Battery 3 - Why I love it

Lately I've been experiementing with different beat machines, the one that I've come back to and wins by a long shot is Battery. There is one big reason for me -

Flow: There is a clear flow in battery's interface.

- The top half is all about drum pads - easily color coded, and each pad lights up when hit for an instant understanding of what is going on.

- The Bottom half is tabbed, and flows from left to right - and makes sense.

- Starts with the sample graphic: I always want to see this first, to help identify a sample visually in my mind, and how I can shape it. Envelope shaping is overlaid on the sample graphic itself - giving you a clear understanding of what these otherwise cryptic knobs are doing to the shape of the original sample. There is also a big bonus here: the Vintage sampler mode with different sampler emulations for a more natural sound.

- The next 4 tabs allow for down and dirty stuff: like voice management, humanizing, and velocity sample layering, wave editing and looping.

- Then we have the very easy modulation and effects pages: it's easy to modulate a nice bit of LP filter with velocity, or have use a random square wave LFO to modulate slightly random pitches and avoid the machine gun effect.

- Finally there is also the sample browser - it could be larger, but it is very convenient to drag samples you like into straight into a drum pad.

This is my personal experience, and I have heard many others. Please feel free to enlighten us if you have any other faves!