Is it just me or does Battery suck?

[ewistrand]

I'll have to split my vote here. While popslut has a point about the generalizations, Tarekith, jamester and Ben all have valid points as well. Tarekith and Ben's issues I know of first hand, and I've read enough about jamester's issues to know that they aren't caused by ignorance on his part.

NI's products are like most on the software market; if they work on your machine, great. If they don't, it sucks. I happen to be one of the lucky ones where everything works...

ew

[BinaryB]

NI's products are like most on the software market; if they work on your machine, great. If they don't, it sucks. I happen to be one of the lucky ones where everything works...

ew

And you help heaps of mofo's get up and running,
...which benefits the online neighborhood immensely.

Werd.

[jamester]

...and I've read enough about jamester's issues to know that they aren't caused by ignorance on his part.

What I keep trying to stress is that it's not just me, or any individual's problem...it's recognized by NI that B3 is still not fully functional, to the point where a year after the 3.0.2 bug fix they are now in beta testing of 3.0.3!

I bought B3 a couple months before the 3.0.2 update; one of the first things I encountered was that before 3.0.2, you couldn't create an empty kit template and have the midi note assignments save with it. Nobody could, not just me! (Thankfully this was fixed in 3.0.2, but plenty of problems remained.) So my first experience with B3 was figuring out to save a blank "dummy clip" in all the slots so the midi notes would save.

NI are working on another update because they acknowledge that B3 is still problematic. Period. I don't care if somebody doesn't want to believe me or not, because these are FACTS not my personal opinions.

Once again, I defer to NI themselves:
http://www.native-instruments.com/forum ... hp?t=53921

Upcoming patch: Battery 3.0.3
This will be a free update.

---------

The patch is currently in this phase:

* specification
* development
* beta testing
* final testing

For an explanation of the different phases, please see the section below.

---------

The update will include the following improvements:

New and improved features:

* Browser preview for .CL3 files
* Improved In-Kit preview
* "Replace Sample" function for cells
* Improved Drag-and-drop support for hosts
* Mac OS X 10.5 "Leopard" compatibility
* Improved browser sorting
* Improved loading times

Fixes:

* Several stability fixes
* Several file import fixes
* Several host compatibility fixes
* Limitation to 24 outputs fixed
* Multiple triggered cells now light up correctly
* Several usability and cosmetic fixes

I don't have it installed anymore, but for those using B3 in Live I would genuinely like to know:
1) Can you use the up/down arrow keys on your computer keyboard to scroll through the samples in B3's library?
2) With "Auto Preview" (or whatever its called) enabled, do the sounds actually auto play when you scroll to them?

In Reaper I could scroll but they wouldn't preview without clicking them. I seem to remember reading Live users having issues using keyboard buttons in B3, though I believe the scroll wheel worked IIRC...

[v00d00ppl]

No need to bash people for sharing their experiences when people ask.

Sharing their experiences?

You mean writing shite like:

so i guess we can all come into agreement that the progrm sucks but the sound library is the dealbreaker?

the program itself sucks.

Don't try to make out this thread is full of reasonable considered viewpoints and I'm the bogeyman - I just see loads of gobshite n00bs contradicting themselves.

n00b? wait a minute, how long have you been using ableton live? How long have you been on the board? I have been playing with live since 2005 not 2006 like you.

How am I contradicting myself? Who still speaks in leet? This is a musicians board not a world of warcraft board. RTFM...who still speaks like that? If you are a grown man speak in proper sentences and have a sense of respect for other members.

If you want details on why I think battery 3 is not up to expectation then try chopping a drum loop you have sampled from vinyl in battery and see how much you can zoom in and adjust the start and stop points. If its a fine piece of a drum sound you are trying to isolate you will be getting audio artifacts. I have tried chopping sounds on battery 3 and when it comes to the obvious big kick/snare or other highly visible sound waves it is totally alright. Now with a tiny sound wave that you want to truncate and then amplify by a dB value; its a different story. You won't be able to zoom in on it as much as sampler/emulator x2/ or even audition. You can try to use your ear to compensate for this....but a good amount of time you will begin to hear a snap, crackle, or pop.

This happens in both stand alone and in ableton. I have tried raising the latency on both my x station/asio4all/and emu 1616m and i still get those artifacts. If you like to chop up the tiniest drum hit running battery 3 will be troublesome. I am actively using emulator x2, sampler and have used an mpc 1000 and with those three samplers you have the ability to chop the tiniest detail visually or by ear without hearing artifacts.

Why else is battery not up to par? Then why is there latency problem in garageband? Why are there loading problems in garageband, cubase 4, logic 8, live 5, etc. Why does battery 3 still have a latency issue in live 5? There are many bugs you should be aware of if battery will be your main drum/sampler program.
http://www.native-instruments.com/forum ... .php?f=139

Some people on this thread will be adamant that not only i but the rest of the people who complain don't know what they are doing. Unless you have had a technical issue with the software there is no point in trying to put down other members. Some people will have no problems running this software on live 6 and up. Some people will have and issue when trying to run this software in another sequencer. If this software was more stable on sequencers other than pro tools le and live 6 this thread would have been done.

