Anyone using DFHS or BFD for drums?

[bdunard]

Just curious. I thought about getting a Roland Vdrum set for myself a few years ago but I didn't feel the sounds were useable. However, after listening to the DFHS and BFD I feel like I could get better sounds with them than my home. I am thinking about buying a pintech trigger set and use one these software solutions. Thoughts?

[kittonian]

DFHS is fantastic to say the least. Triggering it with either the Roland TD20 V-Pro setup or, if your budget is a bit less than that, the Roland SPD20 with the KD8 kick trigger and the FD8 hi-hat controller are both very good solutions to playing in the sounds.

Works great, offers lots of flexibility and there's even a tutorial on our website about exactly how to use this program (including setting it up with an SPD20).

You can find the rewire tutorial at http://www.audiolot.com/proaudio/sal...ts/dfhs/rewire

Enjoy!

[max cooper]

There a quite a few threads here regarding BFD and DFHS. I get outstanding results from BFD. The refills are cool and you can now run DFHS sounds from the BFD module.

The search function oughtta get ya there.

Lots of people like DFHS. One thing is that I think the demos on the BFD site are really poor examples of the way the product can sound (ya'd think they'd be hip to that, huh?) Also, they're probably confusing people by calling their latest refill "8 Bit Kit". Nice product, though.

On one BFD/DFHS thread, another contender was mentioned, but I forget what it was called. The demos sounded good, though.

[bdunard]

TD 20 is way too much $ for me. What about using the TD6 or TD8 over the TD10. Since I am not using the internal sounds I should only care about its trigger capability. I've heard that the TD6 and TD8 both have better HH and crash capabilites. Any truth to this. Are they both better than TD10 in the HH category?

[pony]

I must say after working with every drum sound making device know to man that BFD kiks Drum Kit For Girls ass!!!!!
BFD is awesome and gets better all the time with the upgrades. I have done tons of tracks using it and I have to say WOW!!! The other thing that I've been using with much success are

http://www.drumsondemand.com/

The multi channel sample CD rocks!!!!
I just feel that DKFH lacks a certain beefyness and sounds very thin to me.
All you have to do is listen to samples of DKFH on thier site and that alone should keep you from buying them. Buy the way I work mostly in the pop/rock genre of music production, so i'm always looking for that Chris/Tom Lord Alge drum sound without real drums. I know that there are a lot of DKFH lovers here but like I said I have Superior loaded in my Giga Studio and they never get touched. BFD or DOD you won't be disapointed

[kittonian]

Pony, I'm just curious. Were you looking for DFHS's sounds to be something more than unprocessed mic'd drum hits? I've heard these comments from people who want a quick way to get great drum sounds that they don't have to spend a ton of time in the mix to get sounding like they want.

DFHS was not developed for these purposes. It was developed strictly to replace the need for mic'ing a drum kit and having fantastic mics, a great room, multiple amazing kits, and a great drummer. The sounds are not processed in any manner and truth be told, if you don't know what you are doing mixing drums, DFHS is going to prove to be very difficult. If however you want incredible sounds and ambience/bleeds and know how to mix drums from raw audio files (nothing more than a mic and a pre was used to create these sounds) then DFHS is definitely the way to go.

Btw, I am not assuming that you don't know how to mix drums, I am simply stating a point about why DFHS's samples might sound "thin".

[pony]

kittonian-

Yes of course I know that the drum sounds on DKFH are unprocessed. I almost never use any drum samples that have been processed at all. I prefer the sound I get through my various chains. I know how to mix and record drums very well thank you. On all the drum programs that I use and have used I always end up throwing my own personal favorite kik/snare samples in the mix anyway. I just have a certain sound that I like. I have had much better results with BFD. Perhaps you could post some drums you've done using DKFH and then I could post some using BFD and let the people decide for themselves. But my opinion stands DKFH sounds thin processed or unprocessed. Josh Freeze agrees and that's all I have to hear it from.

[crypticglobe]

Well, I LOVE BFD. DKFH is good too. But I just really prefer the kits in BFD... the new re-fills have some really incredible stuff. And as mentioned above... the ability to load DFKH kits... well, that makes BFD the end all for me.

I use it a lot for demo's, and it finds it's way on to master recordings now and then too. Have used it in combination with the midi triggering feature on Drumagog to replace individual hits on poorly recorded drums. Sounded incredible. :)

Just my 2 cents.

[cl516]

how's the cpu usage on these things on a single chip 1gig G4? is it hard on the firewire drive, or where do you keep it?

[Ruudman]

I keep DFHS on my internal ATA.
CPU handling depends on amount of latency, I guess.

