In groove editor… I would like to see a ‘Nudge’ feature like SD3… Basically I can snap my edits to the grid I choose, but then click on any note and ‘nudge’ it by 128th note left or right… and if I nudge it 5 times to the left, there is a counter. It just makes it fast to manually humanize where I need too. I have a track pad right now- and to do the same thing means changing the grid to mess with with one note here or there… time consuming.
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Here’s a cool one I just thought about… How about being able to save Groove FX settings separate from grooves and palettes would be useful. Being able to load settings with varying degrees of Groove FX would be a quick way to dial in the sound.
I’m going to reiterate this and be done. I would have to have proof BFD4 is thoroughly tested in VE Pro, whether it still has to run under Rosetta 2 or is native to Apple silicon SoC.
Today I had to set everything up in it, after it was setup in Nuendo (getting a standalone to work killed that), a true drag/a tedious four hours, and once I was done everything mono was panned to the left. Not 100% but it may as well have been, by the sound.
This has been true variously over years now (I have to instantiate a group bus and individually place the drums in it, now instantiate a Powerpanner and set it to mono.). I don’t care if or that it’s VSL’s fault, it’s pretty clear to me there is zero contact with them, never was/still isn’t.
It wouldn’t have working automation at all if it weren’t for me being a very squeaky wheel with ROLI support back in… 2014? The automation is perfect in Nuendo, one supposes it’s tested in Cubase at least, same difference really, but I’m back to my workaround in VE Pro. No way am I going to put more money into the application unless it’s taken seriously. I cannot be the single person on earth that runs every instrument in VE Pro. If it wasn’t for this being a second-gen. M1 it wouldn’t be feasible in Cubendo for me, or I’d have to do everything else before it and render, then maybe. I was liking it in Nuendo because I don’t have this micromanaging to do (I have to save the automation map just_before saying the VEP server project. Literally just before, a second save without having done is going to mean one or more slots have to be deleted and relearned at next launch. Strategies and having to be clever vs working normally…
Somthing I’d like to be able to do when creating my own custom sample, is have the option to upload & add an overhead/room/ambient mic for each sample and have them automatically load and be available in the mixer, just as they do normally.
If I do that with my own snare for example, I can achieve it now by having the close mic as the main sample, then creating another new drum for the overhead samples, then link to it. But you can imagine, if I want to create even just a kick & snare with in/out/under/OH/room mics, I’m gonna need to link a ton of kit pieces together.
BFD already has the room mics function in the mixer, so when I load that custom kit piece, whichever extra mics I’ve added, if any, will be loaded with it and listed & controlled in the mics section of the mixer.
I’d love to completely get rid off the grooves by choice instead of just switching them off.
The groove editor needs another look, it has never invited me to do things.
And yes, resizing would be important- my number one prority.
Add 2-4 more mixer FX inserts per channel. Usually 6 will do it, but on occasion I find I need more. The alternative is to make another bus to add more, but I’d rather not if I don’t have to.
A simpler, more clever and intuitive way to set up channel outputs to mate with DAW channels.
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Yes it would be great to have a window for that, easy and simple to just route everything at once and individually if need be.
I totally agree. At least a download manager that works more comprehensively. Why does it have to check files already downloaded every time you check for an update.
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No more mono ambient mics they just mostly don’t sound good or useful.
Fix the authorization mess for all of fxpansion like has been noted before.
Add some final mastering touches (width, depth, balance, stereo field stuff) to the samples to be able to even compete with Toontrack. Enough of this super narrow, bare-sounding samples. They never compete to a finished-sounding sample lib. like superior drummer. Record to tape, bring the samples to life. Give them some finishing touches.
Mono room mics are amazing at bringing more hype and more space out of the kit since you can focus and reinforce what the stereo rooms are doing while managing low end response in the sides and the mix as a whole. Also BFDs rooms consistently sound very live and organic, very easy to mix a monstrous kit with them.
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Why would you want to go backwards, . . . seriously?
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You mean forward in this sense.
Mono ambient channels are very useful when eq’d and blended in the mix nicely. I notice when I mute them that something is missing. You can get creative and mangle them too, for an effect.
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It would definitely be a backward step for BFD3.
Seriously, I think you must be missing the whole point of BFD3.
It was always about putting you in complete control of the raw unprocessed samples.
If you feel the need for more polished sounds then by all means use presets (it’s what they’re for) otherwise you may as well just use SD3.
Steve
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When I’m tracking drums for a project, I always set up a few mono mics. The trick is to automate their volume so that you only reinforce the drums you want - typically for me it is the kick and snare - and lower the level of them during tom rolls and cymbal work.
BFD is a production workstation for drums. We’ve got that bit down pat, and our libraries are consistently given compliments about how real they sound, in comparison to some of the competition.
Where I want us to catch up is in workflow, interface design, preset design, and groove quality.
Personally, I think some of our libraries are the best around, and the next one we’ve got coming up is really killer.
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They sound bad “mangled” that’s useless for effect. Most of the time only 1 of the mono mics sounds well enough to actually use or blend. They need to do more incremental ambient mics instead like, close, medium close, medium and far ambient channels would be far better than blending a boring mono channel that barely adds anything overall. The compressed mics and ambient mics are the ones to use. For sanre the mono blend works but not the rest of the kit because of the sympathetic garbage snare resonace which they need to do away with and sound to narrow which defeats the purpose of ambietn channels. I used to try to blend the monos but are just too subtle.
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No I think you missed the whole point. No one these days have the gear or time except professional studios to make bfd samples sound really great. So yes it looks like I will keep preferring toontrack (older libraries at that) which makes me cringe to say that because I love many things about bfd and fxpansion just not the narrow and small sounding samples. Most people don’t realize this until they compare it to something with a bit more as you say? “polish”
I don’t know why people think anything sounds better than BFD3, for me, nothing comes close, not even slightly. Everything else sounds over processed and like a (excuse the pun) drum machine lol
Each to their own and everyone hears what they want to hear I guess.
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I agree that the stock mono 1 mic is probably the most useful, but for me the expansion mono mics are where it’s really at, at least for some of them. Maybe for BFD4, they could include some of those other mono mics for the stock library?