User Guide

4
WHAT IS BFD?
BFD is a high-quality acoustic drum module. It concentrates on impeccably-
recorded multi-velocity acoustic drumkits, with some crucial differences to using a
general-purpose sampler with sample-CDs, or using pre-recorded acoustic drum
loops.
The BFD concept:
• Flexible mixing of multiple microphone placements
• Hyper-detailed kits: up to 46 velocity layers and a wide selection of hit
types, all recorded simultaneously through eleven microphones
• Easy compilation of new kits without wrestling with time-consuming
editing and combination of sampler programs, or having to load multiple
whole kits
• A versatile automated drummer in the Groove Librarian
• Endlessly variable sound and feel
All this and more is provided in an intuitive, highly integrated interface, plugged
into the heart of your favourite sequencing environment, via the VSTi, DXi, RTAS,
AudioUnit and ReWire interfaces. A standalone version is also supplied, which
uses the ASIO and CoreAudio protocols. BFD supports Windows and MacOS-X
operating systems. While BFD should work in Windows 98SE and ME environ-
ments, we only recommend and officially support its use in Windows 2000 and
XP.
When designing BFD, we tried to make it easy to use for people who prefer
to write music rather than mess with the inner workings of a plugin, while still
allowing a great deal of control and flexibility for the habitual tweaker.
Multiple microphone positions
Each drum component in BFD is sampled with a number of microphone place-
ments simultaneously:
Direct: a clean, close-mic’d signal. A variety of microphone types were used for
this, including Sennheiser MD421, Neumann KM81 and M49, ElectroVoice Re20,