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View Full Version : Battery 3 - Anyone recommend it


tweezer
12-18-2010, 09:37 AM
Hi

I've bought my son a copy of NI's Kontakt for a Christmas present. However, due to NI not despatching it until 10 days after I paid for it, and the current bad weather here in England, it looks like it may not arrive on time.

A local store I deal with has Battery 3 on sale for £79.00 which seems a good price. I don't want my boy to have nothing on Christmas day so I thought I might get him that to tide him over until Kontakt finally arrives.
Does anybody here recommend Battery 3. I know it's not the same thing as Kontakt but he (and I) both love drum stuff.

Thanks in advance for any comments.

arbogast
12-18-2010, 10:27 AM
Battery 3 is a very good drum VSTi. Unless your son primarily makes acoustic music (for which battery 3 is overkill, IMHO) you can't go wrong with it.
Lucky son.

bullshark
12-18-2010, 11:04 AM
It's very versatile, covers a whole lot of percussion ground out the box and it's easy to load your own waveform and tweak them, it's native 32 and 64 bit and it's stable with Reaper. Don't have anything negative to say about it(but I just got it a few weeks back) except maybe the copy protection, but since you're already getting Kontakt then it's a non-issue.

Curvespace
12-18-2010, 11:45 AM
It makes a very nice sister-sampler to Kontakt. Good for beats and percussion with a more simple and easy-to-use interface than its big brother. It's got a few acoustics kits bundled with it, though I've not really used them.

Yeah, lucky son for sure :)

tweezer
12-18-2010, 12:24 PM
Thanks for your comments.
I decided to buy it anyway as it was around £50.00 cheaper than I'd seen it previously, and with more snow today Kontakt's arrival any time soon is very much in doubt.
Son's not really so lucky as it seems. I bought Kontakt on the 50% off NI offer at the end of November and all the music stuff on the shared PC is a shared resource that I get a crack at as well.

mixer
12-18-2010, 04:11 PM
B3 is a great piece of software. I should use it more, but I seem to drift to Superior and other kits before B3. Probably because the cells are so visually "undrum-like" to me. I do mostly acoustic drums, and B3 is heavey on electronic, glitch stuff. But the acoustic kits in it are very nice.

Good luck with your purchase.

(You do know, I hope, that there is no end to the wanting of more drum software! Anything you get is just a stepping stone to the next.)

Cheers.

Eyes
12-18-2010, 04:24 PM
I was going to recommend the demo, but seeing your post it seems pointless. :P

Battery has a great library for general drums and percussion, there is always something useful. Using it as a general samplerer for non pitched items is easy as well.

If it helps, you should be able to open the battery patches in Kontakt as well for extra manipulation.

stratman
12-18-2010, 04:24 PM
(You do know, I hope, that there is no end to the wanting of more drum software! Anything you get is just a stepping stone to the next.)

Cheers.

Yes I know that feeling.

Hi

A local store I deal with has Battery 3 on sale for £79.00 which seems a good price

Your local music store isn't Andertons in Guildford is it, because they're selling it for that price? I was in there on Friday buying a keyboard for my eldest daughter and almost bought it. I'm still tempted. However, I've got Kontakt 4, which (apart from the included samples) I think can do the same thing, with more flexibility but with a less user friendly manner.

Question: is it true that Battery 3 can only deal with 8 velocity layers per pad, whereas Kontakt, based on my experience, isn't limited by the number of velocity layers.

Pete

DarkStar
12-18-2010, 04:49 PM
... and here's a bonus:

http://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?p=637845

PS stratman, have you got caught in the bus lane outside Andertons? I got into a small argument about crossing it. :)

boatclub
12-18-2010, 05:01 PM
I highly recommend Nerve from Xfer.

http://www.xferrecords.com/

It's fairly new on the scene. The first version is up an operating, but the new version which is currently in beta and about to get released, really hits the spot. It's not the cheapest thing in the world ($200), but it's FAR more satisfying than Battery 3, and comes with a killer library to boot.

stratman
12-18-2010, 05:01 PM
PS stratman, have you got caught in the bus lane outside Andertons? I got into a small argument about crossing it. :)

Luckily no. But it can be tricky getting a parking space. Incidentally, I love that shop. The staff are so knowledgeable and helpful. That place has got a great vibe about it.

Pete

Sound asleep
12-18-2010, 05:11 PM
if you plan to use an electronic drumkit to trigger the sounds of battery 3, then there are better VSTs for that i find. but if your aim is to use any samples you have, or have access to a nice library of percussive sounds, and you're going to want to program your beats, use nice articulations, and have great tools/FX to manipulate these sounds in your library, then battery 3 i find is very good.

one shortcoming i guess it might have over other drum VSTs is the lack of midi clips ready to use. you really have to build your own. but like i said, as a tool for doing that, i find it's very awesome.

three_eyed_otter
12-18-2010, 09:11 PM
To get the best out of Battery 3 or the previous versions I think you really need to build your own "electronic" kits from the included samples. For the most part the acoustic kits are solid, but when you open an electronic kit with a bunch of cells things can get haywire.

