BFD Percussion Expansion vs. Ethno's percussion

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mhschmieder
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BFD Percussion Expansion vs. Ethno's percussion

Post by mhschmieder »

Has anyone used BFD's Percussion expansion? From the data lists, it seems deeper than Ethno's percussion coverage, with more layers, etc. But the on-line demos did not impress me as much as I expected compared to other BFD material.

I use Ethno mostly for its broad coverage of melodic instruments, which I feel it does a very good job of. I am less happy with the non-melodic percussion, for reasons stated in a previous posting. But not just because it's not really set up to create easy-to-use drum kits (which is OK, as that's not why I bought it, and it can't be everything to all people); I also feel it doesn't provide as much nuance as I would like for detailed percussion tracking (particularly latin percussion). Though I am fairly happy with it overall.

So I ask about BFD's Percussion expansion, because it is a bit pricey, but might be deeper in its coverage of more nuanced styles and its ease of setting up ready-to-use kits for live tracking, vs. more time-consuming MIDI note and drum kit re-mapping to render already-recorded material. Yes, I know anything is possible with Ethno, but I prefer to use the most efficient tool at hand for each task.

It would be an added bonus if the sample quality for BFD Percussion is (subjectively, of course) superior to those in Ethno. After all, Ethno must devote a big chunk of its library to the melodic stuff. And I presume the BFD stuff will have more realistic and detailed tails for stuff like congas that have complex decays once you start dealing with nuanced playing styles.

I am going to buy the main BFD program regardless, but looking at their expansions gets a bit confusing in terms of possible overlap and maximising for one's primary needs. Nevertheless, it doesn't seem that any of the other expansions have enough percussion coverage to make the dedicated Percussion expansion at all redundant or unnecessary. I also could not find package deals last night, but thought there were discounts for buying multiple BFD products at once.
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Post by TnMike »

I have BFD and it's great. Don't have any addons. The percussion exp. pack looks good but seems very expensive for only percussion. Ethno which I would love to get (hopefully soon) does percussion and all the cool earthy loops also. Are the percussion sounds in Ethno not very good?
Just to let you know there are no brush drum sounds in BFD. You have to buy additional exp. packs.
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Post by mhschmieder »

I picked up the Percussion library for BFD a couple of months back when I found it on special sale, but haven't used it yet. ACtually, I haven't used BFD in a recording yet as I've been mostly doing orchestral stuff of late.

I ultimately became intrigued by the instrument sources being so different from what else is out there, and as I do a lot of Latin-based music, I felt that having more flavours to pick from for basic conga/bongo/etc. timbre would be beneficial. Also the velocity layers, as it really adds to the human element when doing latin percussion-heavy arrangements.
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