PAKET 61 : BFD 3 Fxpansion Virtual Drum Instrument
125rb 10 dvd
Hemat 25rb!
Untuk yang sudah tau BFD 1 dan BFD 2 sudah tidak perlu diperkenalkan lagi bagaimana kualitas virtual drum instrument yang satu ini. Yang ke 1 dan ke 2 saja sudah begitu bagusnya apalagi yang ke tiga ini , sudah pasti lebih baik lagi dari yang sebelumnya.
Silakan dicek ada apa saja di BFD 3 ini.
Silakan dicek ada apa saja di BFD 3 ini.
What's New?
a series of meticulously sampled acoustic drum
kits with multiple sample layers (up to 80 on some of the snares).
Equally, multiple articulations have been sampled. For example, for the
snare you can get standard hits, drags, flam, half edge, rimshot, side
stick and rim click, while the hi-hat features as many as 13 different
articulations. Providing your programming and/or playing
chops are up to it, what this allows is an ultra-realistic sample-based
performance to be created; no machine gun rolls or parts where every
hit of every drum is triggering the same sample.
However, the potential for creating realistic drum
performances doesn't just depended upon the sample base; there is also
the very sophisticated mixing environment, including multiple
microphones on some drums. For example, the snare features top, bottom
and side mics while the kick has in, out and sub mics. In addition, you
get overhead, room, ambient and various mono and compressed room
channels. The mixer allows you to blend all of these sound sources, just
as you would with a multitrack recording of a real acoustic drum kit;
including the ability (if you want it) to add 'bleed' from one drum into
the mic positioned near another. Oh, and you get a range of dedicated
effects such as compression, EQ, envelope shaping, distortion and reverb
that can all be added to your drum mix.
In short, what you have here is a virtual equivalent of
the best acoustic drum kit you can imagine, in the best recording room
you can imagine, miked up with the best collection of mics you can
imagine, ready for you to play and then mix. The vast majority of us
simply couldn't get close to the sound and control that BFD offers. And
if your drum playing or programming sucks, then FXpansion throw in
a huge collection of ready-made (and editable) MIDI drum grooves that
can capitalise on the sampling and articulations offered.
The obvious difference with BFD3 is a significant overhaul of the interface, both visually
and functionally. There is also a completely new core-audio library
with five new kits, one of which is sampled in three versions based on
sticks, brushes and mallets. This gives a total of 118 kit pieces (or,
as they're rather intuitively called in the new terminology, 'Drums')
plus 1000 new MIDI grooves in a range of musical styles.
In addition, there are a number of new features in
terms of the performance options, some new articulations and
improvements in the mixing/processing capabilities. A new lossless audio
compression/decompression system also that means audio data takes up
only 1/3 of the hard-drive space without any compromise in performance
or audio quality. However, both drum sample data and MIDI groove data
from previous BFD installations will happily function with BFD3,
although you might find you need to do some initial tweaking if you load
one of your own BFD2 presets into BFD3. That said, the two versions can
co-exist on the same system.
BFD3 can work in stand-alone mode or as a VST, AU, RTAS
or AAX 64 plug-in, with the first three of these available in either
32- or 64-bit formats. You can purchase either a boxed or downloadable
version and choose between three levels of install (18, 27 or 55 GB)
depending upon your requirements and available disk space. This includes
the above-mentioned compression, without which the full library would
be in excess of 160GB. If you purchase the download version, be prepared
for a bit of a wait whichever level of installation you go for; unless
you are on super-fast fibre all that data is going to take some time to
be delivered. That said, once done, installation and authorisation is
a very smooth process.
Good Looking Drummer
If you're familiar with BFD2, the screenshots here
will clearly illustrate just how different BFD3 looks. Aside from the
upper menu/transport strip, the interface is split into three areas by
default. To the left is the Browser that can be tabbed between Presets,
Kits, Drums, Grooves and Auto (automation) functions. The Browser can be
toggled off if required. The remainder of the display is split into the
upper drum kit graphic and lower mixer areas. Gone are the old-school
drum graphics of
BFD2 and in comes a modern, crisp technical drawing and, as you browse
over the kit image in the upper half of the display, an arrow rather
helpfully points out which mixer channel belongs to the currently
selected drum in the lower half of the display.
This central area is also tabbed — Kit, Effects, Groove
Editor and Key Map — and each option adjusts the display to show the
appropriate functions. The Drum Editor replaces the Kit-piece editor
and, to the extreme right of the main display, are two further tabs for
the Drum Editor: Tech and Model. These allow you to get into the
detailed settings for each drum.
While the depth of the overall window is fixed, you can
adjust its width via two buttons located to the right of the Help menu.
This is great if you want to see either more Mixer channels at the same
time or want a bigger area within which to view the Groove Editor.
A similar 'expand/contract' switch is available within the Mixer panel.
This allows you to toggle between two views: one where all the channels
are shown including the multiple channels for the snare, kick and
ambience mics, and a second where each of these multiple mics are folded
down into a single channel (acting like an aux or group channel).
Further Mixer customisation is available via the Mini Mixer as this now
allows you to specify any subset of channels to be displayed. These
channels are then permanently visible on the right end of the Mixer
panel, regardless of where you are scrolling within the mixer channels
on the left.
Drum Tuning
There's not enough space here to go into all the
subtle details offered by BFD3 for shaping the drum sounds, but the Drum
Editor is an excellent illustration of what's possible. For example,
activating the Tech panel opens an additional panel on the right side of
the display to edit the technical details of the currently selected
drum. The level of control possible — and the ease with which the new
interface makes it accessible — is excellent. While you can adjust the
level and tuning, the ability to control the bleed from the kick and
snare and the absolute precision with which you can adjust how much each
drum appears within each of the ambient mic channels and its dynamic
response (the Loudness settings) is like a drum engineer's fantasy.
