Does anyone have Battery 2 and use it exclusively for acoustic kits? Does it have buzz rolls and realistic snare expression? I really want to buy it as I love the interface, but I want to know if it's significantly better than 1 in terms of the multi-sampled kits.

I was wondering about the same thing,because the included demo kits were god-awful,about as bad as it gets.

Yep! That's precisely why I asked. What on earth were they thinking? I mean, the ns7 freekit blows them away.

I had the opportunity to try battery 2, but I was really dissapointed with it. the only thing that change was the interface and the kits did not sound that good as I thought they would.

Ok, I own it and have some things to tell ya.........

First off, the 2.1 update makes the thing fairly useable now............out of the box it is not. Ok so they did there job and now with the update it's kosher.

The kits are good, I bought it for brushes and mallets and so on. I have had a hard time finding ride sounds that I like too, so those were the primary concern for me. All in all they are pretty good.......and un"colored" which is cool.
I think that the interface is good too. That is important for soloing different aspects like "pzm mics" or "room mics". I like the way the outputs are set up, it's really easy to assign.
For example, you do like the direct mics to mono channels and the room stuff to different stereo channels.

Anyway, the kits sound pretty good but unless you need a really flexible interface where YOU will provide 100% of the grooves, I'd pass.

Hope this helps

It's a well balanced library, meaning there are good selections of kits and they are well designed and even better at designing.

When I think Battery I think great editing of sampled material, not so much great library though I like that too.

If I wanted great sound I'd go BFD for very complex sounds and lots of nuisance, real kits thought that has changed a good bit with the "8 Bit Kit" library, great and needed percussion sounds and some very useful 808, 909 sounds played through speakers and sampled, these are also incredibly useful for hybrid kits of all kinds, not just Techno/House as x0x kits are associated with.

Similar with RMIV, especially for the more aggressive sound it has and the great distortion algorithm and bitcrushing.

elbaby765 wrote:

the only thing that change was the interface and the kits did not sound that good as I thought they would.

Are you sure thats the only thing that changed? LOOK AGAIN!

As far as the kits go , everybody has their preference. I'm not super impressed with the kits but they are very useable. I am impressed with Battery 2 itself tho . I think they did a great job.

Battery 2 is an amazing bit of software and while the 2.1 update is a very important addition, I've been using it out of the box since it was originally released with very few issues. (The main improvement for me was the output configuration option in the update. Before 2.1, you ended up with 32 mixer strips the moment you created one instance of Battery. Two instances gave you 64. That was annoying.)

I agree with some of the previous comments. I wouldn't buy Battery 2 just for the sound library, but at the same time the library is of a pretty high quality. Sure, there are some clunkers in there but all in all it's got some really great sounding kits. For example, there's a jazz brush kit that I recently used on a Charlie Brown inspired jazzy Christmas track and you would never know the drums are sequenced.

I don't use a ton of natural sounding drums so I haven't used any of the other included natural kits. But I do own NI's expansion, Studio Drums, and those kits sound really, really good. Probably not as good as BFD, but they will be undetectable from a live drummer if you know how to program.

i read on another forum that the demo kits lacked velocity layers that are actually available in the sold version
I have no way of confirming this
if it's true it would seem to say that NI is more concerned with marketing the interface than the content.

I have to agree with Ojuzu. It's the Battery Studio Drums pack that has the good sounding hits in it. 24Bit, 16 velocity layers (for snare and kick), mono and stereo kits, very nice rides, lots of rolls and flams, and a nice brush kit which is something I'd been searching for. I'd been looking for years, literally, for a good vintage kit, i.e. 69 Ludwig, and hadn't found anything close. By mixing and matching the hits in Studio Drums I was able to come up with two excellent, distinctive sounding "vintage" kits.
Of course, tastes vary, and while I appreciate the NS kits, for instance, the kicks have always sounded flabby to me, the stereo imaging seemed a bit off. So, if you have Battery 1, you might consider the Studio Drums instead of the upgrade.

I use battery 2 with an Octapad II + a bas pedal and it is a real strong combination. I think I will put some extra triggers/pedals on the Octapad for more control.

And I've always hated the Studio Kits. I try to use them, get disgusted, and find something else. I keep trying to 'like' them, and it never happens. Oh well. Most people I see don't like them either, but I've found a few who have. All in taste. I just really don't like the sounds of the kits at all, the snare, bass drum, toms, nothing.

Devon

DevonB wrote:

And I've always hated the Studio Kits. I try to use them, get disgusted, and find something else. I keep trying to 'like' them, and it never happens. Oh well. Most people I see don't like them either, but I've found a few who have. All in taste. I just really don't like the sounds of the kits at all, the snare, bass drum, toms, nothing. Devon

i couldn't agree more. studio kits sounded so terrible.