Battery, by Native Instruments
"breathes life into your drum samples"...
At least that's
the way Native Instruments begins to describe it's hot new product.
Battery is a software sampler designed for drum sounds, but is also
good for pitched sounds.
April 7, 2001
So, what is Battery
really all about? Battery is first and foremost a VST Instrument (or
as other plug in format) that works as a software sampler enabling extreme
control over samples. It could be compared to Steinberg's LM4, but with
additional features and far more flexibility. It can be used as a stand
alone program, but it's primary effectiveness is when used as a VST
INSTRUMENT in Cubase or any other program that supports VST plug ins
(other formats like MAS also supported).
Now lets get this out
of the way right off the bat... Battery is NOT a loop or groove generator.
It is not pattern or grid based and does not generate grooves (however
samples can be looped within the program as well as modulation capabilities
with looping). Battery is primarily an INSTRUMENT that needs midi input
or otherwise to trigger the samples. It has a host of features that
makes creating and tweaking drum tracks a pleasure. But you still need
to give it something to work with! It's easy and fun to use for all
skill levels.
Open
up a new window to see Battery Product features at a glance
At $199. Battery is
a remarkable value. Not only do you get a great interface that helps
you tweak and mangle your existing library of samples to your delight,
but it also comes stuffed with 20 high quality soundsets. The soundsets
alone are worth buying this package for. But the real icing on the cake
for us is that Battery can read samples in the formats Akai, SF2, LM4,
AIFF, WAV and MAP (Reaktor format)! WOW! We immediately discovered that
Battery is a great tool to get all those Akai sample CD-ROMS data into
our computers! Fabulous! More on that later.
Battery's interface
- 54 slots to load samples into with extensive sound shaping options.
So now that you know
that we like Battery, lets tell you about our experiences working with
it on both PC and Mac.
Although we do our primary
composing on the Mac, we decided to first load it onto our PC, a Micron
450 Pentium II with 192 MB RAM and just the stock Maestro sound card,
but cranked into a mighty set of Altec Lansing computer speakers with
subwoofer. Installation couldn't have been easier! We inserted the cd
and followed the excellent installation instructions. We chose CUSTOM
INSTALL and installed both the stand alone version + VST Plug IN. In
minutes we were opening the program and entering the serial number.
Set up the soundcard, set the midi in and out and then we copied the
soundsets from the 2nd CD onto our drive. Keep in mind this is a big
transfer and took close to 10 minutes to get all the kits from the cd
(576 MB in all including kits and examples + midi files). Another option
is to just insert the cd-rom when you need to get kits. We like to have
our sounds ready, so we opted to put them on the hard drive for immediate
access.
We adjusted the the
controls for better latency ("play ahead") as guided by the
manual (by the way it is PRINTED!) and whoila! We were all done and
ready to play.
We confirmed that the
stand alone version worked and played some notes with our midi controller.
Sounded good. Loaded a few kits and were amazed by the soundsets. Then
opened Fruity Loops 3 Full and opened up Battery as a VST Instrument.
Easy as can be!
All we can say is WOW,
Battery combined with Fruity Loops is a killer combo to generate an
endless variety of loops! We experimented with some of the Battery sound
sets and were LOST in all the possibilities. The included kits are first
rate! Be prepared to spend a lot of time exploring the sounds they provide
with the program. Drum N Bass, Rock, Jazz, Dance... you name it. The
20 kits cover everything form real sounding to totally bizarre.
We played with the sound
shaping controls and modified some of the samples. Great fun! You can
mutilate each cell and it's sample in so many ways and save your new
kits to use later. The exact state and all settings are saved, even
as a VST instrument.
Just a few
of the sound shaping controls available to each sample cell in Battery.
Be sure
to listen to our audio examples in MP3 format to hear
what Battery sounds like!
We then moved on to
loading in some of our Akai sample cd-roms. I must admit I was anticipating
some trouble, but Battery works like a charm with Akai CD-ROMS. Just
pop the CD into your drive, select FILE in Battery and LOAD AKAI. A
dialog box comes up listing the AKAI partitions and each of the programs.
You can even audition the individual samples before you load them. You
can load individual samples, entire programs or even multiple programs
by shift selecting all the names right there in the dialog box. The
great thing is that Battery will continue loading as many samples as
it can fit in the available cells (54 total). If there are still available
cells you can go back and ADD more samples till you fill them up! That's
great! This means that you can load multiple programs resulting in a
stuffed to the gill instrument! Hooray! Now here is the real kicker
- after you load up the Akai samples, Battery keeps them all safe and
secure in an IMPORTED samples file folder right within the main Battery
folder! Yep! That means you can now use the imported WAV files in any
program you desire, not just Battery! This alone makes the program INVALUABLE.
