specific BFD vs DFH questions (sorry - don't shoot me)

[grob]

I apologize in advance for starting another BFD 1.5 vs DFH Superior thread. I promise I won't ask any "which one sounds better" type questions. I'm tired of waiting (over a year now) for Native Instruments to debug Battery's kit-importing functions, so I've decided to throw my cash either at BFD or DFH. Any help with my questions would be greatly appreciated.

1. Considering that both are similarly priced, I'm wondering how BFD can hang with DFH, considering that DFH's sample library is almost four times larger (35 GB vs. 9 GB). Given this, I've been surprised to see some of the KVR threads where BFD seems to be more recommended.

2. In DFH's favor, the kits seem to have a little more (5 toms vs. 3, for example). The cocktail kit and extra percussion aren't a concern - I'm happy with Battery libraries for those. Similarly, I read that BFD cymbals don't decay until silence. I kind of doubt that, but that is a comment I've seen.

3. In BFD's favor, the interface seems easier, and a useable MIDI groove generator is nice. I hate Cakewalk's MIDI mapper, so I've used MusicLab's SlicyDrummer. The one measure limitation drives me nuts, though, and the number of individual drum channels in Slicy is too limited for these nice libraries. So, if the BFD MIDI features are well done, that's a big plus.

4. The mic bleed in DFH sounds like a cool feature. Does it really add a lot of life to the drums, or is this a pretty small effect on the overall sound?

5. I've read a few comments along the lines that DFH is better for metal and BFD for hard rock through pop. I've also read responses that indicate those generalizations really don't do justice to how versatile these libraries are. Correct?

Thanks for the help.

[Angus_FX]

Hi,

Just from the BFD side of things...

1. Considering that both are similarly priced, I'm wondering how BFD can hang with DFH, considering that DFH's sample library is almost four times larger (35 GB vs. 9 GB). Given this, I've been surprised to see some of the KVR threads where BFD seems to be more recommended.

I guess because 9GB is still, in absolute terms, a heck of a lot of drums.. afaik, the largest library before these two came along was Wizoo Mixtended, which was only 2GB or so. The original DFH was well-regarded in its day, and was only 500MB.. at some point you start to hit the law of diminishing returns, and doubling the volume of data brings only incremental improvements in quality. The BFD Deluxe and Jazz & Funk expanders, at 55GB each, sound deeper and more detailed than the original BFD, but not six times more detailed. There's little to stop somebody recording a 200GB drum library, but it's hard to see that it would sound that much better.

2. In DFH's favor, the kits seem to have a little more (5 toms vs. 3, for example). The cocktail kit and extra percussion aren't a concern - I'm happy with Battery libraries for those. Similarly, I read that BFD cymbals don't decay until silence. I kind of doubt that, but that is a comment I've seen.

BFD can handle 6 toms and more.. the v1.0 engine was limited to 3 toms and 3 cymbals; the newer v1.5 engine can handle 13 toms/cymbals/percussion (as well as 2 kicks and 2 snares), it's freely assignable.

The BFD cymbals do decay until silence.. however, it's a disk streaming instrument -- as such, if somebody has their machine set up wrong and it hits a bottleneck, voices will choke prematurely.. this is particularly noticeable with cymbals.

4. The mic bleed in DFH sounds like a cool feature. Does it really add a lot of life to the drums, or is this a pretty small effect on the overall sound?

BFD has bleed as well, but to the snare and kick mics only (DFH has it on the tom mics as well). Bleed certainly adds significantly to the realism, but arguably makes mixing more difficult for inexperienced engineers; both products allow you to switch off the bleeds or, in BFD's case, redirect the bleed signal for a drum to its direct mic (so e.g. the snare bleed for Tom 1 can be redirected to Tom 1's direct output).

5. I've read a few comments along the lines that DFH is better for metal and BFD for hard rock through pop. I've also read responses that indicate those generalizations really don't do justice to how versatile these libraries are. Correct?

The way to look at it is, they have quite different sonic signatures "out of the can", which do lend themselves more easily to particular genres, but it doesn't take that much skill in processing to get a very diverse range of sounds with either product.

Hope this helps,
Angus.

[grob]

Very helpful, thanks... You can't beat a next day reply from the developer!

By the way, I have DR-008 and always turn to it for synthetic percussion. I think it's fantastic.

[subtractive]

I don't know about DFH, but I've owned BFD for about a year and I love it. They mic bleed feature is somewhat of a non-issue - you won't really notice if it's there or not in a mix, and with the overheads and room mics, it all bleeds together anyway. I've had great luck with programming realistic drums - I've even fooled other drummers - but it all comes down to how well you can program. With any sample drum library, no matter how good it sounds, it won't sound real unless you can program well. BFD is worth every penny.

[rockstar_not]

I don't know about DFH, but I've owned BFD for about a year and I love it. They mic bleed feature is somewhat of a non-issue - you won't really notice if it's there or not in a mix, and with the overheads and room mics, it all bleeds together anyway. I've had great luck with programming realistic drums - I've even fooled other drummers - but it all comes down to how well you can program. With any sample drum library, no matter how good it sounds, it won't sound real unless you can program well. BFD is worth every penny.

I've never used DFH, but BFD, with some of the 'smart' flams and whatnot that are all centered around the snare notes - those have made my programming skills actually approach what sounds like drumming. This has been an epiphany for me - and I'm just using the freebie version that was in CM back in October 2005 time frame.

In this case, their demo strategy works. If I find the need to purchase a full version of any drum software, there is no question in my mind - it will be BFD, from an ease of programming standpoint.

-Scott