Announcing: Maschine+

i love my machine / mk 3 .... but i also love my akai mpc live. although akai Sequence workflow gets realy on my nerves. but sorry...one thing is quite obvious for me: MPC Life is something completely different. my machine is a little lonely without the mighty Komplete/ nks world that i love. an no touch screens pendent on at least a battery. When I close my notebook and put the MK 3 machine on top, the package is not smaller either and I have everything I need on board. power and all packages all plug-ins working. I also ask myself what happens to the performance of Machine Plus when a lot of plugins effects, many tracks, many samples are running. I don't trust that more complex projects are possible with the machine Plus hardware. But I would be happy if I am wrong. let me say it this way: my beloved machine a few Times a year unfortunately i have to take my Mpc live to jam on traveling or outdoor..., even if I find their workflow unbearable and of course you are a lot more sexy. But when you've grown up you can go to the park with me to make music. i promise

 

How do you know they didn’t?

 

I don’t. Let’s hope they did!

 

Because if they don't manage to add some of that even on iOS apps, how are going them to manage to port the required code into DSP? (which requires redraw algorithms...)
The expertise coding skills required for DSP programming in such platforms (Texas Instruments, SHARC...) is more "baremetal" than the expertise required to put code on ARM device and even more to just port x86 code into dedicated linux embed (but for those two are tools like XCode or similar frameworks for Linux). These tools aren't baremetal so there's where latency and cpu consuming starts... then (again) the power in x86 atom (with lots of dedicated instructions like SSE) vs the power of ARM specific apple chip is another point. Apple has going growing tools to improve these process like Metal for graphics (and pointing in the name the intention to be near DSP coding...) and at the same time has been improving the power on their proposal being next gen ARMacs the point of merging the best of those worlds... for those who had ported properly their code obviously (Final Cut on Mac mini ARM running 3 threads of 4k video or desktop games running on Rosetta 2.0)


Apple will release some new intel macs alongside but probably for the higher tier (the Pro) until a day in the next 2 to 5 years it will ditch completely x86 intel chips.

 

Honestly I love the concept, but seeing the cpu usage in the demo...hmmm...I may want to stay tethered to my powerful laptop.

 

You missed my point in this thread too, homie. Maybe I’m not being very clear today.

How do you know they didn’t explore adding a DSP and decide it was too complicated, too expensive, too...anything? People are already complaining about the M+ plus. What do you think a DSP would have added to it?

 

The info on this product is a bit Incomplete i find, it does not really state what it can fully do, for example; can it run the full versions of Komplete instruments such as reaktor and kontakt, and not player versions. Obviously you can install expansions, players, some effects, and massive, but are those the regular version or are they special lite versions - if you have komplete ultimate, can you install this on it.

 

When is Maschine Jam standalone being released? I hope I will be able to plug in my Maschine Studio.

 

The software that comes with it is the only software supported , so only player versions of reaktor and kontakt and ,massive ,fm8 , monark , retro maschine, , prisim

 

If this does bass and drums with pre recorded LoFi/reverse vocal tracks I’m happy.
I prefer a reduced instruction OS over Windows to run MIDI/Audio, and my PC just for synths and samples.
Also will run Maschine Plus into my project window where my hardware, software and sequences all can have further processing from my DSP rack.

Going to be fun, already pre ordered but if I think valuable features are missing I can bail.

 

that is a bit annoying but understandable as the resource management is different. I am going to guess that the os is a linux variant or something dos like. do the player versions play with full capacity the sounds and projects your create in the full versions? my main interests in this, beside standalone is as well taking a lot of the pull the Maschine 2 software has on a cpu when run in a daw, especially running reactor, when in that mode. it would be freakin' awesome if it could link in the DAW to do that fully. then your mobile setup with laptop just pretty much doubled it's production capacity.

 

I agree with you here - even a good MBP I find cannot handle really serious Maschine projects (yes I had one). Only with a Mac Pro have I felt I had enough resources to really push it hard. I can't imagine doing a really big project with low latency on the +.

 

Yes Linux ,I’m not sure about full versions, but D-One has one now , so hopefully he’ll answer some of our questions.

 

I think when things get too complicated , it will be time to swap to controller mode

 

That will be NI’s get out of jail card. And this is why I am skeptical about the future of the +. You can’t do that in standalone? Solution: hook it up to a computer!
But that’s not a true standalone anymore, is it?

 

This is not fully correct. It‘s not player versions, however not all parameters are exposed, only those that are pre-mapped in the NKS, as far as I can tell from the currently available information.

 

I have an idea that might now be too hard to implement with the Maschine+.

A thing Maschine is great for in production is the sampling and slicing, so you will need a computer for loading things to sample or chop up, wheater it's through a direct connection or loads the file on to the SD card.

Now becuase the Maschine+ has a wifi connection maybe there could be a phone app made for the Maschine+.
So you could transfer files from the phone so it can become more portable or even allow you to stream whatever sound comes from the phone.
That would be a cool option in my workflow.
I'm a random grabber (sample-based, no other pun intended).

A quick other suggestion for the future.
I bet many are asking for a battery option already.
So I had an idea based on the MPClive2 deal.
What about a portable monitor that has battery power to also power the Maschine+?
Becuase the MPClive2 has a speaker built-in but it would be nice to put the speakers wherever.
I much prefer the Maschine workflow in comparison to the MPC stuff.

I'm currently a Maschine Mikro user and that and a laptop is still pretty portable and a lot more flexible on a whole including all the other software I have so the upgrade isn't worth it for me apart from the fact will include an audio interface...
So my final "putting it out there" type thing is: A Mischine+ Mikro wouldn't go amiss.

Cheers, All 'as one, One 'as all ya'll !!!!

 

The fact they already have their main plugins or even plugins at all is a massive jump in the world of hardware.
MPClive did a couple of the basic ones but the Novation main plugins are industry beasts.

It will be nice to see how this develops with firmware updates.

My self I'd like to see an option with the Maschine software to become a complete workhorse.
At the moment it is like the first Ableton window, so an added more DAW like editing mode would be amazing.
It would only be possible in the computer software.

But it would make a lot more people buy into the Maschine world on a whole.

Becuase it is a lot to do with a budget these days the fact you can buy a controller and get a full DAW with it will make it the massive turn to for budget creators.

 

Sorry I meant player version of kontakt + reaktor

 

Meh, that’s the way virtually every music device on the market works. Buy a Korg Minilouge and try to run a third party VSTi on it. You can’t. But you can use it as a MIDI controller and do it!