Unfiltered Audio Battalion now in VCV Rack: explore the engine of the experimental drum machine with five dedicated modules.
Good news: the Battalion modules are also now available for download for the 4ms Meta Module.
In my opinion, Unfiltered Audio’s Battalion is the most powerful and experimental drum machine on the software market. The combination of colorful drum synthesis and sampling, original effects, and deep sequencing is a powerhouse of a drum synth.
Now comes an interesting step. After Unfiltered Audio already released two send effects as the free BattleFX plugin, the Battalion sound engine is now also available for the modular software world for VCV Rack.
Unfiltered Audio Battalion VCV Rack
Battalion by Unfiltered Audio is now available for VCV Rack as well. Not in the same form, and not in its entirety.
Unfiltered Audio has packaged a large part of the sound engine into five dedicated VCV Rack modules.
The first module is the Battalion Drum Synth, a multimode drum Synthesizer voice that packs over 20 drum synthesis engines into one module: kick, hat, snare, clap, modal, cowbell, FM, additive, chaos, VOSIM, SUMSYN, reson, and more.
Each algorithm features four dedicated controls, plus pitch and an AHD envelope with curve control. Stereo connectivity and each parameter offers a CV option.
Then, Battalion Tone is a multimode distortion and multimode filter. On the distortion side, you get 10 rich-sounding distortion modes, including wavefold, tape, tube, dropout, and more. The filter offers six unique filters (scream/dark, and comb).
A highlight is the ability to switch the internal routing order, so you can use the distortion/filter before or after it.
Battalion Shatter brings Battalion’s unique stereo glitch delay to the VCV world, which combines granular stretching, sample crushing, and feedback. It offers ping-pong, ducking, tilt EQ, sample-rate reduction, and clock sync
Also in this package is the Battalion Headspace Reverb, based on the reverb in the SILO granular plugin. It has 10 distinct reverb modes (dark, glitter, flutter, bokeh…) with pre-delay, tilt EQ in/out, and sample-rate reduction.
Last but not least, the Output section offers a maximizer, a 3-band EQ, gain, and a multimode clipper.
Since Battalion is now available as a VCV Rack module, it’s also possible for the developers to port it to the 4ms Meta module, making the drum engines available for hardware modular systems as well.
To run on the Meta module, they need to be transformed into a specific format by the developers. This happened now and is available now for the hardware.
First Impression
Even though I don’t use VCV Rack much, I find this move very exciting. Firstly, the engine can now be used even more flexibly and modularly, and secondly, the drums can now also be used as sustained FX algorithms in Eurorack with the 4ms Meta module.
The new Unfiltered Audio Battalion modules for VCV Rack are available now for $10 each or $30 the entire bundle. Battalion is now on a Summer sale for $69,99 for a limited time.
More information here: VCV Rack Store
The plugin is available from my partner
Yep, it’s coming to Metamodule – they confirmed it on the forum.
Looking forward to trying it out as it is indeed a superb drum synth.
Is the meta module compatibility a fact or an assumption ?
it’s coming. They said it on the forum
The MetaModule version was actually available before the VCV versions due to the delay between their submission to VCV and the modules appearing in the VCV Library. The MetaModule version can be downloaded from UA’s Dropbox (per their Facebook announcement):
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/f0bgvfpyq67svuhwga893/Battalion-v2.0.0.mmplugin?rlkey=a10ngooabqj4glgb6p452yuki&e=1&dl=0