Just ordered Beatbuddy. Stoked to get it. One thing I notice immediately from the audio tracks on this and other sites is the “perfection” of the beats. I’ve read through part of the manual, so excuse my request if I’m missing some setting already available, but if the loudness/level of the beats could vary slightly and randomly throughout play, along with a very slight variation in time, this might replicate a “real” drum sound a little better.
Welcome to the show, jimmay. True what you say. But wouldn’t most musicians hope that their human drummer could hit every drum at the same velocity and have him/her keep perfect time? And a human drummer strives for this as well. At least he or she should. To each their own of course. Although I am not perfect on the guitar, I strive to be perfect.
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And then of course there are other musicians that prefer exact timing. This post from a few years back. Starts with 6/16: Adjusting the beat accuracy?
Thanks for replies and the welcome!
My comment was more an initial thought. It might change as I work with the BB, but the isolated beats, to my ear, are SO perfect, they sound computer-genned (which of course they are.). I’m not suggesting a huge variance. I assume that’s what the drunk drummer settings are for. I’m suggesting something very subtle, just enough to make the listener think it could be a real drummer. Again… opinions change. Who knows what I’ll think in a week or two. 
I always thought the beats were actually midi recordings of Goran playing. Perhaps they’ve been post processed.
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Hey Jimmay! Have you played with the sobriety setting? I sometimes like playing the setting with the least variation ( “1 beer”, I think its called) just enough to make it not feel like a robot.
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Yeah, I’m pretty sure if you go into BB Manager and look at the velocity they are subtly different on each hit.
And the “hits” have variance, too. Unlike a typical drum machine, each velocity can trigger up to 3 different samples. That is why the BB does sound “real.” Now, with multi-instrument kits that we use for OPBk kits, one of the sacrifices is that we give up many of the multi-samples. But, the stock BB kits, and the Premium BB kits, are developed to have built-in minor variance.
FWIW, I also “engineered” minor variance into the drums in my LBDM kits.
You can always go into the BB Manager and adjust the velocity of each individual hit. I go through my beats with it and try to vary them a bit. If you want the timing to float a little turn on the sobriety mode. Give it a go.
Thanks Neil. Spent some time with a few tutorial vids last night. I was starting to get the same idea. So, the sobriety settings will randomize time but not velocity? Sounds like that’s what I’d want to see… two params to randomly vary time and velocity, each with it’s own degree of variance. Again … I don’t even have the BB yet. Just speculating while I wait for Amazon shipping… 
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Got the BB in yesterday. Very impressed with the sounds and the potential for realistic songs. I can now see the realism, aside from the great sound samples, is really controlled by the way the midi song is developed, i.e. quantized or not, variation in levels, etc. Can’t wait to get rolling…
The ideal situation would be to have an actual drummer, etc., which means varying emphasis. In this respect, Superior Drummer is the way to go, as they provide multiple samples for everything, each varying slightly, and you have the ability to dial in the degree of variation in strenth and position of the strike on the drumhead or cymbal.
But then you wouldn’t have the live controls provided by BeatBuddy.
I support jimmay’s suggestion. Having the ability to set the randomness of the velocity would be great.
But even then, there is an issue: Depending on the song, a real drummer would not always quantize on the exact beat. In many instances, it is important for the snare of kick to lead the beat by a 64th as it provides a sense of urgency. Try this out in your DAW - create a rock drum part and push the snare track slightly forward in time by the tiniest bit. It can really liven things up.
Example: listen to SRV: Pride and Joy
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