is Superior Drummer better than BFD3?

[jancivil]

hi yo
re: 'You must be a guitar player'

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

I owned both, I only own BFD3 now, and a gazillion expansions, sold SD3 as I never used it. SD3 has the better UI by a long shot, and some nice features that I personally would never use, but BFD3 has the best sound, the most realistic sound, it just sounds better IMO. YMMV

I do hope now with BFD becoming it's own brand, separate from FXPansion, that a major update is in the works, including a new GUI.

[jinotsuh]

That would be good, as long as they don't let it die and keep supporting it and releasing new stuff I would be happy. Would love to see a BFD4.

[jmelhede]

I just went full into EZkeys (after getting EZbass) and are likely to get SD3 soon, especially if someone is selling in here Besides its learning curve, is there any other things I should consider before I do? I'm producing dance music with genres from jazzy over Disco to Melodic tech house. Thanks in advance.

[jmelhede]

Followup to my previous post, because of the genre I'm producing in - it looks like there is no benefit in getting any MIDI packs for SD3 or have I missed something?

[moonchunk]

I'm with jancivil here in that the cymbal swell modeling is pretty much what keeps me on BFD3. It might not seem like a big deal, but as a drummer, it means a lot to me that I can go crazy on the ride cymbal, for instance, without it sounding fake. When I hear a track, the cymbals are usually the first giveaway that the drums are sampled (and the snare, but that's another story). BFD3 alleviates this to an extent with the swell modeling feature.

I don't really know about the other aspects like grooves and whatnot, because I just use it to load up a kit and play. A fiddly interface is fine with me, because I hardly ever use it now that I've built a proper routing template and a few custom kits that I like.

I recently picked up Superior Drummer 3, but haven't finished downloading it. I have owned BFD2/BFD3 for years. The reason I picked up SD3 is because the ride cymbals that came with BFD2/3, and that I purchased, are not generic enough, they are eccentric. I purchased 3 libraries, (Peart, London Sessions, Percussion) and none of them had a working generic ride cymbal with a decent bell and a decent reasonably tame ride. For some genres what they have works, but not for many others. And the Peart ride cymbal, which is better suited as a generic ride, is broken - a complicated thing to explain but dealing with the fact that Sonic Reality did not sample the room/ambient mics the same way that BFD3 did - its not flexible the way the included Fxpansion sounds are. So although I do love the cymbal swell control, the tom resonance, and the hi-hat foot splash that others here have commented on, without an all-around-solution BFD3 makes me just jump around recording single kit pieces and dragging single articulation MIDI clips. I recently got rayzoon Jamstix to help with the discovery of rhythm ideas - and wanted a way to plug that into a decent high end sounding drum sample library. I saw some reviews of SD3 and although it is missing some of what makes BFD3 great, it has other features that are good. And the feature of song creation from a single beat was interesting.

But the reason I came to this forum was to see if anyone commented on the Groove FX feature in BFD3 and whether there is anything like it in Superior Drummer 3. I search swing and nothing comes up in the SD3 manual. So I'm guessing that's another area (more suited to non-drummers) where BFD3 shines. Thanks for your posts.

Yes, the cymbals and hihats are not perfectly generic - but the realism in BFD2-3 means that I am planning to use a little of both. I have some of the better packs made for SD3, and yet the cymbals are weak in a certain aspect, so because I'm not an electronic drumkit player I can load the hihats or cymbals in BFD2-3 if I want the more realistic version, but if I want something that's less exotic then at times I can hit SD3.

So I think you're exactly right in what you said.