Battery 4.2.0 - suddenly, knobs/faders don't work

ori lichtik

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/69560#Comment_69560

Couldn't agree more!

Just read through all those 8 pages out of frustration.

I actually have Waves V13 for a while now, And having the same issue as everyone here.

Battery 4.3

MacBook Pro (15-inch, 2018)

Ableton 11.2.7

i need Help

Been following this thread hoping for some breakthrough but I’m tapping out and have decided to stop using Battery 4.

I don’t wan’t to, because Battery has been my go-to for almost a decade, but if you’re unfortunate enough to encounter this ghost in the machine, then this the software objectively does not function for you.

You can try to remove other plugins that supposedly cause this issue but that hasn’t been successful for me, and besides that, I don’t feel this is an acceptable solution. Like what’s the endgame here? The only plugin on my machine will be Battery 4 then it will work?

It’s not been easy to find something to adequately and acceptably replace Battery, but FWIW, I think I’ve finally landed on Nuance by New Sonic Arts. Give it a look see if you’re also considering jumping ship.

cygnuszwaan

Confirming that this issue is also caused by Kilohearts plugins.

I'm not paying another cent to Waves and I could go the rest of my life without using their software if I had to... but Kilohearts? Those are some of my favourites. If it's a choice between kHs and Battery, I know which one I'm picking.. just saying.

cygnuszwaan

EDIT: I actually worked this out... I forgot I had a custom default kit set. Went into my preferences and reverted my default kit to Factory Default. Please disregard this message. (It still kinda sucks that any kits I created in 4.2 are trashed as a consequence but I'll live)

I have tried downgrading to Battery 4.1.6 and now even when simply loading in a fresh new instance of Battery or starting the standalone app I get the error message about "your version of Battery is too old to load this file". What file?? The default kit? How do I even go about fixing that?

Then, if I try to create a new kit within Battery by clicking File -> New Kit, the whole app/DAW crashes. This is broken. This workaround is bunk.

Rob Gray

For anyone who has to sadly give up Battery until it plays nicer with Kilohearts plugins, consider Redux by Renoise. It can even do custom articulations with its pattern system. The downside is, because it's so flexible, one really has to set up a "Battery-esque" template to be able to replace Battery with it effectively.

winglet

I responded in this thread more than a year ago on an older machine, and it was infuriating, but I found the best solve was to simply revert to 4.1.6. Just last month my old MacPro died on me so I had to upgrade to a new Mac Studio M2 - literally just got it a couple weeks back. Regarding Waves, I went ahead and did the whole update plan and now everything is on V14. So completely fresh computer, fresh installs of all plugins and Waves V14, and yet the moment I opened Battery (4.3.0) I immediately noticed the same problem I faced a year ago - knobs basically not turning at all, or behaving erratically. Unbelievable that NI has consistently put the blame on Waves requiring an update, and yet with the absolute newest versions of everything across the board, this is still a problem in 2023. So I manually installed 4.1.6 and sadly, I'm not sure if it's due to lack of Silicon support or what, but it's absolutely non-functional and will not even open at all.

So basically, in short, my Beloved Battery is completely useless now, and I have no choice but to jump ship before it sinks.

I think it's a bit shameful and disappointing how much NI has appeared to give up on Battery, which for many years has been one of the best drum samplers on the market in terms of functionality. I do happen to own Kilohearts' software which is awesome (maybe they should make a drum sampler!). But reading throughout 9 pages of this thread and NI shifting blame onto other developers, it's kinda lame. I'm sure maybe there are issues that can be caused by other software, but looking through this thread it honestly appears Battery is the one that needs to be fixed, not the other way around. There has to be a way to address this. (This is not even touching on the fact there are several other bugs and corrupted kits or samples always seems around the corner)

That said, it pains me to have to break up with Battery, but it seems I can't wait around for NI any longer to fix this issue - let alone give it a much-needed V5 update. For now I looked at two alternatives - Nuance by New Sonic Arts, and TAL-Drum by TAL Software. Personally, Nuance is a non-starter because as far as I can tell it only has 16 pads/cells total, and also the interface is a bit drab and clunky IMHO. TAL-Drum ended up being the better alternative of the two (64 cells, still not quite as many as Battery but that'll do). Decent GUI, and all in all feels closest to what Battery did for me without having to reinvent the wheel. I've also used TAL's Juno & Jupiter plugins and they're rock solid and under active development.

I also have Sitala which I like for quick & dirty perc kits, but it's simply not nearly as comprehensive with basically no FX or filters.

ADSR Drum Machine looks very handsome and modern but still only 16 pads.

I'm a Logic user and find its native Drum Machine to be pretty underwhelming.

