I had an email yesterday from the current owners of BFD (InMusic?) saying that BFD had finally been made available as a VST3 plugin. Lo and behold, it has! I haven’t really played with it yet but will do so today. Lovely! Although Groove Agent 5 is my favourite drum plugin, it’s like having an old friend back with BFD.
Steve.
…And currently going for £59.
Fantastic. I love BFD drums. I bought it through plugin boutique, so I didn’t get any info, but once I logged in, I saw a free update.
Thanks for the heads up!
Guys, before installing BFD 3.5
SAVE ALL YOUR KITS AS PRESETS. (In Cubase I mean. If you loaded a preset and swapped out 3 toms, 1 crash, the ride and a splash, re-save that as a new kit.)
I don’t know what the problem is, but after having installed 3.5, any 3.4 (vst 2.4) projects that use sounds from expansions throw up exclamation signs because their Licensing is out of whack, probably because from within the plug-in, an FXpansion(!) LM is summoned to do the authorization.
Other than that, 3.5 works fine. You might need to redownload the Core Library of BFD3. At least I did, because it wouldn’t authorize. Once I re-downloaded the Core Library, it authorized fine, and everything is up and running.
I just wish 3.4 still worked as it should so I could do the swap perfectly.
I also found on further testing that authorisation was out of whack when I loaded BFD3.5 within Cubase. When I loaded it as standalone I was able to authorise everything and there (so far) it’s worked fully authorised within Cubase.
Steve.
False alarm, sort of.
Make sure that you don’t have any BFD3.dlls lying around and being scanned by Cubase. There should be just one BFD3.dll provided by 3.5 and of course the vst3 plugin in the common folder.
If everything goes well, opening up any old new project should bring up BFD3.5’s interface.
But DON’T save the project yet. Make sure that all pieces load correctly. There have been changes in the database and metadata, so some expansions might need redownloading.
(Repeating from memory what Drew said over at bfd drums forum.)
Well it’s great that InMusic notify us (NOT) of the update required to InMusic Central. When using the BFD Licence Manager, it informs me that everything is up to date. They could so easily alert their customers to the change in licensing / download process, but they don’t. One has to Google to find out why you can’t update their software .
And more, when following their instructions to completely re-install both the app and the library, it clearly states:
" On the next screen, you are prompted to specify the install location of your BFD3 Core Library."
This is wrong and does not happen. I could find none of the usual 3 dot menus to re-direct the download to an external drive (not enough room on my MacBook). In the end I stumbled upon it. You have to click on your profile disc initials top right, then you have the ability to go to settings. There you can change the default download location.
You’d think, wouldn’t you, that the person writing the guide would understand their own software app. InMusic - I hate 'em! I only have BFD3 from them and would never buy anything else. Horrible service and the 90 day checkin is a bloody nuisance when you live out in the wilderness.
But no longer capable of generating drum maps. 