Battery 4 sucks in 2018?

[martinjuenke]

Alright, I‘ve reinstalled Battery 3 from NI support page (threw away my old DVDs stupidly after upgrading), have now all acoustic and ethnic kits again and found my MIDI example files again in these approx. 10 GB.

I was mystified by this, but finally I found this {NI} page:
Where-Can-I-Download-the-BATTERY-3-Installer-?

Notes as to OSX: the page indicates not supported past 10.10.
What that means here (10.12.6) is:
1) It doesn't show in Native Access. I entered S/N there and it indicated it was activated. Ran standalone; it was not.
2) Service Center was useless from the standalone 'Activate' (and additionally believes two things which are activated are not. Battery 3 never showed in it).
3) Nuendo 8.2 blacklisted it.
3b) I opened it in VE Pro 6 (NB: 64-bit server) and Service Center now played ball. I can use it here.

To demystify and to clearify:
I can use now the Battery 3 library in Battery 4.
I do not run Battery 3 as an separate application or plugin (I‘m on Mac with High Sierra).
For me that‘s sufficient.

[jancivil]

Having said that, Battery 4 is probably all that any sane man needs.

Fortunately, then, I am neither sane nor a man.

Its library is not useful to me. I liked particular things in 3; I would update if they were in 4 which would have saved me a lot of time in the last several hours. That's $49.50 I'm not spending.

[jancivil]

Alright, I‘ve reinstalled Battery 3 from NI support page (threw away my old DVDs stupidly after upgrading), have now all acoustic and ethnic kits again and found my MIDI example files again in these approx. 10 GB.

I was mystified by this, but finally I found this {NI} page:
Where-Can-I-Download-the-BATTERY-3-Installer-?

Notes as to OSX: the page indicates not supported past 10.10.
What that means here (10.12.6) is:
1) It doesn't show in Native Access. I entered S/N there and it indicated it was activated. Ran standalone; it was not.
2) Service Center was useless from the standalone 'Activate' (and additionally believes two things which are activated are not. Battery 3 never showed in it).
3) Nuendo 8.2 blacklisted it.
3b) I opened it in VE Pro 6 (NB: 64-bit server) and Service Center now played ball. I can use it here.

To demystify and to clearify:
I can use now the Battery 3 library in Battery 4.
I do not run Battery 3 as an separate application or plugin (I‘m on Mac with High Sierra).
For me that‘s sufficient.

Good for you. It was not anywhere on _my_ support page, I had to do a search and it took several tries at search terms; I had just about given up. I don't own Komplete but finally that informed my search terms.

I'm not spending any $49.50 to update it, and it works as AU in VE Pro 6 which is where I'll use it 100% of the time anyway.

[Jace-BeOS]

They probably spent a lot of developer time recreating the GUI's basics from scratch, only to lose steam in the last 10% of the job (often regarded as 90% of the work) and push Battery 4 to market prematurely, without finishing all the finer details.

I don't think it has anything to do with being rushed-to-release. Were that the case, they could have easily re-introduced these features in the years since release.

I never underestimate the laziness of developers, or the stupidity of product development priorities. Getting their priority features re-implemented, and then selling the product as "NEW!", very often results in the "lower priority" features never being completed. Especially at corporations that focus mostly on one product. If none of those features have been put back since 2014, then they're never going to do so and are clearly not interested in Battery anymore. What other explanation is there for dropping perfectly good workflow functions?

When I watched that video of lost features, I thought "those are exactly the kinds of workflow features that make a quality user experience... and now they're gone."

What a shame.

Maybe they wanted to maintain a larger feature divide between Maschine and Battery (This assumes these features are present in Maschine, which is something I can't claim to know).

I don't know all the details of Mashine, but I can tell NI are nearly 100% focused on it, so it seems obvious they're favoring Mashine over Battery. Crippling one product to favor another is foolish and arrogant. Mashine isn't remotely a product I'm interested in. I'm a musician with a perfectly usable DAW, not a "beatmaker" looking to play with loops in a schizophrenic tool that sells hardware (yet more hardware which is useless garbage should the software become unavailable).

I had Battery on my list of interests because it seemed like a good tool for creating unique drum kits, since I don't have such a tool with any kind of sensible workflow for samples (I hate Logic's UltraBeat; I'd love if Propellerhead Reason's Kong was an AudioUnit plugin... with a larger GUI). But now I know better about NI's thinking on Battery (very little thought). It's just going to keep me away from ever wasting my money on, and time learning, Battery.

Mashine helped kill Kore; next it will kill Battery?

