Ashamed: still no undo on Battery 4.

I've owned Native Instruments for many years now.

I tell you frankly that, had I known that Battery and many other Native Instrument programs had no undo, I would not have gotten involved with this program in the first place. But, frankly, as a programmer it never occurred to me that someone in 2008 could write a program without an undo - I didn't even bother to check it, a terrible mistake I've been paying for for years.

Now it's 2014 and there's still no way to undo changes. Every time there's a new release of this program, there's a chorus of people saying, "Why can't we undo?"

For shame!

Do NOT tell me that "you can't do undo with VST programs" - because it isn't true, I've written a (simple) VST plugin with undo myself (using the Juce C++ library, highly recommended). Sure, I understand that it might be hard to allow Live or your VST host to do the undoes - but you have complete control of the interface within Battery and the actions that they cause within the plug in. You could put an "Undo/Redo" command in your little Edit menu, what's to stop you?

I've kept with this program for many years now - even though the workflow is horrible, particularly in Battery. There are just so many places to click in the Battery window which completely erase your entire drumkit - and there's no way to undo them - and Live, which is my VST host, also doesn't allow me to undo parameter changes to plug-ins.

How are you supposed to work if you can't make small changes and switch back and forth between them? How do professionals actually use this program?

So I'm deeply ashamed. I'm ashamed of myself for making this bad decision in the first place and equally ashamed for not biting the bullet much earlier and moving away from this poorly-written program.

And above all, I'm ashamed for the management and programmers of Native Instruments. You clearly have no pride in your work if after over five years of complaints you can't add a basic feature that's been in almost every desktop application for thirty years now.

 

There are elements of Technical Feats and Diligence into making an Undo feature for B4 IMHO: it's easy enough to store what was clicked on, nudged and selected (values), but I think the issue the Devs run into is if they need to store the State of the Wave Samples because there can be many edits / changes on all those WAVs (in the Cells), and it will use a lot of memory and take time for the previous Sample states to come back in an Undo Redo -- but: not having an Undo / Redo totally kills the Art and WorkFlow of Battery IMHO.

If a user wants to shape and try things, there is too much risk in losing momentary brilliance (due to tweaking) unless one saves every instance with a foot pedal.

Hopefully one day NI will look at it from the Artist Creation Perspective and understand why Undo / Redo is needed for Battery to shine.

(It all probably comes down to Dollars and Cents). Maschine is the focus for the NI programming investments. (The new Maschine v2 Drum Synths are Excellent, Good Job NI on that). Too bad about Battery, it was so close to having a decent (creative) workflow vs constant and guaranteed frustrations when needing to go back a step (which happens all the time). The B4 Kits, Samples and new Layout Design are all great, but it dies in the Workflow when the user cannot Go Back 1 Step. [ The solution doesn't need to have unlimited Undo / Redo. Even Undo Last Step / Redo Last Step would satisfy most of us if not all on this issue -- a good, fair compromise ].

 

Yep +1 for undo here. I'm a new battery user, & have just got caught out by this !

 

So I just bought Komplete 9 Ultimate, and on the one hand, I LOVE the sounds, the feel, the general ease of use. On the other hand, I have one HUGE issue. No UNDO/REDO?!?!?!?! Seriously?

Battery is REALLY elaborate and you should OF COURSE have the ability to undo your previous 25-30 moves (at least)!!! And it's not just Battery, it's every NI plug in!!! The ability to Undo or Redo is standard in any creative software, whether it be audio (Pro Tools, Logic, Abelton Live, Reason, Waves plugs, UAD plugs), visual (Photoshop, Illustrator), video (Final Cut), animation (Maya), you name it. Even comparatively mundane programs like Excel or Word would be almost non-functional to writers, poets, lawyers, teachers, etc. without the ability to go back and forth in your work flow.

When you're creating art especially, the freedom to explore is paramount. It's extremely nerve-wracking and therefore creatively stifling to have that freedom to explore be undercut by a fear of not being able to comfortably return to a previous configuration, or 2 configurations ago, or 5 or 10 or 20 for that matter. I'm completely flabbergasted by this. I've only had Komplete 9 Ultimate for a month and I've already run into situations that required me to import a Battery or Kontakt track from a few days prior from a "Session File Backup" of an old Pro Tools session just to return to an earlier stage of my work, precisely because of the egregious lack of undo. Of course, even this wasn't a real fix, since I still lost a whatever tweaks were made in the interim.

Undo/Redo is a subtle thing; it's not always a simple matter of going back to what you had when you opened up the plug, it's often about going back to something BETWEEN what you had for a while and something you just created. Often the best sounds are discovered right before you go to too far, and so the ability to peel back the layers of one's own exploration is a vital and necessary component to creating dynamic art in the digital age. I find myself doing ridiculous things like making duplicate tracks in Pro Tools of a Battery or Kontakt track, then muting the duplicate track and hiding it, just so I know I can go back to what I had before making any new parameter changes.

In short, THEY NEED TO FIX THIS ASAP and not just in Battery!!! I thought I was going to fall so head over heels in love with NI and that I would pretty much move away from Waves entirely, but I have to admit, the fact that Waves and Universal Audio have always had Undo/Redo buttons in their plugins, has me seriously reevaluating Native Instruments and where they fall on the spectrum of caring about their customers. Really, really disappointed.

Angry,
Gervish