Hi

I am new about Battery4

I was surprised not to find the batch compress option in Battery 4 to compress files to NCW as in Kontakt
I tried the "save Kit as" also, it showed a similar window as in kontakt but without the "compress samples" box.

Even more surprised not to find this topic in forums
(but i did search 5 min then came here, but hey, what else can i typed after trying " bath compress battery 4" and " ncw battery 4" in google)

Battery 4 can handle NCW files
I made a test and the only solution i have found is to convert them with kontakt then batch resave the kit with battery 4

Am I missing something? an option?

thanks

 

Think it may have something to do with the Backwards compatibility of NI instruments i.e Earlier versions of Battery could not handle NCW files therefore to preserve compatibility with say Battery 3 files are not natively presented NCW.

Many kontakt libraries are still in wav format for the very same reason.

However it could be a good idea but would require the engine to be completely redesigned I imagine as Kontakt normally decompress files in real time playback.

A good test to try would maybe be to compare loading times & whether it affects playback at all etc.

Am sure there a better explanation than this but not completely sure myself.

 

A complete integration do NIs products will only happen when include Maschine, Maybe with kontakt 6, Battery 5 ans Maschine 3...
When ssds becape cheap will not be a problem, but the fact is that drum samples are often user by many in other samplers/drum machines, só its good to keep the samples usuable for other vstis.
As vstis evolves they make their particular file format. Toontrack, Spectrasonics and Fxpansion accept wavs but you can locate any wav in their folders...

 

It's a nice tip, toshfox, many thanks!

 

What Ovalf says makes a lot of sense *yes* As I suppose you compress to NCW then obviously u need decompression So therefore until NI get Komplete (real KOMPLETE integration) then things the way they B.

For NI themselves they possibly relish the chance to have samples encoded in a format that universal to their products alone. For example check out the way Battery Integrates with Machine. Pretty immense imho.

It is exciting imo to see the way they heading with the whole integration thing. Didn't like the idea at first but that's why they NI and I not LMAO.

You can always convert the samples to NCW in a few ways but u have to work out whether the benefit of doing so outweighs the other stuff.

Like Ovalf said it be cool to take a certain sample u really like and use it across a wide range of instruments etc whatever u want to call them and of course WAV is pretty much standard.

I mean does the amount of disc space that NCW would save it worth the effort? Does it have an impact upon playback etc everything else.

In kontakt with 100GB + libraries for sure its a good idea but with battery well How many kits can you have and how much space you realistically gonna save and does the efffort=worth what u lose.

Good idea though & can see it happening and would be immense to have such an integrated range. Of course there will be those who hate this idea but imho what you get in the Komplete Ultimate range at sale time gives u a huge amount of possibilities.

U could spend a lifetime developing wierd stuff with Reaktor like Tim Exile does lol

 

thanks for the answers guys

Yes it's for the disk space but not only.

I rarely work with wav files and all my tracks are midi instruments so i guess it's about the workflow.
i always compose with kontakt and instruments vst , so i am used to compress these files.

the other reason why I work with NCW is to load more samples in the RAM
I compose a lot with greedy libs as cinematic strings 2 , and even with the option "update sample pool" I need more space ( ncw takes less ram than wav then)

U are right about the fact that i won't get so many kits so yeah maybe I don't need to compress them

 

Well yes but NCW was only ever intended to be used with Kontakt.

The reason it was developed was to save disc space, load libraries quicker and also like u mention you can load about 40% or so more samples into the same area of RAM than with WAV.

However that was in the case of huge libraries with like 10000+ samples etc.

In the case of Battery you are never going to get a library with that many samples loaded at once so their would be little point use using NCW with Battery from a performance aspect even though I get what u mean.

In certain cases it could even have a reverse impact upon loading times etc as decompression needed.

Also keep in mind that another point is that Kontakt has DFD mode with the ability the change buffer settings etc with on the fly streaming. Battery Doesn't.

NCW was developed for Kontakt alone really allthough I understand your trail of thought

 

@ Clandestine I appreciate the details and explanations,
thank u