Couldn't open my BFD files, darn, however, have been playing around with quite a number of other drum samples from other discs. Yeah, they are pretty well recorded, but that is as much as it is.
It is tiresome to humanise a real drum movement, not that it can't be done, but it is tedious, very tedious. Time is money man!!!
I am an utter fan of recording drums directly by old school mic way, but i'm open to other approaches like using samplers and sample cds. Thatz why i have both types of gears in my studio.
I think towards the sense of arguments place, there really is no sense in it at all. The word is genre.... some genres do accept sampling drums method, especially those music that has quite some electronic feel in them etc... or hip hop??? But in terms of recording live band acts, old schoolz is still the way....
Why??
No 1: Tuning
Drums are normally tuned to the song and drum tuning doesn't follow a standard path. Every drummer has their own style of tuning. Though you can pitch shift your drum samples, but again it is extremely tedious to do it correctly.
No 2: Tonal Difference
Drum samples are recorded at only certain spots on the drum itself, not every spot to authenticate differences. Getting a live drummer to play would mean that the drummer is impossible to roll perfectly at the exact same spot, whiich these "mistakes" are really the live feel after all....
No 3: Dynamics
Volume is expression, this is something that is super super tedious to humanise....
So good luck to those who plan on using drum samples all the way, check your watch carefully, if it is not worth the time, why not spend on a real drumset after all....moreover, bands really need to play together to do good takes.
There is one tricky method which also can be used, but costly too.. That is to use an electronic drumset and get the drummer to play with the band, record as MIDI files, then resample in using drum samples. But again these electronic drumsets are only have tonal difference of maximum 3 zones, so still have to humanise....
Cheers!!! Why not u guys just go techno, solve all the problems!!!!!!!!!!!!!