taking drum loops and rebuild them within BFD3. As far as I know there is still no perfect tool on the market for this. The groove extractor by LESOUND is quite close to an acceptable solution. It would be great to get a BFD version where you “throw in an existing stereo drum loop and get out midi grooves” that could then be played with the huge spectrum of bfd drums . This may sound a bit futuristic, but with respect to the many AI improvements in music production plugins lately (e.g isotope and sonible plugins just to name a few examples) it shouldn’t be undoable these days. For sure this could be a strong usp for a coming bfd4 release.
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Yes to your second point, that would be quite a feature.
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here are my top 3 … my wishlist for christmas 
- replacement or MIDI function like tracker in SD3 (a fine/detailed translation of played dynamics to midi velocities is key here)
content wise:
- airy and realistic HHs and cymbals like in Al Schmitts Decades … also the KDs are just fabulous when you hear, rather FEEL the air moving from the shell + drum head (not just a deep 2D kick sound)
- CONCERT TOMS :)! Not for everyone but am I the only one who loves the viby tom sound of Aretha Franklin and Al Green records?? Check out Aretha’s Rock Steady or the Spanish Harlem
ok regarding features it’s just my Top 1 but new content (and different from multible hard rock & metal options) is always welcome
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A specific, recorded bounce articulation for building rolls, as well as more than one type of drag articulation at least in some things, or going forward.
I don’t know who is in charge of the Orchestral library, but the snares in that have no flam, it’s a duplicate of ‘hit’. Not a lot of money down the tubes but this is pretty bad.
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Far more generally, I would like development to be fully aware of its functionality in VE Pro.
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I just want boring management stuff. Better installers. Simpler installations with one place for presets, grooves etc. rather than the multiple duplicate folders I seem to have for no reason (are my presets in Documents/BFD or Program Files/BFD or Program Files (x86)/BFD or ProgramData/BFD or…? you get the picture.
Consistent naming conventions for all expansion kit pieces, e.g. I just bought Jazz Noir, but the pieces are labelled “Camco Snare” etc. How about a prefix (which actually some expansions do have), like “JZN Camco Snare” to make finding them easier? On this front I would like see the ability to fix the meta data. I have far too many pieces in the ‘unknown’ section of the libraries tab. And library names like YHG for the Cocktail expansion are not very helpful
Also some improvement on the Groove GUI. It’s all a bit messy and I never really knew what a Palette was. Odd labelling.
Oh and to second Civilization3’s mention of Orchestral needing a bit of work. Frankly I found that library a mess and very disappointing, probably the worst BFD library I have. Never found an easy way to have the tubular bells actually set up chromatically (and they didn’t sound very consistent across the notes anyway).
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Apologies for ‘rambling mess’ comment above… frustration with migration experience. Doesn’t do justice to my appreciation of your amazing work.
I would like to see a dedicated, more integrated, palette-groove browser page, organised in such a way to get up and running more quickly with song-writing ideas, where the detail of groove editing comes later. A browser with more comprehensive categorisation and intuitive search options. A search system based on analysis of the groove/hits themselves, which can suggest similar options rather than just searching titles alone. Maybe even the ability to tap in a rudimentary feel and get a bunch of suggestions.
I’ve got all grooves going back to BFD 1 as well as most of GM stuff. It’s a long trawl though many obscure and minimal details.
Also it would be great if you could subsequently drag a groove-region back in from a DAW to edit it again without having to be reliant on host midi-editing, or having to figure out which groove it was to start with in the palette list and then make a copy to do the edit.
And it would be nice to know which kit was loaded to start with so even if you change kit pieces you know what it’s based on if you need to go back to what you started with.
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Tiny and inconsequential thing I’d like to see is to have the 'show ‘info’ button on the kit page permanently turned on or off in either the engine or GUI preference page.
I like to have it always on.
Steve
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One thing I’d like to see is options for microphones, presented as such in the mixer. Of course, that’s not BFD’s domain per se, but it would be neat if we could swap different mics. For example: have pairs of overheads 4038, 451, KSM32/44 and be able to swap between them.
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Moreover, I would find it useful if the graphics representing the kit included the microphones and their positions, from where we could remove, disable, or mute said microphones, in addition to what the mixer currently offers in 3 (which is a lot!)
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Another thing would be as @Sigmund said, a sleeker palette with searches, filters etc.
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Keep all of BFD3’s much appreciated complexity, but explore a way to bypass it completely. An alternate mode(?) (like player mode(?)) where the user could just select presets in a minimal GUI and have BFD accompany them, with coarse options to change kits and grooves.
That’s it from me for the time being! All the best!
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