FXpansion BFD 1.07 (Mac/Win)

May 1, 2004 12:00 PM, By Marty Cutler

Overall EM Rating (1 through 5): 5

Coaxing great drum tracks out of your DAW often requires the skills of a drummer and a recording engineer combined. FXpansion's drum module, BFD (Mac/Win, $299), answers both needs, with 24-bit, 44.1 kHz samples and MIDI grooves recorded by a top-notch drummer.

BFD comes with seven drum kits and assorted individual instruments, which you can mix and match to create new sets (hear Web Clip 1). The module gives you control of the balance between the direct mics and three sets of room mics.

BFD can be used as a standalone or plug-in instrument (RTAS, VST, DX, and Audio Units) and offers ReWire compatibility. The minimum system requirements on the PC are a Pentium III or Athlon/1 GHz and Windows 2000 or XP. On the Mac side, you'll need a G4/733 MHz and OS X 10.2. You'll also need at least 512 MB of RAM and a DVD drive for installation. I tested the instrument on a dual-processor G4/1.42 GHz with OS X 10.2.8 and 2 GB of RAM.

Sui Generous

The samples in the BFD kits are fairly large, which ensures subtle and realistic transitions between dynamic levels. For example, the 1920s Ludwig 4×14-inch snare uses 45 velocity layers, and that doesn't include multilayered flams, rim shots, and rolls. In addition, you can hear the snare's strainers fade in as you increase the Velocity on some of the toms. You can also choose between a kick drum at B0, in which increased Velocities introduce sympathetic snare vibrations, and C1, a kick drum with no snare interaction.

The instruments were sampled with their full natural decay. That means you won't hear the kind of artifacts you get from looped cymbals, which often have unnatural, wobbly-sounding tails. Because each complete drum kit is larger than 1 GB, BFD streams samples from disk rather than loading them into RAM.

Balancing Act

Most of the instruments have a direct mic and controls for Trim, Tuning, Dynamics, and Pan. The two exceptions are the snare drum, which has a mic on the top and bottom, and the bass drum, which has a mic inside and a mic outside. An additional control for each of these drums lets you set the balance between the two mics.

BFD's three types of stereo distance miking — overheads, room ambience, and PZM — are available simultaneously. You can alter the level and stereo spread of each pair and change their distance from the drums. Although this kind of flexibility leaves little need for additional spatial enhancement, BFD offers 17 outputs, so you can process each microphone separately.

The default drum maps loosely conform to the General MIDI standard, but you can configure your own mapping or use preset maps for devices such as the Alesis DM Pro, Roland TD-10, and the Yamaha DTXtreme.

BFD comes with MIDI-file grooves that take advantage of the full dynamic range of each instrument. The grooves can be triggered with MIDI Note numbers, and you can customize playback in a variety of ways, including overlaying additional instrument hits. The playing is creative, human, and supple, and there are plenty of real-time tools to let you change the feel and dynamics. The most amusing controller resides in the quantization window: as you move the slider from hard quantization to swing, a colorful robot image morphs into a beret-wearing, goateed hipster.

It's difficult choosing a favorite from the assortment of vintage and contemporary drums: I love them all. If I had to single out just one, it would be the Slingerland kit, which features a vintage Ludwig snare, a resonant Radio King floor tom, and a kick with a nice, long decay.

In all cases, Velocity controls layering. However, on some cymbals and rim shots, Velocity is used to switch between strike locations rather than loud and soft samples. I'd prefer to use Modulation (CC 1) to change where an instrument is struck: Velocity is harder to control if you want to move from the edge of the ride cymbal to the bell.

Beat It

BFD offers nearly all the tools you need to create realistic, high-quality drum performances. According to FXpansion, more drum kits are in the works, so hopefully we'll soon see a few brushed kits and hand-percussion setups. With all that BFD provides — great-sounding and expressive drums and a wealth of customization and mixing options — I doubt that my drum machines and samplers will ever see the light of day again.

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FXpansion Audio UK
tel. (44) 20-7836-6663
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