I'm sure Toontrack will continue to develope their product in a way
that makes it more than a BFD add-on..


ruudman

[sharpeleven]

Just got DFH Superior a little while ago to try and save a poorly recorded Rock drum track. I was shocked when I found out how good it sounds! I actually ended up radically replacing everything, even the Hats and Cymbals by created midi files triggered by the actual performance.

[chrisso]

Getting back to the original question.........
I'm sceptical about the realness of E-Drums, but this recent 'DFH Superior' demo absolutely blew me away:

http://www.toontrack.com/demos/chicken_low.mov

(25mb file by the way)

I even wrote to Toontrack asking if the hi-hats and cymbals were all samples.....and they are.

Can BFD do this level of realism?


BTW, I think the other sample set mentioned before was Scarbee (which is said to be very good, but only one DW kit sampled).

[bdunard]

bfd could really use some new demos. I would love to hear some gearslutz bfd or dfhs mp3's. Any takers? Also, I can't get the movie to download from the dfhs site.

[kittonian]

If you are talking about the flash demo on the ToonTrack website, we have the exact same movie on our website. Perhaps you'll have better luck watching the one we host.

[Timsplace]

What are you using to generate MIDI fiiles from your drum tracks? I used to do this with an Alesis D4. I'm using Protools TDM and there is no software add on that I know of to do this. I wish Digi would roll this functionality into Soundreplacer. Someone posted elsewhere that they do it in Logic, but I don't know if it's built into Logic or is it an add on?

Tim

Originally posted by sharpeleven
Just got DFH Superior a little while ago to try and save a poorly recorded Rock drum track. I was shocked when I found out how good it sounds! I actually ended up radically replacing everything, even the Hats and Cymbals by created midi files triggered by the actual performance.

[sharpeleven]

Originally posted by Timsplace
What are you using to generate MIDI fiiles from your drum tracks? I used to do this with an Alesis D4. I'm using Protools TDM and there is no software add on that I know of to do this. I wish Digi would roll this functionality into Soundreplacer. Someone posted elsewhere that they do it in Logic, but I don't know if it's built into Logic or is it an add on?

Tim

I also use Logic's Audio to Midi function, works great (tight). Then I import the midi files back into PT as general midi files. Works great, but don't forget to set the tempo in Logic identical to your PT file (even if you didn't use click) other wise you'll be ****ed when importing into PT...

[chrisso]

Is anyone using the basic samples from BFD or DFHS to perform sound replacement duties?
My biggest beef with both plug-ins is that I'm a hopeless drum groove programmer. (Don't mention the BFD midi grooves, I know about that)

[entropy]

what he said. I too have had both but have now ditched DFHS and gone with BFD as my sole drum app. It ****ing rocks!!! IMO it has the same "realness" that kittonian was referring to, except for the "bleed" thing that DFHS does. But that one thing wasn't enough to swing me. The interface in BFD is fast and effective and the updates are certainly worth it. 8 bit kit is the shit!

and for your information, I sell both. I bought the Akai MPD 16 drum pad to program with my laptop but it would be great with a TD6 or something similar.

BTW, I'm streaming from an external firewire drive to a 1.25gb g4 laptop. Worx smoove!

[jho]

Originally posted by Timsplace
What are you using to generate MIDI fiiles from your drum tracks? I used to do this with an Alesis D4. I'm using Protools TDM and there is no software add on that I know of to do this. I wish Digi would roll this functionality into Soundreplacer. Someone posted elsewhere that they do it in Logic, but I don't know if it's built into Logic or is it an add on?

Tim

I would like this for PT 6.7 also. I'm using Aptrigga2 which is excellent, and soundreplacer sometimes when Aptrigga doesn't work fast enuf (like fast kicks, etc). Are there any utilities out there or VST's etc for PT to convert audio to midi?

[Timsplace]

It's my understanding that BFD uses a multichannel .Wav format (like up to 18 channels I think) that you need a special app to extract individual sound files. That's why I'm reverting to audio to MIDI to use BFD in Protools.

Originally posted by chrisso
Is anyone using the basic samples from BFD or DFHS to perform sound replacement duties?
My biggest beef with both plug-ins is that I'm a hopeless drum groove programmer. (Don't mention the BFD midi grooves, I know about that)

[LongWave]

y'know that video demo on page 1 of this thread? whats the deal, does anyone know? was it recorded in, and then triggered in a daw or something?

ill be buying this set just because i really like the sounds in that video. but will i be able to use it to trigger drums ive already recorded...? if so, how..? i already have drumagog.

Romesh

[trazan]

Any of you BFD guys care to post some snippets? I didn't like what I heard on BFD's site, so it would be nice to hear it treated and in context.