[v00d00ppl]

jamester issues 1 and 2 work for me out of the box.

The biggest issue for me is chopping that tiny drum sound sampled off of vinyl can be truncated in an mpc 100/emulator x2/ and sampler fine without the artifacts getting involved but in battery 3; no go.

[thelocalhost]

I'll have to split my vote here. While popslut has a point about the generalizations, Tarekith, jamester and Ben all have valid points as well. Tarekith and Ben's issues I know of first hand, and I've read enough about jamester's issues to know that they aren't caused by ignorance on his part.

NI's products are like most on the software market; if they work on your machine, great. If they don't, it sucks. I happen to be one of the lucky ones where everything works...

ew

It either works great, or it doesn't work at all? What? This is nonsensical point of view.

Battery is a lackluster program that is (at best) 80% completed. It's been a year since it's release and you still can't preview batterys own proprietary format (*.cl3) within the browser. Only a company like NI could think that this is acceptable.

Depending on your workflow, the browser can be ok, or a piece of shit. I think it's a worthless piece of shit that can preview *.rx2 files. There's a lot of cool features (e.g., articulations, fx, sample lib, etc...), but the browser is just a piece of shit and leads to a very frustrating experience.

Also, I never understood why the master effects only operate on 1/2 and not 3/4, 5/6, etc... Despite this issues, I still use it. But I use it in a very minimal capacity. Don't do anything more than the basics.

P.S. I am almost positive they are going to do the Battery 2 to Battery 3 thing they did last time. After not releasing fundamental fixes for many, many months, they release a huge fix for version X, then 3 months later they announce version X+1.

[ewistrand]

It either works great, or it doesn't work at all? What? This is nonsensical point of view.

Exactly my point. People are divided into two camps as far as software goes, If everything works the way they want it to, it's great and so is the company. However, if something doesn't work, either by a design flaw or it doesn't do things the way they want it to, the product and/or company sucks. To further prove my point;

It's been a year since it's release and you still can't preview batterys own proprietary format (*.cl3) within the browser.

True. This will be fixed in the upcoming update .

Only a company like NI could think that this is acceptable.

Huh?

I can think of lots of instances of things more egregious by other companies. Take Spectrasonics' 2+ years of having people wait for UB versions of Atmosphere and Trilogy, and then releasing a stopgap measure using a Rosetta host interface.

Or, closer to home, why can I only automate the first 128 parameters of something in Live? But I digress...

Depending on your workflow, the browser can be ok, or a piece of shit. I think it's a worthless piece of shit that can preview *.rx2 files. There's a lot of cool features (e.g., articulations, fx, sample lib, etc...), but the browser is just a piece of shit and leads to a very frustrating experience.

See my opening remark...

Also, I never understood why the master effects only operate on 1/2 and not 3/4, 5/6, etc... Despite this issues, I still use it. But I use it in a very minimal capacity. Don't do anything more than the basics.

Because they're master effects, and pre-fader/pre-pan. Are you going to carefully set up separate outputs for everything to get separation, and then dump everything pre-fader into an aux channel with no spatial control? Not in my world...

ew

[thelocalhost]

Exactly my point. People are divided into two camps as far as software goes, If everything works the way they want it to, it's great and so is the company. However, if something doesn't work, either by a design flaw or it doesn't do things the way they want it to, the product and/or company sucks. To further prove my point;

Maybe this wasn't clear.

It depends on your workflow/project and it's not a black and white issue. There are still issues with Battery, but I still use it. Often there are just a handful of 'quarks' (i.e., things that don't work as expected, or never worked at all) that are a a major detraction from making music. I think many people are so attracted to NI products, because they are excellent ideas. However, they are often poorly executed and have oddities. Battery is the canonical example.

Also, I agree your Spectrasonics statement. They used to be one of my favorite companies, but I don't understand why the Trilogy and Atmosphere UB are taking so long. And then they release this 'layer' that allows you to run them in Rosetta.

Also, I never understood why the master effects only operate on 1/2 and not 3/4, 5/6, etc... Despite this issues, I still use it. But I use it in a very minimal capacity. Don't do anything more than the basics.

Because they're master effects, and pre-fader/pre-pan. Are you going to carefully set up separate outputs for everything to get separation, and then dump everything pre-fader into an aux channel with no spatial control? Not in my world...

What is all this "pre-fader/no spatial" nonsense?

I assume you've used Kontakt? Battery needs to have a Kontakt-esque routing scheme/layer for the outputs.

At a minimum, each stereo output (e.g., 3/4, 5/6) should have it's own Master Tab. Isn't this obvious?

[Timur]

Hm, EQ and Compressor can be used without Master effects, so I wonder how good are those Limiter, Delay and Reverb on Master? Are they so good that one really wishes to use them or would you prefer the quality of external master effects anyway? I don't know, maybe someone here has compared them already?