Native Instruments future of Maschine vs Battery

[njarecki]

Hey guys- what do you think the future holds for Maschine and Battery? Most of my successful producer friends are saying they prefer battery - but NI seems to be abandoning it for maschine, which is perhaps more consumer oriented but cumbersome and lacking some functionality? Love any views. Thanks!

[Dirtgrain]

Just today I was looking at Groove Agent, then wondering about Battery 4, which I have, and also UVI Drum Designer, which I don't have. Just looking into it so far.

I've got a very old midi keyboard, and I've never had drum pads. At one point, I thought to get Maschine for that reason, but I'm now thinking it will be some cheaper midi drum pad option that I get (and a separate midi controller for some sliders and knobs).

Battery 4 came out maybe 8 years ago. Still, NI doesn't necessarily hint at what's next (many didn't expect Guitar Rig to get updated, and it finally did).

[cryophonik]

Funny you mention this because Battery and Maschine were my goto's for years, but I really hate the direction NI has taken with Maschine and I'm starting to consider other options. It's become the most convoluted half-ass DAW on the planet and is just too much of a PITA/overkill to use as a drum instrument anymore (IMO), so my go-to is now Atlas 2 (and, to a lesser extent, XO), which I am absolutely LOVING!. My bet would be that, if we ever see a Battery 5, it will follow the lead set by Atlas and XO. But, who knows? I don't see any signs that NI is abandoning Battery, they're just notoriously slow in updating their products and they seem to favor updating the ones that provide a platform for new products they can sell, like Maschine expansions, Kontakt libraries, and Reaktor synths/ensembles.

[DJ Warmonger]

Well, Battery 4 has been just a drum rompler for me. I don't do anything special within the plugin, but it does have awesome kits.

As to Maschine... I'd love to get it together with dedicated controller, but the later doesn't seem competetive anymore compared to MPC. The main argument for it are tons of packs bundled with Komplete, but then why chose an inferior solution just for a large pile of content?

[noiseboyuk]

I don't really agree with the premise that NI are abandoning Battery, even though it's been a long time since a feature update. Case in point - it is the core rhythm component of their new Komplete Now. Not Maschine.

I've been wrongly predicting for a decade or more that NI will release Maschine Player, a stripped down version not tied to hardware, similar functionally to Reaktor or Kontakt players. The fact it has never happened when it is such an obvious thing to do leads me to think that for whatever reason NI want to keep Maschine tied to hardware. Again, the Komplete Now decision backs this up - they could get new customers in on their Maschine ecosystem by releasing Maschine Player, but they've chosen not to.

In turn, this makes me think Battery is going nowhere. It's always been strange to me that they've never had any kind of rhythm sequencer with it. I've never used Maschine, but from what I've seen the workflow looks horrible - I wouldn't actually want that in stand-alone software. Maybe once day Battery 5 will come along, or maybe a totally new product with a pattern engine. It's still an underexplored area for VIs in general imo (not many underexplored areas left), a more intuitive and creative way to program and suggest patterns. Toontrack's Tap To Find and Song Creator are still best in class and several years old, and skewed towards real drumming rather than general beats.

[Goony]

Dont see them abandoning Battery anytime soon, just this week they updated it.

[Weasel-Boy]

Dont see them abandoning Battery anytime soon, just this week they updated it.

Not much of an update, really. After eight years, you’d think NI might’ve repaired some or all of the damage they did to it after removing a litany of very useful features that existed in Battery 3. They might not abandon it, but it sure feels like they did already.

[Goony]

Not much of an update, really. After eight years, you’d think NI might’ve repaired some or all of the damage they did to it after removing a litany of very useful features that existed in Battery 3. They might not abandon it, but it sure feels like they did already.

Still an update, and shows it is still in their plans thou. Lets face it, at least they didnt do a Refx and charge for it and call it battery5.

[db3]

I don't see Maschine or Battery going anywhere as they both generate extra $ through expansions. Maschine's workflow as a plugin has never been ideal, so there's opportunity for NI to develop Battery further for that (here's hoping). They could even create a Battery specific HW controller with the lovely Maschine pads.

[StarSMASH]

I've abandoned maschine standalone such a long time ago. i only use Maschine VST for drum programming pretty much now. I've tried to switch to battery 4 vst for a while until i realized it was much more of a headache because u pretty much cannot load group kits and have a ready template where all of the sounds have familiar mapping (ie. some kits are just mapped in different octaves and it gets confusing). It's just not uniform, and it's better to just not load kits and drag and drop individual instruments, which could be not your ideal workflow.....it's always nice to have that option anyway.

I'm still with maschine VST as it's the lesser of 2 evils and i'm familiar, but i would love something like Atlas 2 or XO with the sort by frequency spectrum feature. i just love the note repeat/arp feature and fingerdrumming with my maschine MK3 hardware, so if i can keep that and program through XO or Atlas 2, i might have to do that.