FREE BFD Player w/ 5 GB Acoustic Drum Kit; Additional Kits $29 USD

[PavlovsCat]

LINK TO GET THE FREE BFD PLAYER WITH A 5GB CORE LIBRARY: 
https://www.bfddrums.com/drum-software/bfd-player.html
 

TL; DR VERSION

There was a pretty extensive thread on BFD Player, new acoustic drum plugin that comes with a free 5GB acoustic drum sample library.  Unfortunately,  it was deleted, through no fault of the developer and nothing directly related to the product. So I thought, considering that there aren't many free drum plugins that feature extensively sampled drums -- 5GB worth, in this case -- with a mixer. this is worthy of creating another thread that, hopefully, can stay focused on the product. 

REVIEW 

A LONG TIME DRUMMER'S, NON-INFLUENCER, HONEST,  UNCOMPENSATED REVIEW  OF BFD PLAYER 
InMusic is one of the biggest companies in this industry,  so influencers are eager to forge a good relationship and hawk their products,  so it's a guarantee you'll see them lining up to praise this. So I thought I'd give a non-influencer, honest review here on the forum. 

It's All About the Sound
I spent a couple of decades playing drums semi-professionally and have a deep love for drums as well as a love for drum gear and sounds. Some of the plugins and  libraries I own include SD3, AD2, NI's Abbey Road Drummer 60s and Modern Drummer, NI's Studio Drums and at least dozen other detailed KONTAKT drum libraries. SD3 is my favorite drum plugin and makes what I consider the best drum sample libraries on the market. Consequently, any drum libraries and drum plugins I consider are seen through the lens of my experiences with those instruments and their sound quality and capabilities. When I listened to the isolated drum demos for BFD Player, I didn't find the sound of the kit presets appealed to me. The mixes and snare drum samples don't sound as polished and professional as those from Toontrack -- SDx or EZx -- AD2 or NI sample libraries. And not loving the sound of a sample library and presets of a drum plugin is a tough hurdle to get past. But tastes are highly subjective and sounds that don't appeal to me may appeal to you. So I urge everyone to listen for themselves and draw their own conclusions. No doubt the genre you specialize in will also greatly impact your preferences. I mostly do rock and singer/songwriter music. If you primarily specialize in a different genre, you will very likely have different tastes than me. 

OVERVIEW

As a free acoustic drum plugin, if you like the presets, BFD Player is no-brainer without much in the way of peers (Steven Slate Drums Free is the only that comes to  mind). It offers a lot of functionality you commonly are only going to find in a paid acoustic drum plugin: 

• Ten processed, ready-to-go drum kit presets (it's one kit with different presets). 
•  The ability to go beyond presets and mix (limited) and apply effects (limited). 
• The ability to easily route the drums and cymbals as you like and use external effects  (which is probably most relevant for the dry kit as your starting point, because everything else is heavily processed). 
• 340 MIDI drum beats with the included MIDI files embedded in the player.
• The ability to swap out drums and cymbals. (I haven't tried this because I only have the core kit, but I read it). 
• Mapping so that you can use this to replace MIDI from other popular drum plugins like SD3, SSD, ezX, AD2, etc. 
• Mapping for popular electronic drum kits (I was happy to see my kit on the list). 

