BFD3 - $49 at AudioPlugin.Deals (+10% off w/ TACO10)

[Kirean]

https://audioplugin.deals/product/bfd3/

[Tim Smith]

Man they are practically giving it away now.

[PavlovsCat]

1 hour ago, Tim Smith said:

Man they are practically giving it away now.

They've had it at this price in the past, even a little lower.  It's been on version three for more than ten years, most of them with major bug problems for the software.  I bought BFD Eco when it was fairly new and never upgraded to BFD full -- and the upgrade price is $49 US -- because of all of the problems reported with it and acknowledged by the development team -- PLUS the fact that 10+ years without a major update is kind of a red flag. I'd love to see them release a really good BFD4, and I might consider that if it were cheap. But given their history of issues and neglect of their software lines, I still might not buy it. 

[Doug Rintoul]

33 minutes ago, PavlovsCat said:

They've had it at this price in the past, even a little lower.  It's been on version three for more than ten years, most of them with major bug problems for the software.  I bought BFD Eco when it was fairly new and never upgraded to BFD full -- and the upgrade price is $49 US -- because of all of the problems reported with it and acknowledged by the development team -- PLUS the fact that 10+ years without a major update is kind of a red flag. I'd love to see them release a really good BFD4, and I might consider that if it were cheap. But given their history of issues and neglect of their software lines, I still might not buy it. 

Actually the current version of BFD3 is pretty solid. I think most of the issues have been ironed out. I have not had any issues with it, and it seems that it is still being maintained. 

[Fleer]

Sweet. Come to mama. 

[Last Call]

28 minutes ago, Fleer said:

Sweet. Come to mama. 

Oh, I didn’t know you were a female. Good to know. 

[PavlovsCat]

15 minutes ago, Doug Rintoul said:

Actually the current version of BFD3 is pretty solid. I think most of the issues have been ironed out. I have not had any issues with it, and it seems that it is still being maintained. 

Yes, that is as I understood it and Drew, the very friendly developer from the BFD3 team seems like a very nice guy.

But my point is that experience and the history of neglect and major software problems and poor support are still important considerations. It's 13 years after BFD3 was originally introduced and most of the years since InMusic has bought the product, they've created more problems with the software and haven't committed the  resources one would expect to maintain and improve the product. 13 years without a major update for a software product is a heck of a long time. To me, those are glaring red flags that a company is not committed to a product.  The bar should be higher for InMusic than just fixing bugs. 

InMusic's ttrack record with BFD3 -- and the other software they've acquired -- raise a lot of red flags. Even if they finally come out with BFD4 and price it at say $199 US and make it fairly competitive features-wise, I will consider BFD4, but that history and should be a factor with everyone evaluating the purchase. If  BFD4 is released to rave reviews -- and I hope it is, because I'd be happy to buy a great new acoustic drum plugin -- the BFD3 history of problems and neglect gives me -- and I'm sure a lot of the market -- pause. InMusic has the money to make this a better product and support it. But historically, they haven't done that. Even if BFD4 is excellent, the very valid lingering question is, will InMusic support and advance the product or neglect it like they did in the past. One of my good friends, a developer, bought BFD3 early on, but eventually deleted it from his hard drive and urged me not to upgrade to it even when it was less than 50 bucks because of the history of problems and neglect. Again, I'd love to see the product become great. But I'm not willing to take a risk. I'll let you guys tell me about it before I take the leap. 

[Doug Rintoul]

I guess it depends on what you are looking for. Some would maintain the current version is already great in its current state, especially with the majority of the kinks worked out. If the existing feature set has what you want and it sound good to you, then $44.10 is a darn good deal. It is not like it is a thousand dollar investment on which you are basing your career. For me it was worth a punt and I am glad I did.

[Fleer]

3 hours ago, Last Call said:

Oh, I didn’t know you were a female

… with daddy issues. 

[MusicMan]

Is this still only VST2?

[jngnz]

1 hour ago, MusicMan said:

Is this still only VST2?

Yes

[MusicMan]

1 hour ago, jngnz said:

Yes

That made the decision to pass even easier..

