What configuration, software and musical style or context do you use with these virtual drums? Is its anti-piracy protection excessive or burdening? Is it CPU intensive?
I use bfd3 to write or produce French chanson, rock music or for stacking for electro-leaning music.
I use it with a 2011 iMac I5 2.6GHz with 12 GB RAM, not so recent but it works flawlessly for you can choose how much to load to avois any CPU problem.
So you're working light to produce heavy.
No problem with copy protection, very easy.
Is it easy to use? Are its parameters straightforward? Is its MIDI programming simple? Is the quality of the grooves provided satisfactory?
This is the problem... It's very hard to get used to it, even if efforts have been made since BFD2, it still is a very demanding software which requires at least a basic knowledge in both mixing and programming. It's both a sequencer and a drums mixer within your DAW...
But, once you start understanding how it works, it's party time! Try the internal groove editor, you'll love it, you can program everything through it and when you're not a good drummer it's very appreciable to see how to input right-hand left-hand movements with the right velocity, time a "fla" and so on...
All this is easy to acces thanks to the paintbrush tool, so you can take inspiration from and edit the (very professional-sounding) included grooves.
How would you judge the overall sound quality? How do the presets sound? Do the virtual drums sound realistic? Versatile?
A real killer (disclaimer: no one was harmed in the making of these grooves)! This is the most realistic and the better recorded virtual drums that I've ever heard, you can do anything you like with it and good luck to see the difference with a real drummer - provided you know how to program it. I have tried several other comparable softwares but all sound overproduced to me, leaning towards a sonic identity I don't like.
Here, I really have the feeling to hear the mics from home with none of the mistakes or lack of quality that are typical of a home studio.
This already was the case with bfd2 but it wbugges all the time and was unnecessarily complex.
Add the fact that you can get beautiful symbal swells, sympathetic resonance between the mics, choose the stereo fiels and the distance between the overheads, and the same with the five other ambiance mics, kick in, kick out, sub and so on...
That stuff is just awesome!
A drums production environement that also allows to work fast with the included presets.
What are the pros and cons of these virtual drums?
+ Sound
+ The soft's modular aspect
+ No serious competitor (mixosaurus perhaps? never had a chance to test it)
+ The possibility of playing, composing and producing
+ Great value for money
- Not very intuitive or user friendly
- Gain staging has to be taken care of all the time (GREAT JOB GUYS!)
Thanks for reading...;)
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