I’ve had the Beat Buddy for 3 years and spent weeks and weeks of my life wrangling it’s abandoned software. For such a powerful and customisable product, the difficulty in creating minor tweaks is great - and makes the product unusable, unless you dedicate days (literal days) to making adjustments.
I just don’t think Singular Sound will ever deliver software that allows users to really make the most out of their product. They’ve created VST versions of BeatBuddy and the kit sounds - but not given us a way to use this with the pedal. It’s another product entirely - that resources went into writing code for… which means they were not being used to fix the software that’s broken, and now 7 years old.
I just spent last week rebuilding my enitre repertoire, and making 1 all encompassing kit so there won’t be delays when changing songs, and so volumes won’t change too much between kits. (different venues have different speakers that accentuate different frequencies. changing kits means you’re likey to find some kits are over accentuated in hats etc.)
I played a few venues and noticed things (at high volumes minor variences become accentuated) and I just don’t want to go through all that again - make the hats a bit more quiet in song x - open ableton, change the midi, export it, reimport in to BeatBuddy. Kit sounds are not balanced - some instruments im using at 1-3 velocity (out of 127) because if i change the kit instrument volumes, I have to change every other tune that has congas in it… everything takes so much &%$##$ time.
And Lay down all midi files on the same day, on the same equipment, same settings, with the same drummer. And maybe you’ll have similar velocities…
Then live compression and limiters?
That’s exactly what I did - over a few days (couldn’t do all tracks in one day) - even went back over them a few times because the start of the list sounded different to the end of the list - as my ears acclimatised. So I got it all sounding good and relative to each other. (*note I’ve lost days of my life to this pedal, and it’s not the only time.)
Also, I use maximum compression / limiting on my mixer for the BB.
Then I get to a venue, and the volumes are much louder than I can have in my town house. 1Db is 10 bells - 10x louder. If a venue is 10Db louder than home - that’s 100 bells. The variance in volume is pronounced in a way that was not perceived at home and inevitably edits need to be made. That’s the issue I am trying to articulate. You can’t fine tune this incredibly complex device.
Every pedal I have needs to be fine tuned over the course of years. Every room and sonic scenario reveals strengths and weaknesses - and I have been tuning my gear over years. Everything else sounds excellent now. I often get compliments on my tone, and people are surprised when I reveal I use fairly average guitars.
Beat buddy however can’t be fine tuned. It means it is almost always on my chopping block.
I’m really sorry to hear that you’re having so much trouble with the Beat Buddy. I’ve had the Beat Buddy since 2016-2017 and found it “not very useful” until discovered the OPB files produced by the wonderful people on this blog. Since then, I have been using it religiously gigging in one of musical endeavors, my duo.
I do realize there are significant sonic differences room to room and system to system. However, I use my own system with a Behringer XR18 and am able to satisfactorily EQ things to an acceptable state. I do, of course, have issues with the lack of ability to “normalize” the song files. In response, I keep my iPad next to me on stage and now know which songs need to be louder or quieter and adjust accordingly.
Otherwise, I find the Beat Buddy to a great companion to our sound and performance. It has increased our bookings by 250% as well as our fees.
I’ve had a BB for about two years now and have been through all of your problems. I’ve even created my own drum sets from scratch. I’ve decided that Singular Sound will NEVER update the BB Manager and will continue to offer new devices instead. I’m equally sure that they will not support them any more than they do BB. I too am looking for suitable alternatives.
If there are substantial variations in the response of the various PAs you play through , it will be effecting everything you put through the PA, not just the Beat Buddy.
I sympathise as there are some really terrible PA systems in some venues. A better solution would be to use a decent parametric EQ to correct the signal you’re sending to the PA, and try to compensate for its inadequacies?