Meh. My struggle with buggy-ass text selection in shitty-ass iOS Safari has made me much more irritated while typing this than I should be about this topic; sorry for the rant (not going to do any more editing; screw you, Apple; these bugs have been here since iOS 7 and never fixed!!!).

[Dewdman42]

This is all much ado about nothing. Battery 4 is great for what it is... Ok, NI didn't port some cool workflow features from Battery3 to Battery4. I highly doubt its some grand conspiracy to sell you Maschine, just oversight...and they don't really care because at this point battery is basically not much more then a talking point for selling Komplete, from their perspective.

Don't like Battery4? Try Geist or something else to setup kits. I recently picked up the new Akai MPC2 software for pretty cheap. etc...

The video above is interesting and it would be nice if NI would pay attention and bring those easy to add workflow improvements that were were B3...over into B4. But don't hold your breathe. There is not much financial gain for NI to spend any time like that at all on Battery4. When's the last time you saw an update for FM8, Absynth, or many other NI products? NI just doesn't do that. They are all about adding value to Komplete, or yes the Maschine platform which somehow they must see financial incentive there, but anyway, Battery4 is part of Komplete and adding those couple of mentioned features will probably not add one single Euro to their bottom line result. There are other fish to fry.

[jancivil]

This is all much ado about nothing. Battery 4 is great for what it is... Ok, NI didn't port some cool workflow features from Battery3 to Battery4.

Yeah! Because FVCK cool workflow! Amirite?!

It's useless to me, which is not a gigantically big honking deal. Well, the time I spent yesterday to get it working kind of is a big deal, which if they hadn't got rid of every single thing in the library I have any interest in will have been avoided long before I decided the other day I'd like to have some Arabic and Indian percussion I don't have on this system. I mean it would have probably been on this system, as I update some things I was reluctant to recently.

"Don't like Battery4? Try Geist or something else..."
Yeah, or Battery 3. Which was the whole point you're replying to, or pretty much.

[Dewdman42]

Battery3 is yesterday's news. move on.

[jancivil]

this is the whole thing behind my reaction: why do you need to tell people how to be? Obtuse and obnoxious.


I installed it this morning. I own a license for it and I'm not paying to update it to something I won't use. I don't need to "move on".

[Aloysius]

Battery3 is yesterday's news. move on.

Very Fake News

[Dewdman42]

you can be any way you want, I'm just saying that you are apparently making much ado about nothing. Battery3 is over and out. Can't even run it on my mac. peace.

[jancivil]

Kind of funny on a forum where many members are at such pains to recreate the workflow from 30 yrs ago that a product discontinued in 2013 is ancient history and 'you need to move on'. People still find Kore 2 useful, abandoned for the new kid on the block, Maschine. Which I have very little interest in just out of novelty.

I have a linear workflow like the ancient ones! I don't even buy Computer Music magazine for teh loops packages! Fck me!

I wanted specific things for their *actual use value* to me so I decided after seeing the thread to see if it was even possible to get Battery 3 going again. And it is. I am not, nor would I want to be you D00000dman. for reasons.

[Aloysius]

@ jancivil. Thanks for that B3 Link yesterday.

[Dewdman42]

jancivil, there is no reason to be so un civil about it is there? We're all entitled to our own opinion.

[Kevin63101]

I wanted specific things for their *actual use value* to me so I decided after seeing the thread to see if it was even possible to get Battery 3 going again. And it is.

Agreed: premium vintage software. Battery is still indespensible to me.

[codec_spurt]

Having said that, Battery 4 is probably all that any sane man needs.

What about insane robots?

We don't count. No one listens to us.

Having said that, Battery 4 is probably all that any sane man needs.

Fortunately, then, I am neither sane nor a man.

Its library is not useful to me. I liked particular things in 3; I would update if they were in 4 which would have saved me a lot of time in the last several hours. That's $49.50 I'm not spending.

B3 is a bit fugly, but it's a powerhouse of drum sample manipulation.

B4 looks the part, and it is pretty powerful in its own right as well. If you can get over the 'missing' 12GB library, then there's not a lot to be hurt about. It's still a great piece of software.

Do any of you remember that famous thread when B4 came out? After years of waiting. It caused quite the fuss. Both the software and the thread. ISTR the consensus was it was over priced and somewhat crippled compared to the original (B3). NI jumped the shark on that one.

It's taken me a while to realise what a great piece of software B3 was. Even though many raved about it back in the day.

jancivil, yes B4 does seem to be a cripped version of B3. If you aren't a gui whore then you won't be missing much.