No more restrictive file requirements like other soft samplers. Battery
will open up a whole new world to you. Just think of all the Akai sample
CD-ROMS there are out there! And sound fonts too!
Now, a quick note on
the Bitheadz Unity DS-1 software sampler, which also does read Akai
samples. Theres a catch with that program. The samples must be on your
hard drive in order for Unity DS-1 to read the files. Battery takes
it a step further and opens up the world of CD-ROMS to you. In order
to read samples in Unity DS-1, we had to use the EVALUATION version
of Bitheadz OSMOSIS to convert the samples off our Akai CD-ROMS, which
it did, but that program is expensive (as much as Battery!) and the
Osmosis demo is feature restricted. Battery does it all very happily
within the Battery program, and even keeps the Akai samples in the WAV
format on your drive for use by so many other programs (like ACID, Reaktor
and Fruity Loops for example). Hats off to you Native Instruments for
getting this one right!
So... we played for
a full day on the PC with Battery and decided it was time to get serious
and install it on our Mac to use with Cubase VST 24. Mac used: G3 beige
desktop with 450 upgrade and 256 MB RAM, using MOTU 24i Audio interface
with ASIO.
Mac installation was
not quite as painless. Small glitch. For some reason after opening the
stand alone Battery program and entering the serial number the computer
froze and crashed. Native Instruments offers a fix.
IMPORTANT
notice - Battery for Mac - FIX INFO
After a reboot we just
moved on to using the Battery VST instrument in Cubase VST 24. It again
requested the Serial Number. No prob. Entered it and boom - Battery
worked like a charm with Cubase as a VST instrument. Fun fun fun! We
also did some Akai CD-ROM imports and all worked well.
So how does Battery
sound? Excellent! From clean real sounding drums to the most extreme
oddball sounds, Battery delivers an impressive array of sound possibilities.
You can take even the tamest of samples and mangle them to some new
incredible sounds. Battery works like a champ and sounds like a million
bucks. No latency problems at all on the Mac (minimal on PC) and it
is so very easy to use as a VST instrument. In no time we were cranking
out killer grooves in Cubase. Best of all is that in Cubase you have
all the other options available such as processing with VST Effects,
and all the quantize and groove options. The mangling and mutilation
possibilities with Battery and Cubase are endless!
Battery is very friendly
on CPUs and as a VST Instrument we were able to load up multiple instances
of the plug in with multiple kits open. It is quick and responsive (unlike
LM4 which is a hog and slow loading to boot!). Only problem we had was
that with the "reggae kit" Battery in Cubase was not able
to load the full kit of samples (error dialog saying run out of space?).
We restarted Cubase after allocating a little more RAM to it, but still
couldn't get the full kit to load. Oddly enough on the PC it loaded
no problem.
So... all in all working
with Battery has been a great experience. A must have in any midi composers
toolkit. The sound sparkles, the kits provided are excellent and the
fact it reads Akai CD-ROMS and more sample formats is a huge plus.
What would we like to
see implemented in future versions of the program? Well... hate to be
picky, but we do believe that Battery should have some form of step
entry or grid patterns to generate loops with, aside from manually entering
via the midi keyboard. We know it is not intended to replace a sequencer
or program like Fruity Loops, but it'd be nice to generate some rhythmic
stuff within Battery, especially in stand alone mode. Also another great
feature would be some sort of "cell shuffling" capabilities.
For example it'd be nice to MIX UP the cells to see what drum patterns
come up. Also some sort of RANDOMIZATION of parameters, perhaps like
the excellent PLUGGO plug ins have. Maybe an EVOLVE or RANDOMIZE function
that shifts parameters in small increments or completely random. That
would be a cool plus that would really make BATTERY even more fun to
use!
So, if you like
creating grooves and making music on your computer, Battery is
an essential addition for your toolbox. Whether replacing or adding
to a hardware or software sampler, Battery will get the job done
and keep you occupied for endless hours!
Addendum: 7-10-04 Just
wanted to make a note that I still use Battery like crazy and love
it as much as ever! It still is one of my favorite VST instruments!
Native Instruments Battery page with demo version available
+ features and description.
Native Instruments Reaktor Review Beat Mode review of Reaktor 2.
Native Instruments Reaktor page with features and descriptions
Review of Native Instruments Reaktor
2.0 at
the Harmony Central site.
Another
REAKTOR
review
at vintagesynth.com
|
