Here’s a couple of tips and tricks for Battery 4 that cover some new features. Tip 1: The Battery 3 Library? You’ve just updated to Battery 4 from Battery 3. So where the hell is the Battery 3 library then? Well, it doesn’t appear in Battery 4’s Library section.

Battery began life at a time when Native Instruments didn't really deal in bundles but rather in dedicated software applications, each of which performing an independent task. It's been over a decade since Battery first appeared as a plug-in but, more tellingly, more than six years since Battery 3 was unveiled. While there have been some solid tweaks since, there's been nothing significant enough to warrant the release of a new version.

Battery fans feared the worst when Native Instruments debuted Maschine in 2009. After all, does a company of this size need two dedicated drum engines? Delightfully, the answer is yes. Now, Battery 4 has been released as a flagship new application within Komplete 9. Of course it's available separately from that bundle, but with the landscape for virtual drum machines having changed so dramatically does Battery still rule the roost?

Colour coding

From a design point of view, there's no getting around the fact that Battery 3 has been showing its age for some time. Although its cell based matrix of drum pads remains a great approach to beat programming and sound triggering, the grey and green combination was never our favourite.

Indeed, while colour-coding of pads was possible there was little continuity from one kit to the next. The only way to track down sounds was either to audition them or to squint hard at the interface. Battery 4 addresses this head-on with a much better design. Without a trace of light grey or green, the layout is now a slicker, darker affair.

Colour coding is more straight-forward too, with preset kits now mostly showing kicks in red, snares in yellow, claps in pink, hats in light blue and so on. Below the matrix of pads in the upper surface, the middle of the GUI is dominated by the waveform display whose waveshapes match the colour of the pad you've selected for editing. Neatly, key parameters such as Tuning, Key Range, instant Reverse, Pan, Volume, Phase invert and L-R switching are available to the right. Mercifully, start and End flags on the waveform itself make selecting the active area of any sample straightforward.

Assault and Battery

The lower part of the GUI concerns basic modulation possibilities, starting with Volume and Pitch Envelopes for each pad that feature two different Envelope configurations for each. Velocity can be mapped to Volume or Pitch (or both), while a simple 'dual' filter design lets you scoop out bass and treble from either end of the frequency spectrum at the same time.

Each pad features its own Compressor that keeps things simple on this main page with a basic Amount dial only, while send dials to the Delay and Reverb modules (we'll come to these shortly) lie on the right. Overall this makes Battery 4's workflow quicker, though the best development on this front comes from a new tagging system for individual sounds within the plug-in's library.

Building your own kits used to involve a lot of faff but now Battery 4 contains kit piece names that are further sub-categorised (acoustic, analog, electronic) so that you can audition via Battery's own browser to drag and drop hits into the cells you want them to fit.

In-depth configuration

Once you've exhausted these initial sound sculpting tools, you can go under the hood of your cells and overall kit configuration via a series of tabs at the bottom. Applied acoustics systems strum gs-2 v2.0.0 win osx incl keygen happy new year-r2r. The Effects tab opens up more per-cell sonic treatments with Saturation, Lo-Fi, Filter/EQ and Transient Designing modules, as well as a complete set of controls for the Compressor module mentioned earlier. Further to the right, the Master tab allows access to sub-grouping Busses, the Reverb and Delay master modules, as well as Global Filter/EQ, Compressor, Limiter, Transient Designer and Saturation modules.

The Modulation tab offers multiple opportunities to 'interrupt' signal flow with twin LFOs and a dedicated Modulation envelope, and drop down menus let you assign these to the parameters of your choice. Brilliantly, the waveform display toggles from LFO or Envelope shapes and the waveform of the sound you're processing as you hover over parameters, which is neat and hugely effective.

Oodles of options

Even though this version has been a long time coming, it's been worth the wait. Design wise, we're happy to leave the old version's looks firmly in the past. Workflow has been so significantly improved that once you have familiarized yourself with what's new, beat building becomes more fun than ever. The new kits sound great and with the integration options - Battery 4 will accept samples from a wide range of file types - there's no need to stick with NI's own libraries of content because you can so easily expand these with your own.

Once you have configured sounds into cells, the giant strides NI have taken in terms of effects processing in recent years make their presence felt here too. Certainly, I would have no hesitation in recommending Battery 4. In fact, it should be considered towards the very top of your list if you're looking for a software only drum plug-in.

Battery 4 is upon us. This release has seen a major overhaul for the advanced drum sampler with a new refined interface and loads of new features. Here’s a couple of tips and tricks for Battery 4 that cover some new features.

Tip 1: The Battery 3 Library?