The Model panel allows you to configure some of the
engine's modelling options for damping, choking, cymbal swells and the
tom resonance. Again, the degree of control offered is impressive. For
example, in a busy mix, one of my pet hates is ringing, resonant toms;
in BFD3 you can pretty much dial that in or out to whatever degree you
want via the Damping and Tom Resonance controls. Equally, the Hi-hat
Tighten controls allow you to specify just how tightly closed the
'closed' articulations actually are, going between snappy or flappy as
required.
Incidentally, BFD3 also introduces a new system for
saving individual drums with all their associated Drum Editor, mixer and
effects settings. These are termed Processed Drum presets and they can
be viewed for selection within the Drums section of the Browser.
Kit Mixing
In the Mixer you now navigate between Fader, Effects,
Sends and Tweaks views using the appropriate tabs. The first three of
these are obvious and straightforward (and, incidentally, stuffed full
of features; this is a very well-specified mixing environment). The
Tweaks panel brings together the Trim, Tune and Damping controls from
the Drum Editor panels into one place. For broad-brush editing of the
kit's overall characteristics during playback, this panel is very
useful.
While all of BFD's effects have been restyled in v.3,
there are also some brand new effects including FXverb, an eight-band
EQ, EnvShaper and Distortion (the latter replacing PSP's Vintage Warmer
from BFD2). The other key addition is a very flexible side-chain
capability to some of the effects (for example, the Comp Bus and Noise
Gate). Equally, BFD3's compressor effects include a Mix (wet/dry)
control that allows you to create parallel compression effects on a mono
or stereo channel without the need to set up an additional aux channel.
Overall, the suite of effects in BFD3 — covering dynamics, EQ, filters,
reverb, delay, modulation and distortion — are comprehensive and high
quality. It's a shame they can't be used outside of BFD.
Best Of The Rest
BFD3 is a deep and very powerful tool and it's
difficult to give a full sense of that depth in a concise review.
However, there are a few other technical features worth mentioning. For
example, the Key Maps have undergone some substantial changes and, on
the whole, I think these create a much more intuitive and flexible
workflow. As there are new articulations, the BFD3 default Key Map is
different from BFD2, but the latter can be loaded and the new
articulations added if required. Incidentally, BFD3 makes it easy to
work with MIDI drum kits and the automation system now features
a well-implemented Learn mode for mapping MIDI controllers.
As noted above, BFD3's mixer is fully featured and
provides plenty of scope for internal routing of audio. The instrument
also includes multiple outputs; you can send separate BFD3 mic channels
out to your DAW or via a suitable multi-channel audio interface if you
wish.
And if you want to export your
BFD3 drum track as a series of audio files, then the Export features
are truly excellent, allowing you to specify exactly which channels are
exported and their bit-depth. This saves a heap of work assigning the
required channels to separate BFD3 outputs and the subsequent rendering
that would be involved otherwise.
BFD3 & Easy
While I was initially quite surprised at just how
different BFD3 looked from its predecessor, having used it over the
review period, I think FXpansion have done a fabulous job in both the
interface and technical overhaul. These cosmetic and workflow
improvements are not, of course, the only consideration; how does BFD3
sound? Brilliant, fabulous, delightful, er... cubed. Don't get me wrong,
I'm more than happy with the results I can get from BFD2 or competing
products such as Superior Drummer 2 (which I regularly use in my own
projects), but BFD3 moves things up a notch from what's gone before. The
range of drum samples provided means that even with just the default
kits, BFD3 can cover a huge range of acoustic drum kit styles and
musical genres.
But what is really impressive is the combination of
sound quality and the ease with which the characteristics of the kit can
be adjusted and fine-tuned to exactly suit your needs. To repeat what
I said earlier: add in the impressive collection of supplied grooves —
and the powerful manipulation tools — and you can go from zero to drum
hero in double (quick) time.
It doesn't really matter what aspect of the drum sound
you want to adjust — basic drum balance, the amount of room ambience or
tom resonance — BFD3 provides you with a way to do it. And it is all
ridiculously easy, allowing you to go as deep as you like, or just
simply to load one of the excellent presets and leave well alone. The
bottom line here is that you can coax almost any acoustic drum sound you
want out of BFD3 and control that sound in ways that most of us (well,
those of us without a mega-studio at our disposal) could never hope to
replicate in our own recording spaces.
Conclusion
Despite my initial surprise at the radical new look, I think BFD3
is a bit of a gem. It's powerful if you need it to be, but quick and
easy if you don't. Whatever the kind of acoustic drum sound you are
looking for, BFD3 has the samples and editing features to get you there.
So who might buy it? I suspect BFD2 users, who might be hesitant about
what appear to be wholesale changes, will actually be pleasantly
surprised. As a regular BFD2 user myself, I can honestly say that I'm
not going back.
What about those who haven't yet ventured into the world of top-notch virtual drum instruments but have a need for great-sounding acoustic drum tracks? Well, if you have a studio where you can record a drum kit better than BFD3 sounds, then the price of BFD3 is going to be chump-change anyway. However, for the rest of us, BFD3 is a cost-effective and creative solution to what can be a real recording problem. At £229, BFD3 might not be a casual purchase but, given the truly convincing results that can be obtained, this will be money very well spent. Highly recommended.
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