Considering Maschine Mikro, couple questions

Hi there,

I'm currently looking to pick up a Maschine Mikro to use for a bit more 'hands-on' whilst sampling and composing patterns. I don't sample all to often but I'm doing it more frequently and chopping in Logic kinda kills the creativity a little for me.

I appreciate the Maschine is the clear supremo for much better slice control but I just can't warrant £500 (UK Price) on something I'm not gonna use that much. If I get into it with the Mikro, I may upgrade later.

I have a couple questions about the functionality of the Mikro;

1. Does Mikro have auto-slicing of a loop and can you define how many slices (4/8/16 etc).

2. Does it have mute groups?

3. Can you assign a sample across the pads automatically with different pitches on each (I think this is called 'full level' or something on MPC's)?

4. Does it have note-repeat?

Many thanks

 

Ironic that you want to get Mikro because you want to sample more.
In it's current form sampling is one of the weak legs of Maschine.:lol:
However the basic things you mentioned can be accomplished.

Some may disagree but with the actual integration you loose Mikro is a waste.
I'm sorry I just find the difference in the workflow to be something that the price doesn't make attractive.

Especially when you consider that places like GC have instant store rebates on Maschine from time to time for $100, at the same time they will have a mail-out coupon for $75 off on $499.
That makes Maschine a great deal.

I understand why NI made the Mikro, but a little more thought in it's design could have made a major difference.

 

The software is the same, the controllers are different. Everything you want to do you can do with both.

I have both Maschines and the big Maschince is WAAAAAAY better and more useful than the little one.

Save your money and get the big one.

 

Aw man can't a guy set a budget and stick to it? I posted a similar question on a couple other forums and it was like:

'Save your money, get an MPC1K'...

'Yeah but my budget is £300 and I don't need all the extra features'

'Just hold onto your money until you can get a MPC1K'

'I only want something to sample and easily track into my DAW with'

etc etc

My budget is a strict £300, not because I haven't got a penny more (I'm 27 with a salary! Although any money saved is obviously good) it's because I set aside that amount because I thought it was enough to get some equipment that suits my workflow.

Of course there are 'better' options, the Maschine, the MPC1K, but then you could say the MPC2500, the MPC5000, the Linn Tempest etc etc where do you stop?

If the Maschine Mikro does the things I asked about in the OP, then it's perfect for me I think... I hope anyway, I just ordered one

Thanks for the responses

 

I have both and the answer to all those questions is a simple YES.

the big one is nicer however if you just start out, there is nothing wrong with the mikro. but it does require more usage of the mouse where as m1 really needs no mouse work at all...

I think it's easier to go from mikro to m1 than the other way around (those 8 knobs spoil you) here is a video where I give an overview of it. [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYp2p4MYNP4"]Maschine Mikro Nav Button functionality - YouTube[/ame]

 

I bought Mikro. I find that the workflow isn't really hampered by the lack of extra knobs as that functionality is instead relegated to the pads.

 

To me the key is buy from purpose not price.
That's what keeps me from getting caught up in why not get a _ _ _ _ _ .
Unfortunately it also prevents me from buying (or keeping) things that don't flow the way I desire.


I hope you like the Mikro, but for me if Mikro was my only choice I would be using something else.

The power of software with the directness of hardware, becomes a little to gray with the Mikro.
It's similar to how the APC/LIVE combo still falls short for overall interaction.

I guess you will survive based on the fact you have been trying to do this in Logic.

 

but what about what cat said about how the lack of knobs is mostly dealt with by giving functions to the pads on the mikro, is that so, i still haven't got one yet but I'm interested in doing so quite soon, ?
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let me add a bit to what I'm asking/saying, ... for those of us who want to sample some ****, chop some **** up, mangle some **** and sequence that **** will the mikro cut it or what, with little mouse work?

 

I think what people don't get is in current form sampling isn't a maschine strong point.
If you use the sampler along with the vast other things it's capable of then it's ok.
However if sampling is your front line goal and you have some true sampling expectations then it's can be a bumpy road.

