Review of Battery by Native Instruments
Add quality sampled drums in the virtual domain of your sequencer
by Rich the Tweak
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Native
Instruments Battery Sampling Software (Macintosh and Windows)
Battery breathes life into your drum samples. It boasts
separate sound parameters for 54 Instruments, powerful modulation
capabilities and an unbeatable ease of use. Battery is fast, effective,
intelligent and convenient. It has sample-accurate timing, internal 32-bit
resolution, up to 128 velocity layers per instrument and can play samples at
any pitch - Battery fulfills even the highest demands regarding precision,
sound quality and flexibilityTweak: Battery is a great drum sampler plugin. I like it and use it in nearly every song. It goes way beyond your typical synthesizer drum kit, and it can load sampled kits from some sample cd roms and improve upon them. Read more at the Native Instruments Site |
Everything they said is true. If you are into sampled drums, hits, and rolling your own kits for your sequencer, I cannot imagine a better soft sampler than Battery. Soft Sampler? Well almost. Battery has no recording function, so you are not going to be able to run a mic to the kitchen while the significant other smashes vases, celebrating your new toy. But no big deal there, you surely have a little applet that records wave files somewhere on your computer. That's all you need to turn Battery into a full fledged digital sampler.
Using Battery
Simplicity itself. Much simpler than any hardware sampler. Just open a directory on your computer to where your drum samples are and drag 'n drop into one of the "cells" in Battery's grid. While the cells default to notes C1 through F5 on the keyboard, you can assign any note you want to any cell. The cell is one of those little squares you see in the screenshot. You can do a lot because each one is independent if you want them to be. You can put as many samples as you want in a cell and adjust the velocity ranges so a different one plays depending on how hard you strike the keys. These are called layers. Up to 128 on a single key, for those that a really picky about drums. Most of us are used to having only one sample on a key. You can import Akai files, Reaktor .map files, SoundFont .SF2 files, LM4, Loopazoid and MPC2000 files.
Tweakable stuff
For each sample you can define a volume envelope, pitch envelope, assign sample start, use a bitcrusher, increase or decrease overall "shape" (sort of like a one knob compressor), and tune it. This alone is impressive. Now add to that you can assign 8 real time controllers. The samples can be set to loop mode, and you can do some really strange loop stutters. Yes, you can really go out there if you want. But if you don't, you'll be happily surprised when you hear what Battery can do with a lifeless, mediocre drum sample, and when you map out a whole kit of these, the results are truly impressive. Gone are the days when you are locked into preset drum maps from a synth or sample CD. If you want the kick louder and at a lower pitch, the snare snappier, the hats tighter, these are all easy adjustments to make. Best of all, you can swap out a snare without changing anything else to ensure you have the best on for your song. And don't forget, you aren't limited to just drums either. Any sample you want is fair game. You can stretch samples across the keys too if you want if you wanted to sample some synths. You can reverse the sample if you want. I think Battery would make a great sound effects mapper and do well for avante' gard sound art masterpieces.
What you don't get
There's no synth type filters in Battery. There are also no standard effects like reverb, delay, and if you load a drum loop, there is no facility to change the BPM other than raising or lowering the pitch. But it's no big deal. You can add effects in your sequencer with plugins. And anyway, you are better off putting drum loops on sequencer tracks and time stretching them there.
A Very Cool Feature
If you have a multiple output audio interface, and a sequencer that support them, you can assign different drum cells to different outputs. Ah yes! You can route your snare cell to all the plugin reverbs on your system if you want and keep the kick loud and dry, or to a different effect. How does this work? In Battery's "options" menu you sell it how many busses you want. Then you map the cells to a bus. In the sequencer, you simply route the bus to a different audio out. Why is this important? It allows you to separate your drums into several tracks with a different effect on each. This gives you same same sort of experimental possibilities major producers have had for years with real drummers. The sequencer that does this best in Cubase SX. Battery runs like a dream in it and you can define 8 stereo busses (or 16 mono busses). Tweak sez: Outstanding! It will also work with Logic and Sonar. I did not fully test the multiple bus options (which Logic call "aux objects") I did get it working but it was a bit convoluted to define. I didn't get a chance to run the test in Sonar yet. If you can't get Battery working in Sonar make sure you update Battery with the DX patch, which came out last Spring.
To sum up
Battery is a great drum sampler plugin. I like it and use it in nearly every song. It goes way beyond your typical synthesizer drum kit, and it can load sampled kits from some sample cd roms and improve upon them. If you are really serious about drums but can't quite afford a sampler, Battery is a godsend. Even if you do have a full rig of samplers, you will appreciate Battery's speed at building custom drum maps and the sound it delivers.
All the Best,
Rich
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