The RPi4 starts at around £30, and goes up to about £70 for the 8gb model. Its stock clock is 1.5ghz but mine overclocks absolutely fine to 2.3ghz, and thats a clock most seem to be able to handle.
Really surprising little machine. And its tiny. Just needs a monitor (I had a spare big monitor, but I might get a tiny screen for it), Reaper Daw works great on it (linux version is stable and out of beta), and its got USB 3 for an audio interface (it can be picky with what it will accept but most class compliant USB interfaces work with it, tho the audio devices software is unlikely to work without some effort). My Tascam Model 12 works fine at low latency, my previous 16 channel mixer worked fine, Zoom H5, and now my Focusrite Scarlett 18i8 is just as fine with it at low latencies. And this is all on Raspberry Pi OS, a Linux thing.
If one gets Windows Arm version on there, theres maybe more chance of it being an easy port/fix. I havent tried any of this yet, because laziness
EDIT: I’ll try my Beat Step Pro at some point in Reaper linux too, and eventually Windows Arm. I dont see myself ever buying another full desktop PC tbh.
didn’t mean you with that remark, which we may as well ignore, sorry
I’m actually a little frustrated at the same workarounds every single launch for years, with no support addressing it except when I got very assertive with ROLI (who were inclined to deflect to it being not their problem before I did. It’s not a VSL problem; it was fixed by ROLI in a couple of days once the support person grasped the issue, to the extent it does work at this juncture. It may mean some interaction with VSL’s team to address the specifics I mention but the issue exists primary with BFD3, it’s about the hard-wired slot designations. it’s admittedly complex.).
on point, the notion that VE Pro not doing mono channels per se is a problem, they aren’t converted to stereo or anything and are mono, shown by a goniometer. I use their Pro version Power Panner in mono mode for some things (it has features, not to get bogged down in) but not usually needed.
Def. not a problem, I put all drums in mono out, cymbals to stereo.
I’d love to see a Trigger function that could take a WAV track and replace it with a BFD kick/sare of my choice. OR integrate it so we could open with Trigger2 from Slate.
Works more the current ergonomics
- More shortcuts assignation (example no shortcuts exist for duplicate...)
- More Clever trick. For example, when i duplicate a grove, i would need to double click on it to edit it name instead of an heavy right clic...
- Auto save the groove : each time, it's just a pain in the a.. to go to file and save my groove. We are in 2021 !!! Ctrl +S, auto save, it's basics !!!!
- Please don't ask me each time i leave my BFD3 to be sure i have not forget something or it will be not saved !
- Add a line to set the start point of the start/stop cycle when tuning a groove ; double clicking in the bar is a pain !!!!
- Theses things are easy to implement and improve greatly the workflow when working hard on groove
- permit the FX to be applied just on events, not on whole groups
- Preview option when click or changing velocity value don't reflect it, it's boring to set the velocity and hear x times the same sound, totally useless !
- Take in account the tempo set in the goorve, in the global tempo setting !
- Indicate the name of the kit selected, fed up to click on save to know it, it's really a basic...
- Color the line, it's hard to say with articulation i'm clicking sometimes, alternate color could help.
- Let us personnalize all our defaut path : for example i save everything on an external disk, nothing directly on my PC, so i have to play with shortcut in defaut path each time... Boring !
Resize the windows like evry apps on windows, just with the mouse (OK, i could live without, just strange)
Improve the library scanning, somethimes it fall somewhere in the middle of nowhere. Give some clue to your customer where the scan is locked, finished, not finished...
More value to sell ? Work to some tools/assistant to help to designing grooves. Rudiment is a good example of a tool simple which help a lot
More value to sell ? The library manager is not optimal to classify grooves by theme, genre ect. Help us to find the good groove according to the current groove for example.
Help us also to release our own library easily ! You may even do a market place permitting people to exchange sets for example
If you design a new library : Keep it robust and portable : i don't invest some hours on it to just lost everything while i'm changing a dir or my PC.
To be continued...
Let people define easily their own Genre in the library (and not only the genre, verything should be customizable, as we have all a differents needs)
Permit to use different tempo in the same groove (avanced technics)
When i move today my users palets to another disk, the favorite is lost in the viewer an i need to retag all of the, not normal, it’s a work and it’s time lost !
Maybe a kind of start and stop point with pre roll of x S and post roll of x s, in order to fix some part of a groove, to void to repeat it completly.
*Snapshot feature : Take a snapshot of your current riff, modify it, then compare with the original one and the better
Variant feature : Take a base, and make a new riff with some fast and little variations.
Display strenght time, weak time, with colors, let the user choose to display it or not if he want.
On each lane, let the user choose to auto collapse it or not. For example i have all the time open kic, and snare, and i prefer to have the other lane collapsed until i open it.
An idea would be to permit to set manually the duration of a particulart event, in order to gate some of them (ex : i don’t wan’t my crash to sound too long on a loop…)
Often i work on low velocity in order to get subtilities. Would be great to have some kind of manuel velocity min and max to set, as it’s rarely nice to have a lot of dynamic on notes. For example whatever i done, my veloicty won’t me less than x and more thant y.
Permit to ddraw some curve for velocity (currently, only line are possibles), like Cubase does for example.
Not sure how popular or smart this would be on BFDs part, but how about letting users create their own multitracked instruments?
I don’t know if I’m breaking any laws but I use my old 7.1 mastering/congealment tools (and XML editing) to create my own libraries from sessions I’m recording or mixing and it’s made BFD an absolutely essential part of my job.
Regardless of how good any software is, I absolutely refuse to even consider it if it is only available via a subscription service. If an option exists for software that I am interested in to either subscribe or pay a one-time purchase price (even if subsequent major updates/upgrades require a fee), I will purchase a license.
Im not sure how it worked in BFD2, but it is possible to use drag and drop when creating drum maps in BFD3… at least according to pg. 134 of the BFD3 Operation Manual.
One thing that would be very cool in BFD4 would be a feature that would analyze a specified MIDI or audio track and use timing data from note events or audio transients to generate basic groove patterns that could then be further tweaked. It would be challenging to implement, but it’s not impossible.
Permit people to manage more easily the palette collection (example : having two palette side by side permit to copy groove from one to the other. today, to make a new organization, copy/paste groove to a palette to another one is really a pain !
An auto rename feature, with adding incremential number at begining of each groove name in a palette would be appreciated Also. You can take inspiration from the excellent GUI, Ant Renamer for example.
When playing palette preview, respect groove tempo and not palette tempo (which is useless)
I’m not sure a subscription for a sampler with expansions would work anyways. It would have to be a very expensive sub price to justify all the work involved in creating those libraries.
Make BFD3 compatible with pedal looper like Boss RC10, RC1, RC5, RC500 beatbuddy and so on. Their are very poor and hard to program. Would be great to program a rythm and then export it in their formats. Would also enlarge BFD3 audience as well.
Make an assistant to play a drum track while practicing guitar as example with a main riff and a bunch of variations automatically. After an hour of the same groove or fill, its often boring to hear the same drum groove. The assistant wil just have to get the list of selected base groove (at least one), and do fusion with fills or other grooves (or a custom list) like a true drummer doing variations at the end of the base pattern.
