Tracktion Software

whyterabbyt · Post by **whyterabbyt** » Tue Jul 19, 2005 1:34 pm

Maybe distribution is slow this month. Our local WH Smith still had the Hip-Hop issue as of last weekend... finally got the BFD issue today.

black-rainbow · Post by **black-rainbow** » Tue Jul 19, 2005 10:47 pm

soundpalace wrote:...check out Audio Technology mag. Its around 5.50 $ if i remember correctly and it is in a little higher league than CM in terms of interviews, gear, tips .etc. You get some really interesting insight into pro tips...

I haven't seen that, I'll keep my eyes open, thanks.

koolkeys · Post by **koolkeys** » Tue Jul 19, 2005 10:53 pm

My local Barnes and Nobles said that the hip-hop issue came in on the 8th of July, which means there are still a couple weeks before we see the new edition.

Oh well, I still have all the DR-008 stuff. I just want to see what the BFD is like, since you can never have enough drums.

Koolkeys

braj · Post by **braj** » Tue Jul 19, 2005 11:16 pm

Can someone give a run-down on BFD features? It's UI looks interesting, can you set 'mics' by dragging etc? I like that concept of visually setting pans and levels in Darbuka/Latigo. Is it like that at all?

How is the kit BTW? Useful?

chico.co.uk · Post by **chico.co.uk** » Wed Jul 20, 2005 6:49 am

The kit is good. The UI is nice too. You have 4 main sliders for the full kit, which (i may get the names wrong here) correspond to the direct sound from the kit, the sound from two overhead mikes, the sound from two "PCM" mikes (which are sort of on a height level with the snare or toms) and the sound of two floor mikes.

For each of these four you can virtually move the two mikes apart or together, and move them nearer or further away from the drum kit itself. So you can blend the sound from each of these mikes as you see fit. Want more overhead mike sound, but you want a more ambient sound, so you want them further away from the kit and spread out left and right more? Move a couple of knobs. Some little mikes appear on the gui and move around to give you an idea what you're doing, as if you were miking a real drum kit. Very intuitive, great fun. You can really hear the changes here too, and you can save settings as presets. It comes with about half a dozen presets, which give you a feeling for how dry or wet, big or small you can make it sound before any further processing.

Each of the individual drum pieces can be tuned up and down, and their individual pan and relative volume settings can be set with rotary controls. They each also have an individual dynamics (i think it's called) knob that lets you filter the incoming midi to that part to boost or cut incoming velocity on a per midi note basis, as well as an overall one for the kit in total.

That's the basics of the drum sounds bit, although i've probably missed loads out. Then there's the midi grooves bit, where you have a collection of loops you can audition, or set to play in an order, with a slider that goes from a drawing of a french dude in a beret, to a robot, which sets the "humanity" of the playing, whether it has variations in velocity hits, timing etc. There's individual controls for those kind of things too, I believe. Not played too much with the loops bit yet, been "playing" the kit live with my little Yamaha DD55 drum controller.

You can see the options for being able to swap in other kit pieces (different snares etc) that you'd get if you had the full BFD, you just can't change them. But you can get a variety of very usable and useful sounds from the one kit you do have.

I can see this plugin going on pretty much every track i do from now on in. I'm liking it a lot. It's a lot more flexible and fun to tweak than something like the nskit, but I believe it's maybe about the same amount of samples (over 700meg of samples). The full BFD must be a beast, it has higher sample rate, more velocity layers etc. I want.

braj · Post by **braj** » Wed Jul 20, 2005 6:57 am

Thanks chico. Me want too.

Lunch Money · Post by **Lunch Money** » Wed Jul 20, 2005 7:14 am

Are you absolutely certain that guy's French? Other nationalities have been known to wear berets, too. I bet he's a Deutschlander!

larsby · Post by **larsby** » Wed Jul 20, 2005 11:11 am

He has a cigaret in his mouth and a goattee (kind of), takethe tutorial tour LM, http://www.fxpansion1.com/fxstore/bfdguide.html and the "humanization and swing" chapter.

I'd bet 10 sek that he is french or has french anscestors.

Could we get an official comment on this?

MrM · Post by **MrM** » Wed Jul 20, 2005 11:29 am

@chico.co.uk

Thanks for the detailed info!

I already have a DD-55, and just ordered the mag.
I'll be a happy drummer soon

chardin · Post by **chardin** » Wed Jul 20, 2005 5:39 pm

@chico: Thanks for the detailed explaination.
@anybody: How does the single BFD kit compare to nskit7 free?

Angus_FX · Post by **Angus_FX** » Wed Jul 20, 2005 8:37 pm

Are you absolutely certain that guy's French? Other nationalities have been known to wear berets, too. I bet he's a Deutschlander!

He's an International Euro-Super-Groover, ja? The very idea of nationality seriously harshes his mellow.. although it does seem likely that his cigarette is the Dutch variety

Can someone give a run-down on BFD features? It's UI looks interesting, can you set 'mics' by dragging etc? I like that concept of visually setting pans and levels in Darbuka/Latigo. Is it like that at all?

Sort of.. the mic levels and positions are controlled by knobs and faders, but you do get a vector graphic of their position in the room.

The big difference between BFD and Darbuka/Latigo is that, with BFD, when you turn up the room fader (for example), you get the actual room sound of the drums.. whereas in Darbuka/Latigo it's more of a "reverb send level" control.

HTH,
Angus.

james0tucson · Post by **james0tucson** » Thu Jul 21, 2005 5:55 am

Lunch Money wrote:Are you absolutely certain that guy's French? Other nationalities have been known to wear berets, too. I bet he's a Deutschlander!

The beret is hardly French! It was an ancient Greek invention, antiquated for centuries, and then revived by the Basques, who are arguably neither French nor Spanish, or maybe both.

What's the difference between a Tam and a Beret?

james0tucson · Post by **james0tucson** » Thu Jul 21, 2005 5:59 am

koolkeys wrote:My local Barnes and Nobles said that the hip-hop issue came in on the 8th of July, which means there are still a couple weeks before we see the new edition.

Hey, at least they pay enough attention that they are able to tell you that! My local store seems to treat the various UK imports (mainly from Future, but there are others), as a nuisance. They did pretend to care when I pointed out to them that the CD's would routinely go missing. But they can't seem to decide whether "Computer Music" should be in the computer mags or the music mags.

I had a subscription for a while, but when it expired, I truly did not have the money to renew. It's an expensive magazine, and I don't really get very much out of it, but when I *do* get something out of it, it's something essential.

fedexnman · Post by **fedexnman** » Thu Jul 21, 2005 3:54 pm

cant wait till august cm comes to u.s. book stores, was dissapointed yesterday when i came across the hip hop issue, and not the bfd issue.. cm is a great magazine, there s alot of good things coming out of u.k. .. i lived in wales when i was a kid n i miss the fish n chips, n also all the differnt cadbury s candies, id love just to have a newspaper wrap that they used to wrap the fish n chips just to get a wiff.. good stuff guys.....

MrM · Post by **MrM** » Tue Jul 26, 2005 3:12 pm

Just got my copy of the mag this morning. Installed great; I could choose to put the data files on a seperate hard disk during install. Nice

There are 2 kits inside, or 1 kit with 2 variations.
It sounds cool, works great with my Yamaha DD-55 drumkit thingie...

Cool plugin.

Tracktion Software

KVR Audio

BFD for free (well almost)