Mixing BFD2 in Pro Tools

24 Dec 2008

Some time ago I was making noises regarding how much more powerful FXpansion's wonderful BFD2 can be if you just take the time to try and get more out of it. BFD2 has been beautifully built, with quality sounds straight out of the box, some decent onboard effects, a fantastic mixer, and more, however BFD2 really comes into it's own when you take the time to break it out of it's plug-in environment.

And of course, by that I mean using BFD2 to do what it does best, ensuring the plug-in hands off all the other jobs to software that is more suited to the task, for example, Pro Tools. I don't use BFD2's onboard pattern editor, and since the latest patch, I am somewhat relieved, as it appears old patterns won't play with the new patch. I prefer to use Pro Tools as my MIDI authoring tool and sequencer of choice, letting it drive my plug-ins etc. It's really all about dividing the work up between all the moving parts, choosing the best tool for the job at each step.

With this in mind, sometime ago I created a test session in Pro Tools, breaking out all BFD2 tracks to aux-input tracks within Pro Tools. This approach naturally bloats the size of your Pro Tools mixer, but I believe that should mean nothing to those whom rank quality and control above the layout of one's mixed - naturally, I'm pretty sure that'd be all of us.

I changed all the output settings within BFD2 on each track from Master to the appropriate value (mono outs for some, stereo outs for others)
I created the appropriate number of aux-inputs within Pro Tools. One mono aux-input for each mono out assigned from BFD2 (7 in total), and one stereo aux-input for each stereo out assigned from BFD2

With these tracks all working correctly, you now load your plug-ins onto any aux-input you like, giving you complete flexibility and control over the entire BFD2 mix. As you can hear from these examples, the difference is amazing - once you make the shift, there will be no going back, let me assure you!

BFD2