CONTENTS INTRODUCTION Credits WHAT IS BFD? The BFD concept Multiple microphone positions Hyper-realistic kits Easy compilation of new kits Flexible play modes: introducing the Groove Librarian Endless variety of sound and feel Potential uses for BFD A note about the manual Technical Support and Updates INSTALLATION AND GETTING STARTED System Requirements Installation Using BFD in Your Sequencer or Host Using BFD in Steinberg Cubase SX and Cubase VST Using BFD in Emagic Logic Audio Using BFD in Digidesign Pro Tools Using BFD in MOTU Digital Performer 4 Using BFD in Image-Line FL Studio Using BFD in Sonic Foundry Acid 4.0 Using BFD in Cakewalk Project 5 Using BFD in Cakewalk Sonar Using BFD with ReWire USING BFD Part One: FIRST STEPS... Part Two: IN THE MIX... Part Three: INTRODUCING THE GROOVE LIBRARIAN... Part Four : USING YOUR HOST'S MIXING CAPABILITIES 3 3 4 4 4 5 6 6 6 6 7 7 9 9 9 11 11 11 12 12 13 14 14 14 15 16 16 20 23 30 1 REFERENCE Introduction To BFD's Interface Loading Kits and Kit-Pieces Kit Display Mixer Section Groove Librarian Humanization Functions Quantization Panel Humanization Panels Play Options Panel Auto Groove Repeat Buttons Options Panel Hit Options Panel Tempo Display Loading and Saving Presets Other File Types Used in BFD Miscellaneous Functions Drum Recording Notes BFD's Library of Grooves APPENDIX Host-specific issues Troubleshooting 32 32 32 36 37 41 45 45 46 48 51 53 56 58 59 60 61 63 65 66 66 66 2 INTRODUCTION Thank you for choosing FXpansion's BFD! We hope you will agree that the painstaking effort of putting it together has resulted in the most realistic acoustic drum machine ever. CREDITS Lead Programming: SKoT McDonald (www.vellocet.com) Audio Engineering: Steve Duda, Elan Trujillo Drum Technician: Josh Baldwin Additional Programming: Angus Hewlett Design and Graphics: Adam Ferns (www.raresense.co.uk) Project Management: Rhiannon Bankston-Thomas Manual and Groove Engineering: Mayur Maha Session Drumming: Chris Dagley With thanks to: Andy Simper, Matt Hooper, Swedish Moose, Tom Santamera, Bat, Simon Allen, Monkey, Shane Chambers, Nicolas Lacoumette, Gareth Green, Charlie Norton, Lighthouse Guy for watching over us, WonderBorg, The Cove Pasty Shop, and of course our Long Suffering Significant Others. Recorded at Eldorado Recording, Burbank CA www.eldoradorecording.com ReWire is a trademark of Propellerhead Software. VST is a trademark of Steinberg Media Technology AG. ACID is a trademark of Sonic Foundry Inc. Windows XP and RTAS are trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. Other trademarks mentioned are held by their respective owners. © 2003-2004 FXpansion Audio. All rights reserved. Manual revision 1.0.8.11 3 WHAT IS BFD? BFD is a high-quality acoustic drum module. It concentrates on impeccablyrecorded 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 environments, 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 placements 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, 4 AKG 451 and Shure SM57. They were recorded through custom modified API preamps. Overhead: a lush set of overhead mics - namely AKG C-12's (which, incidentally, cost around $15,000 each), recorded through Summit MPC-100A tube preamps. Room: a room ambience signal, recorded with Neumann U87's and Avalon preamps. PZM: Crown PZM microphones placed at floor level, tracked with API preamps and an additional compression stage (Empirical Labs Distressor set at 3:1 ratio) for added body and sustain. These signals can be mixed together as desired, so you can `dial in' exactly the amount and type of natural ambience you need, without having to use CPU-heavy reverb plugins. The ambience in BFD is totally natural and the result of pain-staking recording in high-quality spaces. Any reverb processor can only try to emulate such a space, while BFD gives you the real thing. There is additional control over the distance placement of each mic-set, and the width of its stereo field. The ambient send levels of each kit element (such as kick, snare, toms, hats and cymbals) can be adjusted in the detailed mixer section, resulting in exceptionallyversatile control over the final drum sound. The mixer section even has controls to handle the blend between mics inside and outside the kick drum, and above and below the snare. In addition, each individual microphone bus, and even each individual dry drum component, can easily be routed to an individual output into the host sequencer's mixer for further sound processing. The mixer section has an integrated, intuitive preset system, facilitating the ability to save your favourite mixer configurations and flick through them with ease. Hyper-realistic kits As well as the flexibility offered by the multiple microphone positions, BFD's high quality drum sample library has an unparalleled degree of realism. For each type of drum type in each kit, there are a number of different styles of `hits': for example, the snares offer flams, drags, rims and side-sticks, while the hihats include closed and half-open tip & shank, open tip and pedal. Each of these `hits' 5 is sampled at up to 46 velocity layers, resulting in drum parts of unparalleled detail and expressiveness. Easy compilation of new kits Ever tried to edit and combine elements of large disk-streamed sample libraries? You'll know that it isn't exactly the most productive use of creative time in the studio. To save you this tedious, time-consuming process, BFD allows you to easily mix and match the kicks, snares, toms, hats and cymbals of the various supplied kits to create custom kits. All this within seconds, and with just a few mouseclicks! You can preview any potential kit changes in real-time and in context, leaving you free to concentrate on the sound rather than losing your creative