Battery stacks with many cells per string require sophisticated balancing hardware for capacity maximization, safe operation, and extended lifetime. This paper proposes a sim plified control architecture for redistributive battery balancing topologies. A high level controller defines the link currents to be actuated by Ryback DC/DC converters. Linear transformations are used to rewrite the balancing problem as a regulation problem that can be solved with a saturated LQR. To reduce the overall system complexity and cost, the low-level control requirements are minimized using feedforward approaches based on pulse width and pulse frequency modulation. The control system is developed using MATLAB/SimulinkIPLECS and validated experimentally.