Hi I'm a proud owner of BFD 2 and have a spare £50, now FXpansion are offering an update to BFD 3 for owners for only £49.99, is it worth updating? As far as my memory goes when BFD3 was first released it was very buggy, has it improved over the years, and is it still buggy, any owners out there that could advice me.TIA
They're pretty much the same program.. The only benefits would be: -New GUI -New stock Library -Option to compress all your samples to Flac But yeah, as you said it seems it's a stubborn program that gives problems from time to time, like notes stuck, silent notes, daw crashes etc.. I personally still use BFD2 because I much prefer the old GUI, it's rock-solid, and as I said they're pretty much the same program, so all the expansions work with it and so on.. The New library would be interesting to have tho, but in truth I guess it's nothing I couldn't really cover with the old Stock + expansion libs.. Last edited: Jun 3, 2021
Have not used BFD in years. Did not have any issues with version 3 after updates were issued. After a month of InMusic announcing the takeover of BFD & creating a BFDDRUMS website, there is still not any new info or reviews of user experience. If you, are an avid BFD user, go for it. Otherwise save the funds for something else. Currently testing the MeldaProduction 15 series of plugins and plan to download the 60GB of free drum content to test MDrummer & MSoundFactory. Hoping to find something better, more tweakable than the canned content of of Slate Drums, AD2 & SD3.
FXpansion releases BFD 2 - 21 Dec 2007 | FXpansion releases BFD 3 - 30 Sep 2013 | I would update - your BFD is already 13 years old In almost all complex software products there are errors in appear in it, regardless of whether you buy an operating system or a drum machine. Everyone wants to be on the market and sell quickly, but all products are then also updated, unless the company goes bankrupt. FXpansion has been acquired by ROLI www.fxpansion.com/news/fxpansion-joins-roli/ first of all the support is assured.
Not worth it in my opinion. I have 2 and 3. I use 3 for years. 3 is pretty stable now. But to be honest, the workflow of SD is a lot better. Well you can try the C*a*k*d version of 3 to see if it fits your needs. Like I said, it is stable and working fine, but the "new GUI" feels a bit old compared to modern standards. I would say stay with 2 and wait for 4.
Well I hope so. I would not buy 3. It feels really outdated and the workflow is not up-to-date. If they want to keep selling libraries, it is time for 4.
BFD 4 would be great, *GREAT* news! ...Buuuuut i don't see it coming... Hope time will prove me wrong. Anyway, i would suggest tring out a BFD3 demo version, if there is one (i dont remember tbh) and see for yourself if upgrading suits your needs!
BFD4 will exist, but not too soon.. At least that's what I read on some Reaper forum threads last year, where the actual Owner of the software talked about it. Great chap btw..
You mean this one: Angus Hewlett – founder & CEO of FXpansion, makers of renowned software instruments like Geist, DCAM Synth Squad, and BFD. The programmers at FXpansion always had good ideas, Cypher became Cypher 2, Strobe became Strobe 2, BFD became BFD 2 and BDF 3. The products just got better.
Well afaik, the actual owner of BFD is not the original programmer.. I don't remember his name but he's a good chap, the threads can be checked at Reaper forum, where he even consulted/worked with the devs to fix some bug, and clarify some inner workings of the program, just for a specific user request..
The Erskine kit on BFD3 is great and BFD3 is better with the last update which is some time ago - BUT - After Superior drummer 3 was released, it's almost like they stopped developing any further. Whether Toontrack's flagship product shut them down or not is debatable. I use Superior 3 as a goto and BFD 3 is still very good, but it is far more fiddly, which might explain why so many BFD 3 owners switched to Toontrack, as did I.
You're right - here they are: Spoiler: Welcome to BFD3! Welcome to BFD3! Programming: SKoT McDonald, Steve Baker Additional programming: Angus Hewlett, Paul Chana, Henry Lindsay-Smith, Andrew Simper Tom resonance algorithm research: Alice Clifford QA: Drew Vernon, Mike Bugh, Tom Meaney, Jamaine Obeng, Sam Gillies, Lawrence King Project management: Rory Dow, Angus Hewlett, Henry Lindsay-Smith, Rhiannon McLaren Video: Rory Dow, Ryan Sellers Documentation: Mayur Maha GUI design: Paul Chana, Angus Hewlett Image design: Rus Brockman Web development: Andreas Schnetzler, Sam Sharp, Rob Philp Artist Relations: Clare O'Brien Support: Alex Volmer, Ryan Sellers, Lawrence King FXpansion USA: Terry Hardin, Leslie Crook, Brian McGovern On the subject of workflow I bought the Cypher 2 the update was cheap, but everyone says screwing the preset is almost impossible. The programmer made it all so cumbersome that you can't use the Cypher 2. I wanted to make a sound bank with it and failed 7 times. Now it is gathering dust and was a bad buy. If you want to sell the license at Roli / FXpansion they want 50 EUR from you ... Last edited: Jun 3, 2021
It's sad really it started with much promise and then went nowhere within a short period of time after a few years.
I absolutely love BFD3 But it's so quirky I have to hurry with my choice & render my trax to audio. What does BFD Stand for anyway? Best Fucking Drums is what I call it!
Its "Big F**king Drums" i believe. Anyway i still use BFD3 over SD3. BFD feels more real, its like hearing real played drums through mics ...At least for me... The downside is that for some reason its causing problems to my cubase projects so i have to bounce audio really early on. Sometimes if i remove the instrument track and add a new instance of BFD 3, everything works fine (i7 and 16gigs of ram so my pc is not an issue)
I would go for it. I prefer BFD3 to SD3 for its warm sounds, although SD3 has far more content and features, far superior GUI. BFD3 went through a long period where it was buggy, took forever to support Mac updates, and a pain to get support. Recent updates have been stable, though. I hope FXPansion's move to InMusic will begin to see some real work on new stuff for BFD, which hasn't had much attention for some time (so far InMusic online support for BFD problems is not good... two support requests from me for an installation problem went unanswered). But for the small price for the upgrade, I would still recommend.
If you want instant sounding placed drums without doing anything, Superior drummer is what many people go for. It became successful because a lot of people do not like spending too much time fiddling with the drums to get a good sound, otherwise they would have hired a drummer. If you want to take your time and get a realistic-sounding drum kit, where it feels and sounds like an acoustic drummer has been recorded, BFD does that a bit better. If the drums become over-processed, then it does not matter what you use. Both are good for different and similar things. There's a lot more good on both sides than simply that. To be clear I like both.
Update: Tried the basic installers for MDrummer and found the quality lacking. Sounds seem to begin & end unnaturally, like they have been cropped at the wrong points. Also the sonic detail seems to be lacking. Reminds me of IK Multimedia samples. Would rather install BFD for now until unless I stumble across a better all-around solution.
