Power Up

Jun 5, 2008 3:33 PM, By Babz

           
 

All the power that BFD2 provides comes at a price. Though memory and storage requirements are comparable to those of BFD, BFD2 can demand substantially more CPU—easily two or three times more. Up to 4 effects on up to 32 drum pieces, as well as various room, master, and aux buses, can quickly add up. My test computers included a 3.2 GHz Pentium 4 PC and a dual 2 GHz Power Mac G5, and at 128 buffers my systems could barely handle some of the more DSP-intensive presets.

There are lots of built-in options to help manage resources. The Preferences page gives you access to settings to help optimize RAM and streaming buffers, and you can manage Velocity detail both globally and at the level of individual kit pieces. Closing the Edit window reduces graphic load, which can help regain CPU cycles on some systems, and you can do things like disable effects during tracking, then raise buffers and reenable effects during mixing. With these and other tweaks, I was able to accomplish everything I wanted to, but if you really want to tap into the full power of BFD2, I’d recommend a fast, modern, multicore computer. I’m a few years behind the curve and due for a computer upgrade, but BFD2 made me realize I may want to do it sooner.