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Battery
Battery by Native Instruments is a Virtual Instrument Audio Plugin for macOS and Windows. It functions as a VST Plugin, an Audio Units Plugin, a VST 3 Plugin and an AAX Plugin.
Product
Version
4.3
Product
Version
4.3.0
Instrument
Formats
Sample Formats
Loads and/or Saves
AIFF, Akai, LM-4, Reaktor MAP, SF2 (SoundFont), WAV
Copy Protection
Online Activation (Challenge / Response)
My KVR - Groups, Versions, & More
1014 KVR members have added Battery to 356 My KVR groups 1210 times.
Not In Your MY KVR Groups
(or group limitation prevents versioning)
+356 in private groups

KVR Rank

Overall: 320   244   316

30-Day: 272; 7-Day: 326; Yesterday: 219

Battery 4 is the drum sampler designed for the 21st century. It combines a supercharged library, tailor-made for electronic and hip hop music, with a radically-intuitive workflow that keeps the focus on creativity.

Instantly find and arrange sounds with a new, tag-based browser, and route powerful new effects with drag-and-drop simplicity. With a clear, compelling interface that puts incredible power at your fingertips, Battery 4 launches drum sampling into the future.

Latest User Reviews

Average user rating of 4.21 from 19 reviews
Battery

Reviewed By dctoe [all]
January 31st, 2023
Version reviewed: 4 on Windows

This is what a software drum sampler should look like, and it is excellent using factory kits. However, when you start to go off on your own, things can get confusing and buggy very quickly. There are no industry standard template maps and having to map buttons constantly can kill my creative workflow in no time flat. I struggle to find the time to sit down and create them myself.

But if you can afford to take the time to make it your own, it's a more than capable machine. I recommend getting it with some version of Komplete, and getting the value of Kontakt and maybe Massive along with it. Then like me, if you find yourself not using it much, the value in Kontakt and Massive will more than make up for it.

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Battery

Reviewed By mohokios [all]
August 2nd, 2020
Version reviewed: 4 on Windows

imho Battery is great... i own komplete 12...

great quality samples
you can load your own samples
you can make custom Kits
the gui is fine, it's working, it's str8 forward...you see everything you need at once,
there's no need to learn tonz of stuff to use it.

only con i see on it is the 16 stereo outputs... when it comes to big kits with more than 15-16 samples unfortunately i have to run 2 instances of it just for routing them all to different mixer channels.. on every else perspective it's awesome :)

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Battery

Reviewed By Spacer98 [all]
July 7th, 2019
Version reviewed: 4 on Windows

Bad programming (slow in general), would be good dead links to be linked again (users know what I mean). Generally good but...

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Battery

Reviewed By stardustmedia [all]
May 21st, 2014
Version reviewed: 4.1.2 on Mac

Introduction
*******************
A great intuitive sampler specialized for drums including a lot of internal sound processing and warping features.
It's impossible to list all features and review them all. They're just too many :) I will concentrate my review to my workflow and just scratch the surface.

I'd give a 10/10, but unless they fix some little issues (see cons below) Battery 4 has to live with an 8/10.

GUi & Usability
*******************
The GUI change from Batter 3 to 4 is huge and I love it. Editing start and end points is now much easier and faster. Loading samples and assigning them to a cell is a piece of cake. So is layering samples within a cell. Layered samples can be still tweaked separately for some important parameters like pitch, vol and pan.
The new file explorer is also faster and gives you the possibility to tag your own samples, so you can find them much faster, because you don't have to search them on your harddrive. Thus creating your own drum set is done quick and easy.

Processing and sound warping your samples within Battery 4 is straight forward and features a lot of different ways. You can even group cells on a bus and then tweak and process the bus internally.

Sound
*******************
The sound depends heavily on the samples you use, of course. Battery 4 has basically no sound for itself, as long as you just play the samples. As soon as you start to process them it'll change. The inbuilt effects, compressors, filters, etc. are nice, but definitely not the best out there. That's why I route the sounds thru individual outs and process them in the DAW. But essentially you don't need that, in fact you'd be able to produce a whole song just with Battery 4. Everything's in there.

The samples sound very good and clean and come well tagged. The included library is huge and has its own sound character. I call it NI-character. It's a matter of taste. I personally don't like them and always use other sample libraries.

Presets
*******************
It also comes with a lot of complete drum presets. The few ones I checked out are well programmed and include a lot of details. Personally I just love to create new sets from scratch. For newbies the presets are a very good starting point, where they also can learn the features of Battery 4.

Stability
*******************
Battery 4 never crashed on my system (Logic 8 & OS X 10.6.8) and runs tight with 8 mono and 8 stereo individual outs. Some claim, that drums programmed with audio files on audio tracks are more tight and groovey than samplers (like Battery 4) triggered by MIDI. I did a test where the whole drum pattern was created twice with the exact same samples. Once only with audio files on audio tracks (what a hassle to set them and if you have to change the groove ;) ) and once with MIDI. Bounced both versions, switched the phase on one and they cancelled each perfectly out. So there was no difference at all.

Cons
*******************
Here are some issues, that left me a little clueless because they were implemented in Battery 3 and then left out in Battery 4. But I have to tell that they are not a killer:
-) Saving presets in the envelopes is missing
-) Previewing samples in a cell without overwriting the original sample is missing
-) Individual out assignment is not possible directly at the cell fader, but have to be done via right click on the cell and thru 3 sub menus.

Conclusion
*******************
Albeit the issues I use Battery 4 for all projects. It's fast, reliable and gives you a lot of features. I hope they will include the missing Battery 3 features in the future.

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Battery

Reviewed By mhemnarch [all]
February 7th, 2009
Version reviewed: 3 on Windows

(For Battery 3)
Really, I don't think there's anything more to ask for from Battery 3 - the interface is streamlined but comprehensive, and the sample library is brilliant.
I'll cover the library first. There are the basics, of course - TR-808 and 909, CR-78 and Linn Drums. There are acoustic kits ranging from heavy rock to pop to jazz, with several of them sampled in extreme detail. There are also a large number of experimental kits, one made entirely from basic waveforms with processing, one made from samples taken inside NI's Berlin headquarters, and many others collecting various unusual sounds. Of course, the question isn't the amount of sounds - there are dozens of programs that offer large sample libraries - but the quality of the sounds there, and when it comes to quality, Battery is hard to beat. The drum sounds are crisp and useable, and it's hard to imagine anyone exhausting the set. Battery will satisfy everyone from the pop musician looking for a quick preset to the experimental producer creating weird, glitchy sounds.
The interface is next. Battery is easy to use, despite its complexity - there's a sample browser that lets you load your own samples with ease, as well as a system of cell presets that lets you easily drop in different built-in sounds to create your own kit. Effects, modulation, and the like are all in separate tabs, so that you the GUI isn't cluttered up with controls you aren't concerned with accessing. Battery allows you to create your own sounds or use preset sounds easily, making it a real pleasure to use.
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