Native Instruments Virtual Drums/Percussion

Battery is a software application and plug-in that can be used as a stand-alone software instrument, or as a plug-in inside a DAW. Battery is a huge library of drum samples. This includes 'acoustic' sounds as well as 'synthetic' sounds. The synthetic drum samples include samples from analog drum machines and also sample from digital drum machines. There are also a large amount of pre-processed/treated/effected drum samples included if you don't want to spend the time to tweak raw or stale sounding drum samples. Battery can be purchased on its own from Native Instruments, however I received it as part of the Native Instruments Komplete Bundle. It can be downloaded off the NI website and installed. Authorization is completed using the NI Service Center application. SUITABILITY/PERFORMANCE Battery is really easy to use, mostly because it has one purpose - trigger drum samples. It is simple to load the included samples with Battery, and also load samples that weren't included in the library if you have some of your own that you would like to use. There is a lot of editing that can be done with the samples like: effects, adsr envelope, etc. One of the best effects is the 'saturation'. It is really useful for making the drum samples 'punch' in a mix. I have always wished that Battery included a sequencer for drum pattern editing. My wish came true with NI released Maschine, but I would have rather seen it included in Battery earlier. Having a library of patterns would have also been helpful. OVERALL OPINION Native Instruments have clearly moved on from Battery to Maschine as their synth-drum software of the future. However, Battery has a lot to offer Komplete users that don't want to purchase Maschine. The classic synth drum sounds are all included (808, 909, Linn, etc) and there are plenty of unique sampled drums included as well. This library was really designed to compete with BFD2, Superior Drummer 2, Addictive Drumms, Steven Slate Drums, etc. You should look into the NI Studio Drummer Series if you want realistic multi-sampled drum sounds. Battery still gets use in my studio for layering individual drum samples.