Drag and Drop in to Battery?

How awesome would it be to able to drag and drop audio clips that you just recorded into Cubase, straight from the arrange window into the Battery Cells? Like how you can with Groove Agent…

Im just saying… Steinberg are german, Native Instruments are German, why dont they pop over to eachothers headquarters and have some brockwurst and discuss this… Its not difficut to code and it would make alot of ppl really happy! More money for both, WIN WIN

hehe anyway its worth a try. :mrgreen:

Couldn’t agree more, but I doubt it will happen. NI know what’s required to make it happen but have not implemented it despite lots of requests.

You can of course do this with Steinberg’s drum plug, which I sometimes use.

isn’t it time for a Battery 4 soon, hasn’t been updated in a long time, maybe it’ll happen then, would be cool

brockwurst?

I’ve got a working solution … working in that I use it every day:

I’m using 2 additional pieces of software with Cubase.

  1. VST-XML Translator: http://vstxmltranslator.blogspot.com/
  2. FL Studio (as a ReWire device): http://www.flstudio.com/

Now, the way I work is I load FL Studio as a ReWire device, undock the FL Studio browser from its main window, and close its main window, so all I get is a floating browser. I can drag/drop from there to any pad in Battery, or to the timeline, or to Kontakt, etc.

To get regions from the arrange window into Battery, I have VST-XML translator running in the background, and I can drag regions from Cubase to its window. (You can set it to auto-copy to a specific folder on drag/drop.) I have that folder set up in FL Studio’s “File” settings (you can add folders or drives, as you like), and so I click refresh on the FL Studio browser, and then drag/drop directly into Battery.

This is the fastest and easiest way I’ve found. The benefit of the FL Studio browser is that it drags/drops everywhere, up/down arrow automatically auditions the next/previous sound file (.WAV, .AIF, .OGG, etc.) … and because it’s ReWired, loops play back at project tempo when auditioning while the sequencer is running. The FL Studio browser is FAAAST compared to anything else I’ve found, and it’s really intuitive to get around.

Best thing is, I don’t think you have to even purchase a license of FL Studio, as the limitation in the demo is that you can’t save. Since you’re only using it as a glorified sample browser, you can just get (and use) the demo.

I’ll be doing a video describing this workflow in better detail, as well as a custom solution I’ve devised for drum programming in Cubase using Battery as the sampler.

Hope this helps!

~Stu

sounds cool, I’m really looking forward to those videos! Hurry up, please :wink:

Wow there’s a waaay easier way to drag n drop to 3rd party plugins that doesn’t require rewiring to another DAW.

Here’s the easy 2 click workaround I use:

click 1: drag audio file(s) from arrange window, media bay, etc… to the VST-XML translator.
click 2: drag audio files(s) from VST-XML translator and hover over the Cubase icon in the taskbar (but don’t release the mouse yet!) until you see the 3rd party VST GUI re-appear then drop sample(s) into the 3rd party VST.

Its just like Ableton/Simplar but with Cubase/Kontakt(or your 3rd party sampler of choice) :sunglasses:

Cool, well thanks guys, both seem like good enough workarounds,

still i would really like to see this feature in the next battery update - it would make life alot easier…

Bugger, I see the VST -XML translator is WIN only…
what a shame, i hope they release a OSX version soon :cry:

It’s a shame. And Drag and drop is not working with Kontakt 4 either, don’t know for V5.
But the most ridiculous thing is that NI blames Steinberg and Steinberg blames NI. I could quote support emails from both companies…

But drag and drop with Battery works in Live and it is supposed to work in Reaper as well. That’s why I think it is a Steinberg thing.

Look at Ableton Live: seamless integration of Drum Racks, browser and host. Multi outs are handled easily. Just drag and drop FX onto cells. The key names in the MIDI editor get their names from the samples automatically. You don’t even need a 3rd party plug in. The downside: Live’s browser is fast as lightning but it’s by far not as sophisticated as Mediabay. No categories, no tags. Just folder structure and a simple search function.

The way that is easy for both PC and Mac and does not require anything:
You can drag and drop into Battery from any Windows folder or Mac Finder window.
So if you are editing an audio part on a track that you want to drop into Battery, Bounce it, rename it in the info line, if you have the your project audio folder open you will see the newly bounced audio show up. Simply drag it from the folder onto a Battery cell and you got it.
If you have a dual monitor set up it s easier, on a single monitor, it requires a little arranging for a smooth process.

What you suggest might work, but for the majority it is a workflow killer. Especially if you know that it is a lot easier either with other plug-ins or in a different DAW. It’s one of those long-term wanted features, it has been on the screen for so long and what we get it Loopmash for iOS. :frowning:

I agree it needs to work properly. These workarounds are workflow killers, but at least you can get working if you need to.

and Steinberg says “it does work properly”. And they are right.
And NI says “it does work properly”. And they are right.

And the consumer says “it doesn’t work properly”. And he es right, too.

It’s a matter of communcation and the will to make consumers life easier, where both, Steinberg and NI fail in some details…: NI could implement the “VST-XML”-dragndrop-object format. Steinberg could implement, what VST-XML-Translator does, namely render the audio regions to wavs and use these files as dragndrop-object…

But nobody does, but a genious, who provided the functionality with VST-XML-Translator.

Life could be one or two clicks easier still, though…

Huh? They’re not, because it doesn’t work properly.

+1 for drag and drop to 3rd party plugins. This has been asked for so long.

Hmmm … I don’t get this. If I go to any windows folder, then Cubase loses active window focus and all the hosted VST/ VSTi GUIs disappear.

How can you drag to a Battery cell if you can’t see the GUI (rhetorical question … you obviously can’t). Or are you talking about loading files from inside Battery through Battery’s brower function while hosted by Cubase?

Or is there something else I am totally missing?

Como

You have the Battery GUI open and are ready to drop the file, when you click on the file in the folder, the Battery GUI dissappears, but once you continue to drag the file over to Cubase the Battery GUI re-appears and you can can drop it.
It only dissapperas for a second. It is like this on windows, but on my mac the gui is always there, go figure.

@johngar … TY … I’ll try that.

Second point. The VST-XML Translator: http://vstxmltranslator.blogspot.com/ ‘download’ link on the page doesn’t seem to be working.

I’m getting the ‘404 error.’

Unless you have to make a donation before you try it? But it doesn’t say that on the page.

Anyone know any other source for this program?

Thanks.

Como

here ; http://dl.dropbox.com/u/705552/vstxml-translatorv1_0_3.zip