Comparin drum sounds: Groove Agent SE, BFD, Toontracks, etc.

[silhouette]

With regard to BFD 3 there are a number of tuorials on You Tube

FXpansion BFD3 Tutorial 01 - Overview

And on the FXpansion site

Creating Realistic Drum Sounds With BFD3

To be honest any knowledge I have about BFD3 came about through trial and error. The tutorials should save a bit of time.

[Romantique_Tp]

@PeppaPig

Steinberg are currently doing a 30% off price Groove Agent expansions, the Simon Phillips and Songwriters’ kits sound excellent - not bad for post discount £33. IMHO they are head and shoulders far better sounding than the pre-installed GA kits - closing the gap in audio quality to BFD3 significantly.

Checkout the audio demos:
The Songwriter's for Groove Agent | Steinberg
Simon Phillips Studio Drums for Groove Agent | Steinberg

Some of the other packs (Brits sounds etc) are just extra MIDI content for existing kits and as such don’t represent particularly good value for money, although I do believe Nashville includes a kit.

Yeah, the Nashville expansion has a kit too. I like it.

Note that the (Genre) Essentials expansions aren’t just MIDI grooves, they also come with extra GA4 mixer presets that may be useful. These expansions are more useful if you own the full version of GA4, since the mixer presets will use the Rock, Vintage kits and the full Studio kit instead of the more limited Acoustic Agent SE one.

[PeppaPig]

@Romantique Tp

@PeppaPig

Steinberg are currently doing a 30% off price Groove Agent expansions, the Simon Phillips and Songwriters’ kits sound excellent - not bad for post discount £33. IMHO they are head and shoulders far better sounding than the pre-installed GA kits - closing the gap in audio quality to BFD3 significantly.

Checkout the audio demos:
The Songwriter's for Groove Agent | Steinberg
Simon Phillips Studio Drums for Groove Agent | Steinberg

Some of the other packs (Brits sounds etc) are just extra MIDI content for existing kits and as such don’t represent particularly good value for money, although I do believe Nashville includes a kit.

Yeah, the Nashville expansion has a kit too. I like it.

Note that the (Genre) Essentials expansions aren’t just MIDI grooves, they also come with extra GA4 mixer presets that may be useful. These expansions are more useful if you own the full version of GA4, since the mixer presets will use the Rock, Vintage kits and the full Studio kit instead of the more limited Acoustic Agent SE one.

Yes, I actually took my own advice and bought Nashville while it was on offer, it sounds really good, easy to mix too - already used it on a couple of tracks. So far I’ve liked all the additional GA4 kits. The standard ones still sound a bit underwhelming compared to BFD3 but in all honesty in a mix they still (generally) sound fine - forget dropping to just drums though unless you trash them through a hot compressor or such like. Whereas the Nashville and Simon Philips kits stand up to solo scrutiny.

[plectrumboy]

@silhouette

With regard to BFD 3 there are a number of tuorials on You Tube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sX1ECZ_-ayI

And on the FXpansion site

https://ask.audio/articles/creating-realistic-drum-sounds-with-fxpansions-bfd3

To be honest any knowledge I have about BFD3 came about through trial and error. The tutorials should save a bit of time.

Thanks, I’ll give them a go. It would be nice to be able to increase my proficiency with BFD3. In the meantime, I’m thoroughly enjoying GA4 with expansions.

Steve