A Look at  BFD Player's Individual Drums and Cymbals 
I think toms and cymbals are often the hardest things for acoustic drum sample developers to get right and I think the BFD team did a very good job with the toms and a good job with the cymbals. They seem well-recorded, the toms have a really pleasant tone and fullness to them. I like them better than most of AD2 toms from their various kits. BFD also is highly regarded by many users (based on forum posts) for cymbal samples. I think they did a good job in that area. The bass drum also sounds fine and maybe a bit on what I'd call the crisp side more than a lower tone with a thud. The drum I'm not crazy about -- and it's not bad, it's just okay to me -- is the snare drum and the snare drum, of course, is a critical part of any drum kit. Frankly, I find the snare drum sound a bit one-dimensional, it's sharp/crisp, but it doesn't have much character. Frankly, it's tuned in a way I would not tune a snare, I just don't love its sound and as a drummer, I wanted to play drums that sounded so good they inspired me to play my best. And through my playing years, I was used to having other drummers compliment me on my drum sound. If an engineer mixed my drums like these mixes, I would be disappointed. Consequently, it's difficult to be happy with them in a sample library/drum plugin. But it starts with how the snare was tuned and the drum heads, as well as the mics and recording. But the snare drum itself is a Ludwig Black Beauty, a legendary snare drum choice used on countless classic recordings of rock, folk and other genres. If you don't have a great sounding snare and bass drum, you don't have a great sounding drum kit, and frankly, I don't think they have a great sounding snare with this kit and I love a wide variety of snare sounds. Whether it's aluminum, wood, brass, nickel...picollo or deep... there is a wide range of drums that sound great and this snare drum doesn't sound great, and there's no getting around that. Tthe issue is the choice of the drum, I think it has more to do with drum heads, tuning, recording, mic choices and mic placement, But I'm no sound engineer, just a former drummer. But if a sound engineer was showing me a mix of a track I played drums on and my snare sounded like the one in this plugin, I would be asking him what can be done to improve it, or perhaps we can layer a better-sounding snare with it, because it just doesn't cut it for my tastes. 

The Presets and Other Opitions
There's one sampled kit and 10 presets. This is where it all falls apart for me. I simply don't like the presets very much. They don't reflect a beautiful sounding and beautifully recorded organic kit with lots of character that was expertly mixed; they reflect heavily processed drums, which can be okay, but I really don't like the choices they made. The thin, one dimensional snare drum gets overwhelmed and lost in the heavy effects they put on and to me, the presets can sound a bit dated and amateurish, especially compared to paid alternatives I own. The good news is that this is entirely subjective. You may love the presets that I don't love. But if you're good with the raw sounds of the basic kit, I think your best option with this drum kit is route the drums so you can mix them with your external effects. If you don't mind the extra work of not handing all of the effects all in the drum plugin, I think you can get far better sounds using your own effects. The problem with that for me is that it's far too much work when I can easily do that in one drum plugin I already one like SD3 or AD2 and then save that preset to easily use again in the future. It's simply too much work for me to operate using external effects after I've found a much easier, effective way to operate that gives me great results and the ability to save those results as presets. 

Beyond The Samples: A Look at the Plugin Itself
The plugin is very simple and straightforward. I don't have any issues with the GUI, it is okay, but unremarkable. I wish the plugin had greater mixing functionality and more effects, but realize that they're saving that for their flagship, BFD4. I find that the BFD team released a solid, stable plugin that runs flawlessly on my machine -- which was my greatest concern with BFD3, not the sounds, which I like much more than those with BFD Player. If you like the sounds and don't desire to get deep into mixing and using effects directly in the plugin, BFD Player may be a great fit for you, and for the price, I can't really think of anything else on the market except for Steven Slate Drums -- which has a very different sound to it, that is best suited for harder, commercial rock music and post rock, and not the music I do (and I know and like Steven, and he had called on me for advice years ago).  I think SSD is more of a niche player as a drum plugin, it really works well in certain genres, while i think BFD Player's core kit is more versatile.

The Wrap Up
I could have been won over by BFD Player, had the presets been more to my liking on the core kit and expansions. If so, I would have easily purchased the two expansions for $29 USD each. But I listened to the expansions and also found those didn't sound to my liking. I own nearly every SD2 drum kit and more than a dozen SDx and AEx kits and I find all of them preferable to every BFD Player preset I've heard to date. To summarize and be very candid, the BFD Player presets just don't sound as expertly/professionally mixed as the Toontrack, XLN, Native Instruments or even smaller developers like Analogue Drums kits.  

Even so, I do think BFD Player has a place in the current acoustic drum plugin market. I would position it below SD3, SSD, AD2 and ezDrummer, due to its less advanced mixing, editing, and effects capabilities and what I find to be less sophisticated-sounding drum mixes as compared to those well-established competitors. I think InMusic was wise in releasing this free to attempt to get it in the hands of as many users as they can, and give BFD the opportunity to prove themselves and also make money from selling expansion drum kits. I also think they priced the expansion kits smartly at $29 USD because there's no other acoustic drum plugin ecosystem that has add-on kits anywhere close to that price. So is it even fair to compare this to SD3, AD2 or EZx or SSD? Probably not. I don't think it sounds as polished as those competitor plugins, but again, all of that is in the ear of the beholder. Considering that many DAW users are looking for plugins that are very simple to use, and sounds that are easy to drop into a mix without any fuss -- as opposed to someone like myself who loves going deep into mixing, effects, layering and swapping drums and cymbals -- being limited on those capabilities compared to the aforementioned plugins may be irrelevant for those users -- a good deal of plugin users simply want ready-to-go drums they can play or use pre written MIDI for to drop into a mix. A successful plugin developer (who may or may not have sold his company to Apple) based in Europe whom I visited on an unrelated business trip once told me, "Every synth user tells us that they want to create their own presets, what we've found in our research is only a small percentage of users actually do that." He was referring to synths, but I would bet that also holds true for this category. 