Things I will miss about Battery which I don't see any alternatives for:

• Transient Master effect built-into every cell (essential for drums & perc!)
• Lots of great options for compression, saturation, lofi, and sampler algorithm
• Articulations (rolls, flams, paradiddles, etc., programmed with the dynamics of a real drummer, a great way to add quick rolls in a musical way)
• Humanize options
• Still the cleanest UI IMHO
• And sure, maybe it's overkill, but you can create kits with 128 cells. I don't usually go that high but I have so many perc kits in the 72-96 cell range, just great for quickly exploring options ;)

mizmizter

This issue is still persisting. I stopped using Maschine in January because the parameters do not function if I'm using Waves in a project. I reached out to Waves to see if there was a solution (which seemed really bizarre to me being that it seemed like a NI issue), but Waves support was super helpful and provided instructions on the remove/reinstall. At the time, I just decided to stop using Maschine instead of messing with my Waves plugins, which were working flawlessly in every other situation. This week I purchased Battery, not knowing the issue is the same. So I went back to the Waves instructions and deleted/reinstalled everything (even though I was running v14 and never had v12 installed on my current computer, which is a MacBook Pro M1). Anyhow, after reinstalling the Waves plugins, the problem persists. The functionality of the parameters is messed up. So unless you decide to leave your samples untouched in your projects, Battery is useless. Waves or NI -- whoever is responsible -- fix the issue already.

icalone

Here we are YEARS after this problem has started happening and NI is still selling Battery 4 like everything is fine and giving it's user base almost nothing in the way of answers to solving this problem. I would say that 50-70% of people that seriously try to use this issue will have the knobs/faders problems because of it's interaction with Waves and other 3rd party software. Paying customers are waiting....

mizmizter

UPDATE: So I contacted Waves and NI, and this is what they had to say.

"We have already made the development team aware of this issue and they are working closely with Waves' development team to resolve the issue as soon as possible. The issue was resolved but it has resurfaced once more. Unfortunately they currently do not have a date they can communicate as to when it will be fixed. When it is it will popup as an available update within Waves or Native Access. As you are on M1 system running your DAW in Rosetta is the only current workaround."

I've confirmed that running in Rosetta fixes the issue. Hopefully they release a proper fix soon.

ryanjraymundo

had this same problem and it seems im way late to the party. but i recently updated battery 4 and was frustrated with the knobs...

BUT I'VE FOUND A WORK AROUND! i have a 2020 imac, ableton 11... I hover over the knob/parameter and use the scroll on my mouse to adjust the parameters. it is not ideal, bc it moves so slow. but it makes it manageble to use.

for some parameters that move painfully slow, i click on the value, type in an estimated value, then fine tune with the scroll on the mouse

Calagan

Wow ! I just discovered recently this issue in one of my session (I didn't use Battery much these last months, and tweaked it even less).

The OP posted the first complain in january 2022 : so it's been (at least) 22 months that NI users have issues with Battery and NI didn't fix anything.

I've got indeed some Waves plugins but they are all V14 (only one is V13, and even this is theoretically ok). Anyway, I don't use them much, and it seems it's not only about Waves plugins.

After reading this thread and understanding the issue better (in short, it's an interaction issue with another plugins - but the NI support doesn't even tell us why and how), I found it to be a very complex problem to pin point.

I reloaded the session I had a problem with, and surprisingly Battery was ok ! So I said to myself : it must be an issue with GUI interaction. So I opened and tweaked ALL the plugins I had in my session (it was a little sound design session, so it was not crowded and had mainly deeply edited audio clips).

No issue !

So maybe it comes from a plugin I dropped on a track, tweaked and then removed. But how could I remember any tiny move I made while producing my stuff ???

Anyway, I'm here in my debugging process, loosing time trying to figure out the problem and testing stuff, when a multinational company weighting few millions $ "doesn't have the ressources" in order to fix the issue.

(and I will not even mention the time I spent these last years updating my sessions each time I updated from Kontkat 5 to Kontakt 6 or Reaktor 5 to Reaktor 6, because they don't care keeping the same plugin ID like so many other devs, even though the changes between K5>K6>K7 are only very minimal...). Did I mention it ?

LIO DIYA

Native Instruments should be ashamed… years later and no fix. Blaming other companies and refusing to fix the issue themselves. It’s YOUR software. Fix the damn issue.

RemiFreamon

I just wanted to say that this issue might have other causes as well.

Today I experience the same symptoms. Knobs and faders acting possessed. Dragging down from 100% to only reach 90% and go back to 100% (while continuing to drag down).

My first instinct was to launch Native Access (NA) to see of there was an update. There was no update for Battery but while trying to download an update for Kontakt, I found out that NA has problems accessing my configured locations for Downloads, Apps, and Content Libraries.

That's when I remembered that earlier I had been unplugging and re-plugging my external USB storage. After close inspection I realised that the system path of my external drive has changed. As you can guess, I keep all my NI content libraries on this external USB storage device.

What used to be: "/Volumes/usbstick" has become "Volumes/usbstick 1" and the old path was no longer working. Restarting MacOS reverted the name of my usb device back to the original path. With this the Battery issue got fixed. What's strange is even with the broken path, I was still able to load kits in Battery but faders were acting up.

I'm sharing this story not because I think everyone else experiencing the issue should look for the same cause. It's unlikely that everyone reporting has problems with paths to external USB devices. I'm sharing it because I suspect a lot of different issues can cause the same symptoms. So rushing to blame Waves, Kilohearts, or any other vendor is probably premature. If broken content paths can cause this issue, I wonder what else.

RemiFreamon

OK, a quick follow up. The problem is only fixed when a create a brand new empty project in my DAW (Logic Pro) but if I open an existing project, the problem persists. Strange.

Calagan

yep strange issue indeed.

Sometime I have the issue, sometimes I don't, and it doesn't seem to be connected to anything I can figure out.

I had the issue in a session where there was not a lot of other plugins involved. And in a session where many plugins from different brands were involved I didn't have the issue...

Usual NI mess...