FXpansion BFD2 Manual - Manual (Page 53)

Unused direct channels
A kit-piece’s direct channel can be in an unused state if:
• no kit-pieces are loaded into the slot and no other kit-pieces’ bleed exists within it
• a snare with 3 direct mic channels is replaced with one with 2 direct mic channels
These channels still exist in the mixer and are simply inactive until they become used again. The coloured tab at the top of the
channel strip turns grey instead of green or teal.
Unused channels can be removed if you prefer, using the ‘Remove all unused’ function on the channel context menu. BFD2 also
asks you if you want to remove unused channels when the Reset mixer function is used.
Ambience channels
Ambience channels appear in the mixer whenever a kit-piece is loaded into any slot. They can be
hidden by deactivating the Ambience mixer view switch. To reveal them again, activate the button.
There are three types of ambience channel in the BFD2 audio architecture:
OverHead
Stereo overhead mics in front of the kit.
Room
BFD2 features a Mid/Side Room set, located between the overheads and the main room mics.
This captures the space of the room in a very useful way, making it possible to expand the stereo
image or reduce it to true mono with very natural sounding results.
The Mid/Side decoding is done at the voice level, so if you’re using sounds from other BFD
libraries in BFD2, normal stereo Room channels can happily co-exist with BFD2 Mid/Side Room
channels in the Room ambience channel.
Amb3
The Amb3 bus is a combination of the third stereo ambience channel on all kit-pieces.
BFD2 features a second set of room mics, much further back than the Mid/Side Room set, raised
approximately 4.5m above the floor. This set of mics captures the size of the AIR Studios room
with exceptional clarity and power.
Previous BFD libraries features a set of PZM boundary mics on the floor on either side of the kit
as the third stereo ambience channel.
Whichever library you’re using, the third stereo ambient channel from each kit-piece is summed into the Amb3 ambience channel.
Ambience versus reverb
You can think of each Ambience bus as a stereo reverb return from a mono in, stereo out reverb processor unit. The sends are
located in the Kit view, in the Kit-Piece Setup inspector. The difference is that the ambience is not generated by a reverb proces-
sor at all – instead, it is real recorded room ambience. This means that you cannot change the characteristics of the ambience or
change the placement of kit-pieces within the stereo spectrum, although the Distance parameter for each ambience bus produces
an effect similar to a ‘pre-delay’ control on a digital reverb.
These are inherent limitations when using recorded ambience. The huge advantage is that it is real - it’s impossible to achieve
such reverb using artificial means.
If you need to create a different reverb space and change the stereo placement of kit-pieces within it, it’s very easy to create
sends from the individual kit-piece direct channels to an aux channel and route the audio into your host for processing with any
reverb of your choice. See section 12:7 for a walk-through example for doing this.
Custom routing of ambience
It is possible to override the routing of a kit-piece’s ambience to the 3 ambience channels: using the kit-piece inspector’s ambi-
ence send controls, you can route any of a kit-piece’s 3 ambience signals to any available aux channels.
Note that while the Width control for the ambience buses in the Mic Tools panel still apply, the Distance parameter is not applied
– if you require this function on an ambience aux routing, you can use a delay with minimal feedback at very small delay times
and set its Mix control to the extreme right.
Further limitations exist when loading new mixer presets – see the ‘Varying channels between mixer presets’ sub-section in sec-
tion 3:2 for more details.
You would not normally have the ability to perform such routing during a real drum-recording session. However the ability is pro-
vided for advanced and experimental mixing scenarios.
Unused ambience channels
Like direct mic channels, ambience channels are capable of being in an ‘unused’ state. This happens if no kit-pieces featuring
ambience are currently loaded into the kit. These channels still exist in the mixer and are simply inactive until they become used
again. The coloured tab at the top of the channel strip turns grey instead of blue.
Unused channels can be removed if you prefer, using the ‘Remove all unused’ function on the channel context menu. BFD2 also
asks you if you want to remove unused channels when the Reset mixer function is used.
Ambience channels