Coming up: Free Maschine update with VST/AU plugin hosting

So? It's one man's opinion. There are going to be good and bad reviews of products and that's a good thing for those who are looking for feedback on a product. It's good to see the pros and cons.

Adding nice features found on another product into another makes the latter an "emulator"? It just happens to be that the MPC has many nice *standard* features that would go well with Maschine.


Thanks to all who offered sincere feedback on the pros and cons of Maschine. Especially vs. an MPC since the latter is what I am accustomed to using. I'm holding off for now but keeping a close eye because I feel Maschine is heading towards a promising direction. The VST hosting is what got my attention but other things are a bit of a turn off IE:

1. Skimping out on the hardware is a BIG no no. Especially if one performs live.
2. Certain basic features (time stretching) and better editing capabilities have yet to be implemented.
3. I think i read correctly where it was stated that Maschine sees only one controller? No good if that's the case.

Lastly sorry for bringing up the MPC here (i think i started the whole gala with my initial Maschine Vs MPC question). Looking at it now I could have posted my question elsewhere in this forum so i apologize for the hi-jack.

Cheers!

 

my 2 cents.

Maschine clearly has a whole number of features that mirror MPCs and they are clearly marketing it to artist/producers - like me- who have lusted after that kind of tech.

having said that, NI also have their own vision about Maschine, and that effects the order of new features that are introduced with the updates - which i have to say has been faster than any of their other software releases.

so influenced by the MPC, yes, direct clone, no.

sowari

 

wow, like an early xmas, this was good news!

 

They didn't. The controller is built very sturdy and solid. You'd be hard pressed to find a usb controller as well built as this. The top plate is a thick piece of metal. Just because one or two MPC fanboys try to make it an issue so that they have something to say in favor of the MPC doesn't mean that it's true.

Such as?
Anyway, timestretching once implemented will be real-time and will be better than what any MPC could dream of doing.

Nope. It can only see one Maschine controller. It can see other multiple controllers just fine.

 

thank you,very well said..

 

Such as drawing tools for automation, i have requested this long ago, it think this shouldn't be a big deal

 

You mean aside from how it's done now including paint mode? Yeah, I would like a line tool where we can click in snap points and also allow it to snap to the grid. Anyway, it's not like the MPC can even dream of having drawing tools for automation. I was asking STRUT what he meant by "better editing capabilities" in relation to the MPC.

 

i dunno bout those cheap issues that people are having either I guess it's subjective but my maschine definitely does not feel cheap, and I've been bangin the hell out of it, also the face plate has stayed in tact, flat and there has never been any issue in that regard with it. I've had just about almost every controller and my impression of maschine is very solid quality, it's not like my mpc 2500 but it's a very solid sturdy drumpad controller and not at all cheap feeling like a novation or korgpadkontrol or something like that.
---
I really really really want to be able to use maschine as an all purpose audio editor
slice up samples using the hardware and save them to folders that I choose in a simple straight forward manner, no fuss so I can use it for editing samples that I use on other machines or in other applications.

 

WARNING: The truth in this post my be hazardous to your health. lol

I can’t understand why anyone would get defensive over a piece of gear, but I see it happen all the time. The MPC series is the best hardware drum machine/sampler/MIDI sequencer ever created. What is this based upon? Over 20 years in production, 10 models, and the fact that nearly every manufacturer that creates similar products (both software and hardware), references the MPC on their websites and advertisements..including NI. Every producer I have heard of that used sampling drum machines has used or owned an MPC at some point. Maschine (as well Roland’s MV) are influenced by the MPC series. The feature set and layout of the hardware is nearly identical..in other words, a clone. If you visit the MPC Forum, you will see that MPC user feature requests closely resembles the feature set of Maschine. Every Maschine OS update has included MPC features so I can’t understand why someone will imply that NI isn’t making Maschine to do what the MPC does and more. The fact that they are adding VST instrument support significantly improves its standalone features making it a music production center (aka MPC). Why argue this point?

I still use an MPC everyday. I also own Maschine but don’t use it as much because of the lack of features I want/need. VST hosting will change this. Improvements in the areas I suggested will make be forgo the MPC altogether. Why? Because then it will do everything that an MPC does and more. As of today, I can’t leave the MPC because Maschine doesn’t sample, sample edit, and sequence MIDI gear nearly as well.