I have a default kit that has 16 empty cells that are mapped for my korg padKontrol. From this default I start loading samples & building my own kits. I then "save as" & move on. If your family uses Reaper you may want to also build a drum map to go along with your default Battery kit, this would make triggering a breeze.

have a good one
3Eo

tweezer
12-19-2010, 05:49 AM
Your local music store isn't Andertons in Guildford is it, because they're selling it for that price? Pete
Yes it is Andertons. They're not really that "local" to me but they're no further from me than London. They've got to be about the best music shop in the south east. Not only for the amount of gear they actually stock, and the competive prices, but the amount of time they'll just leave you alone to play with stuff and make up your own mind without any selling at all. With the exception of guitar strings and small stuff I buy pretty much everything from them. Mail order and after sales is exceptional as well.
(NOTE: I don't work for Andertons I'm just very impressed with them)

Thanks everyone for the further comments.
We don't use a kit to play in the rhythms just some MIDI files that we've made up or collected over the years. As we only use acoustic drum sounds the electronic side is not a big deal for us. My son's into indie guitar based stuff and I'm still trying to create the Sound Of The 60's in glorious MONO. Actually, the stuff we do together seems to work quite well.

fogpeople
12-19-2010, 03:11 PM
I use EZ for acoustics and Battery for everything else. It's the best "cell based" drum sampler out there and has lots of cool tricks for adding rudiments and the like.

Of course, if you paid for Kontakt and bought Battery, one could argue you should've just bought Komplete and gotten all the good NI stuff.

But sheesh, if I got Battery AND Kontakt for x-mas I'd be a very happy kid. You aren't adopting any new sons by chance are you? I come house-trained.

setvice
12-19-2010, 06:34 PM
I bought Komplete recently and i spent the first 6 hours playing with battery.! its amazing and if you couple it with a trigger finger its even better. Can't wait to try the other instruments!

Kundalinguist
12-19-2010, 07:26 PM
I use BFD2 because I have Roland V-Drums. I also have Battery (via NI Komplete) but never use it. However, I think it's a very good piece of software if you simply want to deal with keyboard input or groove templates, etc.

It has a lot of different styles samples, so its good for composing.

rictheobscene
12-20-2010, 01:03 AM
Battery 3 replaced a bunch of 'boutique' drum machines on my rig.

NI ships it with a generous portion of content and there is a great amount of 3rd party libraries. While I will stop short of saying it is infinitely expandable, in my experience, I find it to be highly expandable, easy to use, and uber stable.

Goldbaby, Kontaktbanks.com, and Soniccouture are 3 of my favorite 3rd party libraries.

tweezer
12-20-2010, 02:36 AM
Of course, if you paid for Kontakt and bought Battery, one could argue you should've just bought Komplete and gotten all the good NI stuff.
That was considered when Komplete 7 was announced but the UK price of £430.00 takes some thinking about. Komplete is probably a very good buy if you want the synths, pianos, organs etc as well as Kontakt and Battery but as we don't play keyboards, or make electronic music, it seems likely that they would just end up taking up hard drive space for no reason. I bought Kontakt at half price and Battery was just over half price so I got the bits of Komplete that we wanted for a little over half the price of Komplete.

But sheesh, if I got Battery AND Kontakt for x-mas I'd be a very happy kid. You aren't adopting any new sons by chance are you? I come house-trained.

I don't think it's an overly generous gift. I bet many kids are getting a guitar for Christmas and even a reasonable Squire or Epiphone would cost at least as much, if not more, than what I paid for Kontakt and Battery together. Another way of looking at it is, the money I saved by buying Reaper instead of Sonar or Pro Tools paid for Kontakt and Battery.

rictheobscene
12-20-2010, 06:24 AM
Another way of looking at it is, the money I saved by buying Reaper instead of Sonar or Pro Tools paid for Kontakt and Battery.

Nice!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :D

three_eyed_otter
12-20-2010, 06:52 AM
+1

have a good one
3Eo

DeyBwah
12-20-2010, 11:22 AM
+1 for Battery.

NI also has a nice library of Battery expansion packs for down the road.

Cableaddict
12-22-2010, 10:46 PM
Be advised,

Ever since I went to Win7-64 bit, Battery has been causing me massive headaches. I had to stop using it.

-And B4 has been causing occasional crashes (huge audio output freezes) for about 3 years. there's a reason why NI decided to discontinue it.

Battery is easy to program, but not nearly as versatile as a full sampler, and the factory kits are nothing to get excited about. I recommend you pass. Lots of other great drum VSTi's out there.