No doubt the play will be it's never VST3  and they make everyone buy, or pay to upgrade to BFD4 to get VST3 support knowing InMusic.. 

[Fleer]

In da house!

[CSistine]

For me the kind of authorization makes it easy to pass! 😄

That's also the reason why I passed the last time when it was on sale! I would even prefer iLok! 😆

[Tim Smith]

15 hours ago, PavlovsCat said:

Yes, that is as I understood it and Drew, the very friendly developer from the BFD3 team seems like a very nice guy.

But my point is that experience and the history of neglect and major software problems and poor support are still important considerations. It's 13 years after BFD3 was originally introduced and most of the years since InMusic has bought the product, they've created more problems with the software and haven't committed the  resources one would expect to maintain and improve the product. 13 years without a major update for a software product is a heck of a long time. To me, those are glaring red flags that a company is not committed to a product.  The bar should be higher for InMusic than just fixing bugs. 

InMusic's ttrack record with BFD3 -- and the other software they've acquired -- raise a lot of red flags. Even if they finally come out with BFD4 and price it at say $199 US and make it fairly competitive features-wise, I will consider BFD4, but that history and should be a factor with everyone evaluating the purchase. If  BFD4 is released to rave reviews -- and I hope it is, because I'd be happy to buy a great new acoustic drum plugin -- the BFD3 history of problems and neglect gives me -- and I'm sure a lot of the market -- pause. InMusic has the money to make this a better product and support it. But historically, they haven't done that. Even if BFD4 is excellent, the very valid lingering question is, will InMusic support and advance the product or neglect it like they did in the past. One of my good friends, a developer, bought BFD3 early on, but eventually deleted it from his hard drive and urged me not to upgrade to it even when it was less than 50 bucks because of the history of problems and neglect. Again, I'd love to see the product become great. But I'm not willing to take a risk. I'll let you guys tell me about it before I take the leap. 

Non drummer here, so please take my comments as maybe uneducated and with a grain of salt. My goal is to pull a beat I think works with a song idea period.

I would prefer a set of beats that sound uber realistic and have built in fillers that sound like a real drummer. Most of the drums in my mixes are simple and probably not to the liking of an experienced drummer. I still think BFD has probably one of the best collection of drums in the industry and they were ahead of their time when it came out, so for me, other than the VST2 thing I would pull it in a heart beat if it had something I liked. That's the other thing with this. Some of these drum programs are released with  barely anything decent while others are released with plenty. The idea being that, yes you bought the software but you also need this and this and this to really have something you can use. They are all pretty much like that now and since it's hard to test 500 drum paks, it's nice to have like a good starter set. I believe BFD 3 has that. When I bought it paying much more, I intended it to be my only drum program ever. It did stand up to that expectation for a long time for the most part.

When InMusic bought them it was underwhelming for me. And no one told me. I just tried to launch it and got a " this thing won't work" screen. Then I realized it needs to dial into a server blah blah blah. I have used it since, but man what a pain to always wonder if I need to once again connect with their server. That's really been my only hang up. I honestly wondered if they were going to hang around after that. I didn't want to come back to a mix a year later and not have working drums. 

If I was a real drummer I would have figured out how to build realistic tracks from scratch using maybe just the samples in Sampletank.  I have way to many drum programs at this point, and almost dread looking through all of them to find something, so for awhile there I just settled on AD2 and it worked well. I tried EZD new version and like it so far, so maybe it's my new main drum program. I had issue in trying to match a track to drums using the AI in it, but my tempos tend to be different sometimes.

 

 

 

[PavlovsCat]

4 hours ago, Tim Smith said:

Non drummer here, so please take my comments as maybe uneducated and with a grain of salt. My goal is to pull a beat I think works with a song idea period.

I would prefer a set of beats that sound uber realistic and have built in fillers that sound like a real drummer. Most of the drums in my mixes are simple and probably not to the liking of an experienced drummer. I still think BFD has probably one of the best collection of drums in the industry and they were ahead of their time when it came out, so for me, other than the VST2 thing I would pull it in a heart beat if it had something I liked. That's the other thing with this. Some of these drum programs are released with  barely anything decent while others are released with plenty. The idea being that, yes you bought the software but you also need this and this and this to really have something you can use. They are all pretty much like that now and since it's hard to test 500 drum paks, it's nice to have like a good starter set. I believe BFD 3 has that. When I bought it paying much more, I intended it to be my only drum program ever. It did stand up to that expectation for a long time for the most part.

