Recycle, Battery, and Logic

Supposedly the best way to bring loops into Recycle, edit them and change tempo, and then bring them into Battery VST in Logic is .sf2 with accompanyiny midi file. When I do it however no samples appear in the GUI. AIFFF works fine, but that is more cumbersome because you have to drag/open the samples into the GUI. Anyone been able to make the Recycle.sf2 export into Battery implementaion work?

 

Has anyone been able to test this out yet? With Recycle open a loop and move Sens slider up a bit and export as sf2 and then load this into battery-> Please let me know your outcome.

::chris_borgia:: (NI)

I will test when i get home, but i would love to hear others results as i have been able to get it to work with sf2 files from the net, but from recycle seems to be the issue.

 

From memory...

I'm away from my Mac at the moment, so forgive me if this is very very wrong.

Somewhere among the Recycle menus is an option to Transmit As One Sample. If you check this before exporting, I believe, all of the slices are embedded together within the SoundFont file (much as you would find them on the Web) and find their way to the proper cells.

I do know that I've used this combination sucessfully somehow.

 

This notion is correct, but does not help in this situation. What we are after is not one audio file. (that is what would happen if transmit as one sample was selected) we are after a sf2 file that has the hits separated, and a file that places the hits on the correct midi note.

::chris_borgia:: (NI) i have had no luck with this, anybody who has recycle and battery that can test on there machine that would be cool.

 

Well, it works with BeatCreator, wich is in any way more smooth and powerful than Recycle. But I'll try with recycle as well and will let you know.

 

okay then: since i don't use logic, i did it in nuendo.

just used export sf2 in recycle (with accompanyiong midi-file), imported midi into midi track in nuendo, then loaded sf2-file through file/add kit in battery vst, it loaded, it played, all samples were in place, no problem - except maybe the poor soundquality of the soundfont-samples (but maybe this was more related to the slice's quality i produced in recycle).

could it be, that as long as logic doesn't support multichannel-vsti you have to set battery to one stereo-pair before importing sf2? a bit far, i know, but...

 

ummmmmm.....???? no, because i am testing on the mac and pc and standalone as well as with in a host like logic. and I am having no luck.

Are you using v2 of Recycle? Thank you very much for taking the time and i will check out BeatCreator now...

::chris_borgia:: (NI)

 

Battery and Recycle

Hi!

I remember having problems at first too (Battery telling me no samples were found).
Then I changed the directory for imported kits in the "Options" menu and after that everything worked as supposed.

The only downside (uhm, anybody in for another "sample management" thread? ;-):
Battery will allways convert the samples to the directory specified in the "Options" menu. I wish it would use the source directory of the SF2 instead (or at least offer an alternative option to do so). That way I would just export the SF2 to my song directory while not cluttering up the general "import" folder with converted SF2's that I may never use again but in that specific song.

Hm, btw, what about a straight REX file support? Logic and the EXS do that now (in version 5.x) and I must say it's simply brilliant, especially as it allows to preview REX files in the song's tempo and as you don't have to own ReCycle in order to make use of them (with Battery you have).

For the record: All the above is working under Win98SE and Logic 4.8.1./5.x.

Cheers,
Sascha

 

hello chris, i checked again:

if i open 'load kit/add kit' i get to choose from [allkit types]: Battery (.kit), LoopAZoid (.lpz), LM4 (.txt), SF2 (.sf2) - the one you're looking for, Reaktor (.map), MPC 2000 (.pgm)

if i open 'add cells/add layer' iget to choose from [all samples]: WAV (.wav), AIFF (.aif/.aiff), MPC 2000 (.snd)

all i tested this way imported the samples seriously well. this means on a win-DAW. i can't tell what it is like on a mac. but i remeber from working on some (from OS 8.6 to 9.1), that they're pretty picky about the file types offering you in an 'open'-selection (no matter what types the application is telling it to handle).

on winXP no problems at all so far (except for the dual-cpu bug with all ni-products, grrr!)

i imported midi and .sf2-files from recycle 2.0 via 'add kit' not to confuse with 'add cell' or 'add layer'. it works in standalone and vst as well.

and, sascha: i imported .sf2 and midi from my desktop as well as from my imported kit folder and others. the kit-folders are no special folders at all, just generic OS-folders (at least on win32 OS). so this can't make any difference to the choice the application gives you in an open-file-dialog (as long as there's not something messed up with the OS you're using or how you're using it).

btw: you can generate very stunning drumloops by importing from recycle/beatcreator to an existing kit using 'add kit' instead of 'load kit' (at least as long as there are enough samplecells left to import to).

user interface of battery is not at all the most obvious and intuitiv you could wish, but once you found your ways, it's working all out fine...

