The kits from Battery 1 are also provided, which is handy, as you can use version 2 in your old songs without having to re-import the v1 sounds. Anyone lacking a DVD reader on their PC or Macintosh, take note.! In addition to Battery 2 itself, the DVD contains over 3GB of sampled drums including acoustic, electronic and percussion kits. The disk insert states that it contains the 'Installation CD' - but it's actually a DVD.

when using it to handle main rhythm, percussion and tom-fill duties) with the largest of Battery 2 's new factory kits loaded.Īt first I thought that NI had forgotten to include the library disks with Battery 2. I ran the review copy on a 3.4GHz Pentium 4 in 1GB of RAM with no problems, and it demanded little more than 10 percent of my total CPU power in typical use (ie. Native Instruments claim that it will run in 256MB of RAM and up to 4GB of disk space under 400MHz Athlon or Pentium 3-based PCs, or a 500MHz G3 Mac, but as usual, they suggest using beefier machines than these for optimum performance a 1.2GHz Pentium 3/4 or Athlon PC, or a 1GHz G4 Mac, with 512MB of RAM, is recommended. Now, at last, it's here - does it smooth out the wrinkles of the previous version?īattery 2 will run as a stand-alone application, or as a plug-in under VSTi-, DXi-, RTAS-, or Audio Units-compatible hosts. But there were a few quirks in its operation, and I found myself hoping that an upgrade would take care of them someday. It was great for slinging together a 'kit' of drum samples and for coming up with rhythms quickly, and much faster than using my old Akai hardware samplers to do the same thing. I've been an ardent fan of Native Instruments' original Battery sample-based software drum module since it was unveiled back in 2001. Is it all John Bonham tom mayhem, or is it limper than a Kraftwerk drum solo? Two years on from its original release, Native's virtual drum module gets its first full upgrade. The left-hand part of the Edit Pane changes according to the selections made on the tabs at the top left of the pane, as shown in the other screenshots in this article, while the display on the right shows the waveform of the currently selected Cell for editing.

The Master section is the top strip of this window, above the Sample Matrix of grey Cells in the middle, and the Edit Pane is the section at the bottom. Battery 2 has the same quasi-military look as the original version, as you can see in this shot of the program running under Cubase SX on the review PC.

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