You’ve just updated to Battery 4 from Battery 3. So where the hell is the Battery 3 library then? Well, it doesn’t appear in Battery 4’s Library section. Now, there’s no quick and easy way to bring B3 kits into the Library browser of Battery 4 (which includes the new Tag system and a new file extension for kits). You ‘can’ import the Battery 3 folder in the Library via Preferences, but it will only add Battery 3’s raw audio material into the User section of the Library browser.

The best thing to do is just take the hit and approach this from a different angle. Instead, go to the Files tab and locate your ‘Battery 3’ folder. Control-click/right-click on the folder and choose ‘Add to Favorites’.

This folder will now show up as a shortcut button in the Browser.

You can now easily browse the folder for all your favorite Battery 3 kits!

Tip 2: Cell Rendering

So Cell rendering is new in Battery 4. This allows you to effectively bounce a processed cell to disk. This can be very cool if your the sort of person that likes to build custom libraries and Battery certainly has the sound sculpting tools for creating new and interesting sounds. Now here’s something you need to watch out for when Cell Rendering!

In Preferences, you’ll find the Cell Rendering settings. Here you can set your sample rate and format for the render. Unfortunately, there’s no option to set a custom path which would be handy. In the MIDI settings part, you’ll see an option called Note Length. The highest setting is a Whole Note. This can be a gotcha!

Now if you’ve made a sample that’s quite long and you’ve used the ADSR volume envelope, then the Sustain portion will only last a Whole Note (one beat) of the BPM that Battery is using as its clock. This means your rendered file may come out shorter than you’d like!

When rendering, turn off the volume envelope to capture the whole sample! Once rendered, you can activate the envelope which retains its settings.

Pro Tip: Rename the Cell before you render to write the name to the rendered file. Also make a duplicate backup Cell because there’s no undo!!!

Below you can see the difference in file length between the top file (with envelope) and the bottom file (without).

Here’s the sample without the envelope:

You’ll find all your renders in Documents > Native Instruments > Rendered Audio.

Tip 3: Beat Mode

When you load a sample that contains tempo and slice information (i.e. a REX file, Acidized WAV or an Apple Loop) then Battery 4 will enter Beat mode. This allows Battery to tempo sync these loops and even map individual slices to cells.

Before you proceed, you should uncheck the default ‘Expand Loop Slices to Individual Cells’ in the Loading preferences. This will allow you to enclose a sliced loop like a REX file in a single cell.

Just navigate to a REX file or Apple Loop and drag it onto the Cell. Below you can see Beat mode is selected in the Engine section.

This opens up Battery 4 in a big way!! It now becomes a powerful loop playback engine in the realm of something like Stylus RMX. Any capable loops are perfectly beat-matched! It makes it a breeze to create many sonic variations on a loop too by loading the same one into multiple cells and processing differently!

You can of course split the loop slices out onto Cells by pressing Expand in the playback engine section.

While there's no MIDI file support, it’s a great start!! Game changer!!

Tip 4: Articulations

Articulations aren’t new to Battery 4 but they are cool. They can also take some work out of MIDI programming. They basically emulate drum rudiments like ruffs, drags, flams, rolls and some extra effect based things.

Here I have a Cell that has a a bunch of velocity layers of a snare.

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If I just copy this Cell and Paste it to a bunch of other Cells, I can set up a different Articulation for each Cell. This gives me a bunch of easy to play articulations. The bonus is they are dynamic and will trigger the velocity layers giving a fairly realistic result!

Oddly, they also (well some of them) work on all REX file slices when playing a loop of a single Cell. Try it. Of course you can get some great effects on non-drum material too!!

Tip 5: Round Robins

Round Robins eliminate the machine gun effect produced by re-triggering the same sample in rapid succession. You’ll find some great real snares in Battery 4 taken from popular Kontakt drum libraries. Most will have up to three Round Robin samples for the hardest velocity layer. I’ve loaded three such samples to three different Cells.

If I select all the Cells and click the MIDI icon in the Key Range box and hit a note twice, it will map them all to that note.

Then with all Cells still selected I’ll choose Cycle Round Robin in the Condition drop-down in the Cell Activation panel.

Now all I need to do is set a Cycle Position for each Cell in the Position box (bottom right).

If I play the note, I get a machine gun free snare as the Cells cycle on each hit. Nice!!!

Tip 6: It’s Not Just For Drums!

Don’t just limit yourself to drums in Battery 4. There’s plenty of scope for melodic loops and samples. I got some really interesting results by loading raw synth waveforms into Cells and time-stretching them beyond recognition with a MIDI controller.. All through some Lo-Fi and Saturation effects of course!!!

Battery 4 rocks!! Get at it!