While it doesn't match SD3 or AD2 for mixing and effects capabilities, it doesn't have their price tags and offers impressive capabilities for a free drum plugin. Beyond Steven Slate Drums, I don't think it has much competition in the free category. But the drum kits in SSD Free and BFD Player sound significantly different, so I would recommend installing both of them instead of choosing between one or the other. Personally, I think Steven Slate Drums Free sound much better when it comes to the mixed kits and the snare drum -- SSD Free includes two snare drums and one sounds really good, the other is okay, both are superior to the BFD Player snare. As both kits are free, I would recommend downloading both drum plugins, but personally, I find SSD Free is the better of the two.  

Edited October 12, 2023 by PavlovsCat

[Doug Rintoul]

So I miss some drama. At the point I read the thread, I saw nothing that would require it to be deleted. Too bad because the developer was doing a great job of interacting with us. I downloaded BFD player and tried it and it is  a worthwhile freebie. 

Edited October 10, 2023 by Doug Rintoul

[chris.r]

I missed it too, so I hope there were no useful links and references to other free and paid software in that thread that gone away with it, as that happens alot here on the forum and I often make notes of them.

I read that BFD has great cymbals so when I saw that there was a free BFD Player released, I was hoping for getting some of these great cymbals with a simplified cheaper player, but I get it now that's not the case, right?

??

[PavlovsCat]

34 minutes ago, Doug Rintoul said:

So I miss some drama. At the point I read the thread, I saw nothing that would require it to be deleted. Too bad because the developer was doing a great job of interacting with us. I downloaded BFD player and tried it and it is  a worthwhile freebie. 

Someone was trolling me for not initially downloading the plugin right away (I had fully explained why I assessed the audio demos and had been hesitant to download the software due to the reports of problems with BFD3 and other InMusic software, but this guy wasn't having any of it; to him, I'm a straight up idiot he doesn't like) and for writing posts that annoyed him because he found my posts to be too long (okay, guilty as charged!) and not worthwhile. I did offer the suggestion that he could just scoll past my posts. I'm guessing that was what led to the thread being deleted because it was deleted after his second post trolling me, and I reported the first one and I'm guessing others probably did too. I don't know for sure that is why the thread was deleted, but I'm pretty confident that it was the reason because the thread was deleted pretty soon after the second troll post. It sidetracked an otherwise, IMO, really valuable thread. And Drew has been great. I've seen people post really nice things about him at various forums, and now I can see why. 

Edited October 10, 2023 by PavlovsCat

[PavlovsCat]

15 hours ago, chris.r said:

I missed it too, so I hope there were no useful links and references to other free and paid software in that thread that gone away with it, as that happens alot here on the forum and I often make notes of them.

I read that BFD has great cymbals so when I saw that there was a free BFD Player released, I was hoping for getting some of these great cymbals with a simplified cheaper player, but I get it now that's not the case, right?

??

It is the same folks behind BFD3. I believe Drew posted that he's been with the company since 2008, so he's been involved in both plugins. I think I installed BFD Eco on a past machine more than a decade ago and can't recall much about it. 

Personally, I liked the toms best of all the samples in the BFD Player core kit and thought the cymbal samples were decent. As I mentioned, I wasn't crazy about most of the presets, but found two I liked somewhat that I tweaked to my liking. Specifically, I wasn't fond of the mixing choices of most of the presets, especially the snare sound, and wasn't able to edit to the degree I would like to in order to modify those sounds. Of course, all of that is incredibly subjective, consequently, I think it's worth downloading and installing this plugin on your machine to see what you think. I say, give it a try and share your opinion here to make another interesting and valuable thread.