Maschine’s controller is built like all the other drum pad controllers on the market. I find ALL of them cheap..like plastic toys compared to products in the past. Most companies have gone this route because it is cost effective. Companies don’t build products as robust as the original Akai MPC 60/3000 or the Roland A-90 keyboard controller. But even though Akai used a less expensive design in the MPC 2000XL, 2500, and 5000..they are all pretty solid. I would like a Machine controller to be just as robust. This is my feature request and I would pay for it. The metal plate on my Maschine controller is faulty. NI glued it to the unit. This is fact not fiction…and reporting my findings have nothing to do with being an MPC-fan boy. I could care less if anyone buys an MPC. Akai no longer makes my favorite MPC…the 2500.

Maschine lacks basic sample editing functions found in both hardware and software samplers. I listed them in the feature request thread numerous times. Hardware samplers produced 10 years ago do more. All leading software samplers are better at sample editing than Maschine. You need to look no further than NI’s own products.

In paving their own path, NI (as well as any manufacturer that wants to stay in business) needs to listen to consumers and release a product that people will enjoy. As I a consumer, I tell manufacturers what I want in a product and it is up to them to deliver if they want my money. Again, NI gets my money because they have and are still producing products that I want/need (see Maschine OS 1.6). I just need them to work on the sampling

 

The point is this is a Maschine forum. Comparisons to the MPC are fair enough but is not the topic of this thread. It is disrespectful to to NI and the whole community to continuously derail every topic to MPC vs Maschine debates. Besides, that has been debated to death in other threads here and around the net.

It's common forum courtesy to stay on topic. There is room for MPC comparisons but not every thread.

 

"I've only seen one other person here mention that on their mpc they like to make patterns/sequences of different tempos (not the same tempo all the way through) that happened to be f-major." just to point out... alot of us myself included have put this in threads where it belongs... the feature request forum....
and yes absolutely there should be healthy discussion of what improvements need to be made... I could direct you to about 2 dozen posts I've made from back pre 1.1 till now and will in the future. and I have many times championed the benifits of more features like timestretch, tempo mapping, midi cc, deeper banking and pad link features, etc... but most of those feature requests are in the feature request forum. features request thread is a great place for discussions like this and I know for a fact NI pays attention. I just want the discussions to not result in bickering..

infact here is one of my tirades http://www.native-instruments.com/forum/showthread.php?t=93728&highlight=door+open+truncate

let me just say on the real one thing that lets me down about this thread is the quality of bickering sucks. if your gonna do it do it right..
"you should see this
machine goes to sleep next to stonehenge" features2010 bickering legend LOL

 

^that

 

I was also looking for NI to simply give Maschine Battery Cells with all parameters intact. Now that we will have VST support, I hope that NI plugins will seamless integrate with Maschine similar to how Reason now integrates with Record.

 

well battery strictly running as a vst inside maschine should be just fine. (in my opinion not to discourage yours) because all battery really needs is a great sequencer. and great mapping. so lets assume that either maschine will map the controls for the vst for you OR that you simply hit the midi button and turn on a battery template. wouldn't that work right? though there are feature in battery that I would love to see as dedicated maschine pad upgrades... so i can see this as well but vst hosting is not at all far off from the same kinda integration. kontakt is where i would much rather see tighter integration with nki files. (obviously both would be great though)

 

I've not read many recent replies but, about feature requests, save it for another thread?

 

I have to agree and add this. Why didn't NI just turn kontakt into Maschine. I was thinking about this last night watching a tutorial on Kontakt. I'm curious to know if the developers of Battery/Kontakt share the code with the Maschine developers or are they the same people.

 

If that is the only way I can get the power of Battery in Maschine...great. However, the work flow will be different since we will have to use a mouse in order to operate Battery as a VST. If Maschine had Battery-like cells that we can assign samples and tweak using Maschine's hardware...this would be ideal.

 

You know what's funny ?
We've all asked for MIDI support. And we all know we wanted that to sequence VST instruments.

Well NI said it's harder than they thought so... they've decided to implement VSTs in Maschine.

WAY TO GO ! I love you guys !

 

i think many ideas for NI products start in Reaktor and then evolve with the coding.

i feel Maschine is still close to Reaktor whereas Battery has moved away quite a bit in terms of its structure. many Battery users, wanted Maschine to be Battery version 4, but for me that would have made Maschine quite different.

sowari

 

this would be very nice and is something that i have also dreamed of.

sowari