Review: Battalion by Hidden Path Audio

Hidden Path Audio’s new Orchestral Devices series has started with a bang, as it brings a great selection of traditional and hybrid brass to life within the first installment, Battalion. With great sample content, a solid sound design engine, and 250 presets to get you started, Battalion is a nice addition to the landscape of Kontakt-based brass libraries.

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Review: Battalion by Hidden Path Audio

With Battalion, Hidden Path Audio have taken their first foray into the world of orchestral sampling. However, Battalion goes beyond the great-sounding traditional brass patches you would expect from an orchestral brass library. With the ability to blend four sound sources and control them with independent sequencers, fx, and settings, Battalion is a great-sounding and easy-to-use brass library for both traditional and hybrid scoring

Battalion Main GUI

Battalion normally sells for $349.00 from Hidden Path Audio

Thoughts

The first thing to notice about Battalion is its great-sound samples – the sample content provided here is of an excellent quality that can instantly find a home in both your orchestral and trailer-style tracks. However, while the traditional content offered within Battalion sounds great, the real value here is the processing of this content through Hidden Path Audio’s new Orchestral Devices Kontakt engine. The engine is made up of four soundsources that can be combined and blended to taste. Each sound source offers a browser for selecting the sound to be played, mute and solo controls, a transpose knob to allow for the creation of complex harmonies, independent settings that include filter selections, eq, delay, reverb controls and an envelope. However, in my opinion, the greatest part of each sound source is the excellent independent sequencer each one contains. Each of the four sound source sequencers includes separate lanes for pitch, velocity, and filter with independent step controls for each (1-32 steps each). There is a rate control for each sequencer as well as the ability to play the sequence either forward or randomly. The ability to create independent sequences for each sound source means you can create complex rhythmic and melodic presets that are played by a single key. These sequences can really come to life thanks to the modwheel control that allows you to control the overall dynamics of your combined phrase while still honoring the independent velocity controls within each sound source. The happy accidents you can achieve by simply experimenting with each sequencer greatly increases the fun-factor of this library. My only complaint about the sequencer is that I really wish each sequencer had a randomize function to make those happy accidents even easier to achieve.

The addition of the ability to randomize within a selected key would have been amazing here as well. The main page of the engine includes an XY control to allow you to blend each sound source to taste. The XY control can be turned on or off from the main page and the default CC controls for each can be changed if desired. I would love to have seen automation capabilities on the XY control to allow for recorded XY movements (or even movement presets from the developer), but this isn’t as much a complaint as it is an observation that I believe would allow for even greater sound design possibilities in an already great sound design engine.

You’ll likely want to start by experimenting with some of the 250 presets on offer here, as the presets do a nice job of demonstrating the capabilities of this engine. There are nine categories of presets within Battalion: Core (including traditional brass articulations for ensemble, horns, low brass, trombones, and trumpets), Aleatoric (divided into the same articulations as the Core folder), Drones and Pads, Ostinatos, Sequences, Pulses, Downers, Risers, and Hybrid. My biggest complaint about Battalion comes from the way in which the developer chose to present the presets. Instead of using Kontakt’s snapshot browser, Hidden Path Audio have chosen to include a separate “Load” button from the main screen that opens the Data folder within the library where each of the category folders and presets are located. This isn’t insurmountable by any stretch, but it makes browsing presets more clunky and time-consuming. However, there are some really good presets within Battalion. I was especially fond of those found in the Drones and Pads and Sequences folders. The Sequences give you some great ideas of how to build your own complex rhythmic and melodic phrases using the independent sequencer within each sound source. Lastly, the FX page gives you global options for controlling eq, distortion (tube, saturation, tape), chorus, delay, and reverb. All in all, Battalion has great brass samples, a nice sound design engine, and some good presets to get you going.

Facts

Battalion requires the full version of Kontakt 5.6.8 or later. It downloads as 8.4 GB, includes 250 presets across nine categories, and presents each orchestral brass recording in three microphone positions. Battalion is available from Hidden Path Audio for $349.

Battalion normally sells for $349.00 from Hidden Path Audio

Demos of Battalion by Hidden Path Audio

Videos of Battalion by Hidden Path Audio

Contributor Raborn Johnson reviews Battalion by Hidden Path Audio
“Hidden Path Audio’s new Orchestral Devices series has started with a bang, as it brings a great selection of traditional and hybrid brass to life within the first installment, Battalion. With great sample content, a solid sound design engine, and 250 presets to get you started, Battalion is a nice addition to the landscape of Kontakt-based brass libraries.”