I used to be a drummer, so I'm probably way more picky than most people when it comes to drums. I'm cerrtain that I'm much more of a fit for BFD4 than the Player. But there are certainly going to be others where the Player is a better fit. They may love presets that I don't love and visa versa. Also, while I played a lot of different genres over the years, I was primarily a rock drummer, so that's a major factor in my preferences that should be weighed when you read my opinion. If you're doing hip hop or modern pop, your preferences in drum sounds are likely to be a lot different than mine. And it all boils down to personal tastes. But I think this plugin is definitely worth the time and effort to download and it's running perfectly on my machine, which is great, because my past experiences with InMusic software and the posts in the various forums -- including this one -- from BFD3 users having technical issues with the software made me hesitant to install this until Drew persuaded me to give it a shot. 

Edited October 11, 2023 by PavlovsCat

[Doug Rintoul]

1 hour ago, PavlovsCat said:

Someone was trolling me for not initially downloading the plugin right away (I had fully explained why I assessed the audio demos and had been hesitant to download the software due to the reports of problems with BFD3 and other InMusic software, but this guy wasn't having any of it; to him, I'm a straight up idiot he doesn't like) and for writing posts that annoyed him because he found my posts to be too long (okay, guilty as charged!) and not worthwhile. I did offer the suggestion that he could just scoll past my posts. I'm guessing that was what led to the thread being deleted because it was deleted after his second post trolling me, and I reported the first one and I'm guessing others probably did too. I don't know for sure that is why the thread was deleted, but I'm pretty confident that it was the reason because the thread was deleted pretty soon after the second troll post. It sidetracked an otherwise, IMO, really valuable thread. And Drew has been great. I've seen people post really nice things about him at various forums, and now I can see why. 

Too bad the thread was deleted and not just edited.

[Marc Cormier]

Drew has really been amazing over these years managing BFD; I was pleased to see him on the Forum not just because so many of us have been concerned since the hand-off to InMusic, but also due to his composure and candor.  He's battled naysayers and skeptics for years (I, too, was one of them) but as long as he hasn't given up, I haven't given up.  BFD Player is more than a sign of life - I think it gives a wink to strategy and the desire to bring a modern user experience to what I (IMHO) think are the best sounding drums out there - BFD3. YMMV.

 

Edited October 11, 2023 by Marc Cormier

[LAGinz]

I concur that Drew is an absolutely first rate representative for BFD. He performed in yeoman-like fashion after BFD’s initial sale to InMusic and has continued to be a valued source of information and assistance to those in the BFD community.

[PavlovsCat]

I just saw this in my feed. It's a very likable influencer who does a lot of Cakewalk how- to videos doing a walkthrough of BFD Player. 

 

[Last Call]

I didn't get to see your reply Pavs, because of the deleted thread.

Cheers.

[PavlovsCat]

2 hours ago, Last Call said:

I didn't get to see your reply Pavs, because of the deleted thread.

Cheers.

You and I were nerding out about drums (okay that's  a very American expression,  I just mean we were enjoying talking about drums),  But I  don't recall what we were discussing last. Heck, I can't even tell you what I had for lunch yesterday. So what was it you asked? 

[Last Call]

8 hours ago, PavlovsCat said:

You and I were nerding out about drums (okay that's  a very American expression,  I just mean we were enjoying talking about drums),  But I  don't recall what we were discussing last. Heck, I can't even tell you what I had for lunch yesterday. So what was it you asked? 

I think you asked what really bothered me about this new Free drum library, I obliged, then you replied, but couldn't see your reply in time.

All good, have a good one.

[PavlovsCat]

57 minutes ago, Last Call said:

I think you asked what really bothered me about this new Free drum library, I obliged, then you replied, but couldn't see your reply in time.

All good, have a good one.

Well let's try again. Neither of us liked the preset kits very much. But because I really appreciated Drew, I ended up downloading and installing it and found I thought a couple of presets were okay. I spent time tweaking presets but found I couldn't tweak the snare drum enough to create a preset I loved.  It was the snare samples that were the root of the problem. I found it thin and lacking depth and I think that's a huge part of why I don't enjoy the presets, because of the underlying snare samples. I found the Tom samples sounded good. I liked them better than those in most AD2 kits. I like how the toms were tuned, I like their character and how full they sound. The cymbals sound good. 