[Mystr Tiger]

Originally posted by bdunard
Just curious. I thought about getting a Roland Vdrum set for myself a few years ago but I didn't feel the sounds were useable. However, after listening to the DFHS and BFD I feel like I could get better sounds with them than my home. I am thinking about buying a pintech trigger set and use one these software solutions. Thoughts?

My current thoughts: I'm using DFHS in a hybrid approach. I record my VDrums TD10 MIDI and TD10 audio at same time along with real snare and real cymbals. I use the MIDI track to drive the DFHS kick and toms, and the audio tracks as a guide to line up the rendered DFHS tracks. I also blend some of the TD10 kick with the DFHS kick. I think DFHS sounds fine, but lately I've been thinking about getting a real kick and toms.

The pros of DFHS: good sounds that are very close to real, don't need mics and pres, don't need a large drum room, can chose from a few kits after recording the performance.

Cons: it's hard, hard work keeping the audio tracks and the parallel matching MIDI tracks in sync as I cut and paste, plus DFHS is not real and I know it, damn it (but I think it's possible no else would know it).

All told, I'm currently pleased with the results and will likely continue in this direction for the time being. Seems from other posts (thanks!) I should look into BFD as well.

Good luck with your venture!

[Robcamp]

Here is a little something I did with BFD when I first got it.
Second song down, "Funk City Baby" A progressive rock instrumental for fun.

Rob

[Curve Dominant]

Robcamp,

That sounded really good.

Question: Can I use BFD samples as individual hits, independent from the sequencing software?

I've been using the DFH samples this way, constructing beats manually on the PT grid, with some success.

But y'all got me curious about the BFD stuff. Is there a stripped down version that has just the sample hits I can buy, and where to find it?

Thanks in advance...

[Robcamp]

Thank's Eric,

If I understand your question correctly, you could "freeze" a given drum hit and treat it as any other wave file, but given the multitude of velocities for each drum piece, that would definetly be doing it the hard way....is there some reason you wouldn't want to use the BFD streaming engine?

There isn't a stripped down version. You can check it out at fxpansion.com.

Rob

[Curve Dominant]

posted by Robcamp:
Thank's Eric,

Well, it did sound really good.

If I understand your question correctly, you could "freeze" a given drum hit and treat it as any other wave file,

What I would be more interested in, is importing the individual wav. hits into a PT session, and arranging those hits into beats. Are the BFD samples arranged as individual hits, or only as loops?

but given the multitude of velocities for each drum piece, that would definetly be doing it the hard way....

True, but I get a certain degree of composing flexibility with this approach. It IS time consuming, yes, but I've got this whole system worked out, and then there's these mixing tricks I use, and... and... Yes, I'm quite mad.

is there some reason you wouldn't want to use the BFD streaming engine?

My home system isn't set up for it. Old G3 350MHz, won't handle that newfangled DFD streaming thing. Not sure if I would use it if it did. I like doing it the old fashioned way, like writing drum notes on a scoresheet.

Will the BFD sample library allow me to use it in this fashion?

[Robcamp]

I don't think you can access the sample library as "wave files". I seem to recall reading somewhere that it's a proprietary format of some sort...

The structure of BFD is individual hit's with multiple velocities, no loops.

Rob

[sharpeleven]

Originally posted by Curve Dominant

My home system isn't set up for it. Old G3 350MHz, won't handle that newfangled DFD streaming thing. Not sure if I would use it if it did. I like doing it the old fashioned way, like writing drum notes on a scoresheet.

Will the BFD sample library allow me to use it in this fashion?

Curve, I think there are better alternatives for working with individual samples only. DFH's sound is a combination of a multitude of simultaneous samples, i.e. the snare bleed in the overheads and room 'mics'. The close miced sounds actually sound pretty lifeless on their own - why not take some other more natural sounds for your programming like Clearmountain Drums...

Where dfh shines is in the variety of sounds due to multiple samples that are used for each velocity layer and the resulting realism.

I think you should consider upgrading to a faster CPU and get something like dfh or BFD. It's easily justifiable considering the amout of time you'll save programming drums and the huge increase in flexibility. You can then work with Midi events rather than tweaking single audio hits. It's even closer to 'writing drum notes on a score sheet"...

[nvtmusic]

Hi,
I am not a Drummer but I have DFH . I use it with a protools HD system . While the results are good . Getting setup and finnally getting it to work was a real pain.
That being said I do have it set up now working pretty good . Trigered from a midi track I use 2 audio tracks for each drum,1 with the drummer insert, then bus it to another audio track this allows me to get some qick drum tracks on seperate
tracks all at once . If you want to carry it further you can bounce to disk in the drummer application to get all the ambience sounds from the kit . But it was a trying experience setting it up at first, I was almost ready to give up on it .

Good luck,
Mike