When InMusic bought them it was underwhelming for me. And no one told me. I just tried to launch it and got a " this thing won't work" screen. Then I realized it needs to dial into a server blah blah blah. I have used it since, but man what a pain to always wonder if I need to once again connect with their server. That's really been my only hang up. I honestly wondered if they were going to hang around after that. I didn't want to come back to a mix a year later and not have working drums. 

If I was a real drummer I would have figured out how to build realistic tracks from scratch using maybe just the samples in Sampletank.  I have way to many drum programs at this point, and almost dread looking through all of them to find something, so for awhile there I just settled on AD2 and it worked well. I tried EZD new version and like it so far, so maybe it's my new main drum program. I had issue in trying to match a track to drums using the AI in it, but my tempos tend to be different sometimes.

 

 

 

All of our opinions and experiences are valid. I think once you delve into, say ezDrummer and compare it in terms of functionality, stability, workflow, capabilities, realism and quality, it's going to be difficult to keep investing in BFD. I use SD3 and think it's excellent.  I sometimes use AD2 and NI's acoustic drum libraries, which are good, but certainly not in the same ballpark as SD3. That experience especially would make it hard to accept the kind of problematic history of BFD3 in the InMusic era.

I get that current BFD3 customers are invested , but it's almost like Stockholm Syndrome (I am writing that half serious). They're grateful just that the product doesn't have major bugs at this moment. Expectations should be much higher than that, IMO. But InMusic has kept expectations ridiculously low. IMO, InMusic needs to establish a track record and work on its current negative brand image by creating a track record of non-problematic software that is competitive in their respective categories; they have yet to even start on that (BFD3 is certainly not a competitive product; it's not even VST3 and only recently been getting reports that it's running without major bugs, by the admission of one of their own development team members). They aren't there yet with BFD3. But I sincerely hope they'll get there. I am paying attention. 

Edited March 6 by PavlovsCat

[Fleer]

1 hour ago, CSistine said:

For me the kind of authorization makes it easy to pass! 😄

That's also the reason why I passed the last time when it was on sale! I would even prefer iLok! 😆

Or the Spanish Inquisition 

[CSistine]

52 minutes ago, Fleer said:

Or the Spanish Inquisition 

Or nowadays Western Inquisition! 😄

[Fleer]

2 hours ago, CSistine said:

Or nowadays Western Inquisition! 😄

Sistine Chapel !

[Tim Smith]

3 hours ago, PavlovsCat said:

All of our opinions and experiences are valid. I think once you delve into, say ezDrummer and compare it in terms of functionality, stability, worflow, capabilities, realism and quality, it's going to be difficult to keep investing in BFD. I use SD3 and think it's excellent.  I sometimes use AD2 and NI's acoustic drum libraries, which are good, but certainly not in the same ballpark as SD3. That experience especially would make it hard to accept the kind of problematic history of BFD3 in the InMusic era.

I get that current BFD3 customers are invested , but it's almost like Stockholm Syndrome (I am writing that half serious). They're grateful just that the product doesn't have major bugs at this moment. Expectations should be much higher than that, IMO. But InMusic has kept expectations ridiculously low. IMO, InMusic needs to establish a track record and work on its current negative brand image by creating a track record of non-problematic software that is competitive in their respective categories; they have yet to even start on that (BFD3 is certainly not a competitive product; it's not even VST3 and only recently been getting reports that it's running without major bugs, by the admission of one of their own development team members). They aren't there yet with BFD3. But I sincerely hope they'll get there. I am paying attention. 

I guess my expectations are maybe lower and really you have it right, that they should support and update. At this deal though I still think it's great if a person can run VST2 ok in their DAW.

Reminds me of Acid pro. Those guys sat on that for years. Did little in the way of improvment. Another bought it. Finally wrote it to 64bit Windows 10/11. Not a top notch DAW but pretty ok for looping. Looked similarly like they lost most of their user base.