And it would be worthwhile for you to share your thoughts again. I recall you really didn't like the sound of the snare drum.  Did you install the kit and go through each drum and cymbal? Would you mind sharing your thoughts again? 

Edited October 11, 2023 by PavlovsCat

[tparker24]

My install didn't go very well.  1) I got messages about Windows Firewall.  Is this thing trying to "call home"?  2) It requires me to setup an inMusic account.  3) After not liking these, I decided to Uninstall.  This thing left a trail of debris all over my ? drive.

Maybe it's just my setup, but sometimes with "free" software, you pay in other ways.

[PavlovsCat]

39 minutes ago, tparker24 said:

My install didn't go very well.  1) I got messages about Windows Firewall.  Is this thing trying to "call home"?  2) It requires me to setup an inMusic account.  3) After not liking these, I decided to Uninstall.  This thing left a trail of debris all over my ? drive.

Maybe it's just my setup, but sometimes with "free" software, you pay in other ways.

Just curious. What are your thoughts on the sound of the drum kits and presets? When you wrote "not liking these" were you referring to the sound of the drums or what you had to do to install and use the software? 

[PavlovsCat]

So what compelled me to give my own review?

Well, I am,  in part, a writer, so I thought with all of the fake reviews from Influencers, how about doing an honest review that you'd never see from an influencer.  Influencers are looking for free product and money from developers.  They're basically independent contractors looking for money; in many ways they are the social media equivalent of TV infomercial pitchmen and women.  They're not going to do a really honest, highly critical review because it will damage their ability to get free product and money from a developer.

The review I did above would, without a doubt, ruin an influencer's relationship with a developer and stop the flow of free product and money from developer to influencer. Influencers commonly insert some critical remarks to create the appearance of objectivity, but it's always very minot by design, something they can spin as not a dealbreaker for those considering purchasing the product they're  promoting. My review is actually a review, not a grift. I wish we all started doing reviews, because I think most community members are pretty honest and that's the antithesis of influencer faux reviews (they're really promotions). It's why I always ask people here for their opinions on libraries and plugins they own, because you can pretty much count on honest opinions. 

Edited October 11, 2023 by PavlovsCat

[tparker24]

18 hours ago, PavlovsCat said:

Just curious. What are your thoughts on the sound of the drum kits and presets? When you wrote "not liking these" were you referring to the sound of the drums or what you had to do to install and use the software? 

I didn' t like what I "had to do to install and use the software".  Because I stopped installing, I can't comment on "the sound of the drums".

[PavlovsCat]

5 hours ago, tparker24 said:

I didn' t like what I "had to do to install and use the software".  Because I stopped installing, I can't comment on "the sound of the drums".

Thanks for explaining that. 

[PavlovsCat]

Just a heads up. My hard drive space is at a premium lately (I bought an additional drive, but haven't installed it yet), so I went to uninstall BFD Player, because I'm really not crazy about it and I have a lot of drum libraries that I love. However the BFD uninstall script couldn't be found -- probably because I put the player and files on my D drive, not the default C drive. Oh well, now I'm going to need to turn to BFD support or their forum to this off of my PC. Just a heads up. I mainly wanted to try it out because I got to like Drew so much and maintain a list of recommended freebies that I've tried out personally. 

Edited October 13, 2023 by PavlovsCat

[augustenz]

37 minutes ago, PavlovsCat said:

Just a heads up. My hard drive space is at a premium lately (I bought an additional drive, but haven't installed it yet), so I went to uninstall BFD Player, because I'm really not crazy about it and I have a lot of drum libraries that I love. However the BFD uninstall script couldn't be found -- probably because I put the player and files on my D drive, not the default C drive. Oh well, now I'm going to need to turn to BFD support or their forum to this off of my PC. Just a heads up. I mainly wanted to try it out because I got to like Drew so much and maintain a list of recommended freebies that I've tried out personally. 

Did this happen while trying to uninstall using the Windows Add/Remove Programs? Because that might explain the mix-up (invalid entry).

Otherwise the uninstaller seems to be in the same directory as the main executable, both are in the Installation directory, maybe running it directly from there will work.