flow through excessive file and sample management operations. Custom kit creations can be easily saved into a small preset file, so it's easy to create a library of drumkits tailored to your requirements, and the small size of these files makes it simple to share your kits with other users online. Flexible play modes: introducing the Groove Librarian In addition to functioning as a single-hit module which can be triggered via the host sequencer's MIDI engine, BFD also incorporates an extensive library of `Grooves', in a number of different styles, feels and time signatures. There is also a comprehensive fill library. What makes BFD so powerful is that these `Grooves' are implemented using standard MIDI files, so it is incredibly easy to create and import your own, or use commercial MIDI-file libraries, such as the Kenton and Twiddly Bits products. BFD conforms to the General MIDI (GM) standard, making it very easy to import standard MIDI drum parts as Grooves. Endless variety of sound and feel BFD's intelligent humanization techniques inject that elusive `soul' into your drum parts. The provided MIDI Grooves are dripping with a variety of feels, and the integrated swing controls make it easy to tighten or relax the vibe as much as required. On top of this, the sound of the Groove can be further humanized through the controlled variation of velocity and timing. Potential uses for BFD BFD has the ability to be many things to many people. As well as catering for 6 composers who require `ready-rolled' but flexible drum accompaniments in order to facilitate song-writing without interruption to the creative flow, it also provides convenient access to the very highest quality sampled drum sounds for producers without access to a real drumkit or good recording facilities. BFD's sounds and Grooves are perfectly suited to rock, jazz, funk, hip-hop, blues, drum & bass... in fact, anything that may require a real drumkit. It can be used for anything from auto-accompaniment, traditional song-writing and production, to modern techniques such as creating new drum breaks to use in hip-hop and drum & bass production. A note about the manual We have designed BFD to be as intuitive as possible, to the point where it is possible to fire it up and be up and running within seconds for instant gratification. However, it is recommended that you go through the tutorial chapter ("Using BFD") which introduces the plugin's variety of features in a logical and straightforward way, so that you can make sure you understand all the concepts crucial to the way it works. It is also highly useful to be aware of the Appendix, which contains notes on a number of technical issues regarding performance and troubleshooting. We also hope that you don't find the size of this manual intimidating, as there are several sections (for example, the host-specific Quickstart guides) which you may not need to concern yourself with, depending upon your level of experience. Technical Support and Updates Before contacting our support department, please make sure you have fully read the manual, and in particular, the technical appendix. If, after following the manual's advice, you still cannot resolve your problem, our support department will be only too happy to help. Our primary technical support channel is our support forum at kvr-vst.com: http://www.kvr-vst.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=13 7 This forum is monitored by FXpansion technical support staff, as well as the developers themselves; it is also home to many highly knowledgeable users and answers to your questions can be found quickly at all hours of the day. If, for whatever reason, you are unable to access the forum, or cannot get a satisfactory answer there, feel free to contact us at: support@fxpansion.com Before you contact us, please make sure to read our BFD User FAQ, which includes solutions to many common installation and performance problems: http://www.fxpansion.com/product-bfd-userFAQ.php Please be aware that we are continuously working on updates to BFD and its content, so please be sure to keep checking our website (http://www.fxpansion.com) in order to download updates, new Groove bundles and more! Many thanks, The FXpansion team. 8 INSTALLATION AND GETTING STARTED System Requirements BFD requires a substantial amount of computing power. Here is the minimum recommended specification: · 1 GHz Pentium III or Athlon (for Windows platform) · Apple PowerMac G4 733 MHz (for MacOSX platform) · 512 MB of RAM (preferably 768 MB or more) · DVD drive (for installation) · Windows 2000 or XP, or MacOSX · 9 GB of free hard disk space · 800x600 resolution with 16-bit colour graphics (1024x768 or higher recommended) On the Mac, it will not work on OS9 or earlier versions. BFD works by streaming all its samples from the hard disk, so in order to prevent glitches during playback, please follow these guidelines. · Try to install the BFD audio data on a clean, defragmented hard disk. · If possible, install BFD on a dedicated drive, separate from those used for the computer's operating system and any audio data used with the sequencer. · If you use a notebook or laptop, try and use an external FireWire drive for the audio data. Laptop drives (often as slow as 4200 RPM) can be quite slow for BFD's disk-streaming technology. Installation BFD comes on two DVD's. The first DVD contains the stand alone program, plugins, and several drum kits. The second DVD contains only drum kits. Before installing, always check to see if there is a newer version available on our website. Please see the following webpage for full details on obtaining updates, or if you are encountering problems during installation: http://www.fxpansion.com/product-bfd-userFAQ.php 9 Please note that the BFD d ...