regards

 

hi sascha, I forgot two things:

first, I'm definitely in for another sample management-thread, yeah. just add some 'save self contained'-topic and I'll be there. I think this kind of feature, and a browser to complement it, could solve any of the problems we're talking about here. Both features work great in ableton LIVE and give you control over what is saved where and when. And, hey developers, it should be simple to implement, shouldn't it?

second, the select import folder-option just works for the samples you already imported, it should have nothing to do with from where you import them (I import them from any place I like, even diskettes and network folders)

regards

 

Hi,

I know I can *import* SF2 from any place I like, but the resulting folders for the converted samples and .kit files over here will allways be saved into the folder specidied in the "options" menu (as said, I'm on Windows, but from what I know so far it should be pretty much similar on Macs). I really wish there was another option. I often use recycled files in a song dedicated context, so they defenitely make no sense in any sort of general folder. Requires another cut/paste action inside explorer/finder.

Re: the sample organisation thread (I don't want to start a new thread yet...:
Whenever I save a .kit it will add a folder with the samples inside, named "kickass set samples". This to me sometimes makes no sense either as I may allready be happy with a group of samples that I for example may have saved in a folder for the EXS24. In the end I could of course delete the EXS's folder (it will find the samples from the one Battery created too), but that can't be it. The creation of a new folder when saving a kit should be optional and if the user chooses to use an existant folder, Battery should just remember the sample location and only create a .kit file.
Again I can only recommend having a look at FXpansions DR-008 preset saving scheme which allows exactly that (sorry, PC only).
Oh well, for now I am just using Logics internal preset menu to save things, but of course whenever I'm backing up a song to CD I will have to use Battery's save option to get all required samples into my song folder. Also, this is required once I want to use the set in Cubase (which I still - unfortunately, heh...- have to use every now and then too).

Cheers,
Sascha

 

agreed!

and again - chris this is for your record! - I think, some option like choosing between 'save' and 'save self contained' would solve this. especially when expanded with an option to pick the samples you like to have added and the ones you like not (like wavelab 4 and others do it).

well, and if not starting it in a thread, then at least i'd like to produce daily pressure to ni to have them battery checking up with the skills of their own kontakt...

btw: forthcoming cubase SX might cure some depressed cubase users and logic users alike. its handling is much like nuendo and it doesn't look like toys'r'us anymore. but I for myself am waiting for samplitude 6.5 (with emagic now) 'cause Steinberg mixing algorithms really suck in terms of quality, even with nuendo, and samp's are the most superbe you can ever think of.

have a nice day

 

Ok, i got ZeroG's BeatCreator-> very cool program, and i was successful in exporting a sf2 file and loading it into Battery. So I can confirm that Battery does indeed open the sf2 file format.

But I am still not successful in loading a sf2 file created with Recycle. I pose the question again. Has anyone been able to do this?
if so on what platform Mac or PC? What version of Recycle 1.7/2

Thanks
::chris_borgia::

 

hi, chris, maybe you overread the fact that I was able to do so. with recycle 2.o using export with midi file, on winxp, battery as vst in nuendo. I can't understand that there should be any trouble other than related to logic. Have you tried it in some other sequencer?
I tried it via 'add kit' in standalone mode too and the .sf2 showed up in the dialog and loaded like it should and like it did in nuendo.

hmm... what is this?

 

Hi Chris,

As said before in this thread (atom_b seems to prove that as well), I have been able to import SF2 (created with ReCycle 2.0/PC) into Battery pretty much flawlessly. Working both in standalone and in VSTi mode (using Logic).
Don't know what's happening over at your place...

Cheers,
Sascha

 

Opps! You did say it works for you, sorry about that Atom and Sascha. It is just driving me crazy over here as to why it would not work for me. Unfortunately I don't have recycle here at the office for testing, but in my studio at home i do, so I can’t get in and recheck it untill later tonight.

But i know on a MAC using v2 of Recycle and importuning into Battery (standalone) i was unsuccessful. So was a customer on the phone...actually that costomer was Jalt107 the tread starter...Perhaps it is a mac thing? You guys are on PC right?

::chris_borgia::

 

I am, but I think Atom (what a name, btw...) is on Mac.
Anyways, did you try to change anything in your options menu? As said, SF2 import started working for me after I specified some directory there.
Strikes me though - I can't see a reason why it would open SF2 created with Beat Creator but wouldn't open any that were done with ReCycle.

Cheers (and good night... yawn),
Sascha

 

Hi Chris,

I never had any trouble importing SF2 files created with Recycle 2 into Battery on my Mac. It´s strange that it don´t work for you, I have no idea what could be the reason.

greetings
Jan