BFD ... EZ drummer stand alone???

[drfrankencopter]

I'm looking for a drum program for doing quick songwriting on my laptop. Requirements for me are:
- Easy to use...I don't have time to get too tweaky on the drums
- Built in drum grooves....need lots (mostly in the rock vein), because I'm likely not going to spend a whole lot of time programming. I'm just looking to have good sketches to give to my real drummer so he's got a sense of the groove, and where fills will be.
- Prefer stand-alone operation, for practice purposes anyways...recording will be done with a sequencer program, but it'd be nice to open up guitar rig, and the drum program, and a soft-synth all as stand alones and be able to jam over static pads with drum grooves.
- Samples that are compatible with drumagog (I have this on my Daw), and am in desperate need of more drums for it....great proggie, but the samples included with it (on the version I have) were pretty lame.
- Interface with my drum machine (older roland R-8) via MIDI....

Oh, and and cost <$200 please....

Suggestions????

Thanks

Kris

[mike@switchback]

I love the sound of BFD, but I can't recommend it to anybody, especially nowadays. I've owned it for probably two years and have never had anything approaching a bug free version. Their development support pretty much sucks. The current version doesn't work with Logic 8. And they're fixing it for the next version...a paid upgrade. I'd sell my copy to somebody, but in order to use it, they'd have to buy it from me and then pay FXPansion a $50 transfer fee!! PFffffttttt...they can suck an egg.

[jzucker]

I've used it for over a year with very few problems. It does lock up on occasion when selecting a groove but other than that has been solid.

[drfrankencopter]

I've had good success with FXpansion's VST to DX wrapper...back when that was their only product.

Can you export the samples out of BFD for use with drumagog?

How's the license work for it...can I use it on 2 machines (my studio DAW, and my laptop....I tend to write with the laptop setup, but serious recording is with the DAW).

How are the included grooves with BFD? Useful for songwriting/practicing?

Do you think I'd be able to run it and Guitar Rig 3 simulataneously on a current generation laptop (Pentium M 1.8Ghz, lots of ram, and fast hard disk)?

Does toontracks EZdrummer work as a standalone app???

Cheers

KRis

[jzucker]

the license gives you use to a single computer if memory serves correctly. I can run it and guitar rig together with no problems on a similar computer as long as I don't have GR running on too many simultaneous tracks.

[A440]

EZ drummer is a pretty cool program. I think the basic pkg is less than $200

you can also get additional sets (nashville, etc)

http://www.toontrack.com/ezdrummer.asp