This is one of the reason that most Maschine users are on the edge of their seats with expectations and request for the sampler in Maschine.

No doubt changes are coming we just don't know when.
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Overall workflow is severely hampered by the lack of screen and controls in comparison to the full Maschine if you are looking for smooth integration of hardware to software.

 

Question to you . Sorry its a long time after.

Did you like maschine. I am also considering one and the mikro is real cheap right now. I also would like to know, are the mikro pads nice on the fingers compared to the hard ones on my axiom 61 which hurt after a while.

Also, does maschine mikro do note repeat and I mean, If i am holding down 2 or 3 or 4 pads will they all repeat and do I not have to hold a button down off to the side of the pads to make that function stay on.

Also and lastly, are you happy with what you bought now that you have had it a while?

I hope you can answer even though this discussion is old. Then again, I need the benefit of experience from a user, not a sales person and that means the discussion has to be old.


Hope you did get what you want and can help me to as well. Aidan.

 

Ok, I'll do my best to offer my thoughts, but it may or may not be helpful!

I bought Maschine Mikro in the end, and long story short, I don't have it anymore... read on.

First thoughts were amazing, I loved it. The hardware is really well designed, very nice to use, and solid (as expected from NI). Pads are probably the best I've ever used, on par with the PadKontrol I'd say, far better than MPC/MPD etc. As for the note repeat on multiple pads, I'm afraid I don't know, it works great on one pad but I never tried on multiple pads.

Everything Maschine does, it does exceptionally well. The software/hardware integrate flawlessly and honestly, it's a lot of fun initially. I had no complaints for a little while and loved every second of it.

However, I soon found myself getting bored with the Maschine software. It was awesome for sketching beats and putting together little ideas but I found I didn't actually finish a single track inside of Maschine since I bought it. If you make heavily sample based beats with little use of VST's/Effects/Post Processing etc then I think you'd be fine, but if you want to take it further then I think you'll find the limitations and the somewhat lacking nature of the production ability of Maschine.

This is where most people would jump in and say that it's at this point that you bounce all your Maschine stuff out to a DAW or use Maschine as a VST inside of your DAW, and that's fine if you can get on with it, but I really didn't unfortunately.

I'm primarily a Logic user, in the process of switching to Ableton and I found it was a pain to use the Maschine hardware as a controller for Logic. Truth be told I couldn't get it working properly at all, either in Logic or Ableton, now I'll admit that if I had spent more time Googling and messing around then I probably could have done but I couldn't be bothered and it kinda killed my creativity to be honest.

So as time went on I just found myself using the Maschine software less and less and just wanting a decent controller again for Logic/Ableton so I decided to sell it and picked up a PadKontrol, and in all honesty, I'm completely happy with my setup now. I still love NI products and they actually are responsible for most of my primary tools; Komplete Audio 6, Massive, Battery, FM8, Kontakt, but Maschine just wasn't for me.

The only thing I do miss from Maschine is the sampling functionality. There's nothing on the market (other than dedicated hardware samplers) that are as good as Maschine for sampling and chopping. I like Geist for it's functionality, but obviously you don't get the hardware integration so it's less hands on, but I'm prepared to make that sacrifice since the PadKontrol works great for everything else I need it for.

Would I buy it again? No. Even at £199 for Mikro and £329 for Maschine, I just wouldn't want one because it doesn't work well enough as a standalone controller and for versatility and complete customisability I know I can rely on the PadKontrol. Again, I'm sure the Maschine hardware can be configured, but as I said, I couldn't get it figured out.

With all of that said, I'm sure I don't need to say that there are many many fans of Maschine and examples on YouTube of people making some pretty great stuff with it. Whether or not some of the endorsees and notable artists are genuinely as fond of it as some of the promo material and YouTube videos would lead you to believe is up in the air, but I don't doubt that a lot of people absolutely love it.

Technically, in comparison to an MPC I guess there isn't a lot Maschine can't do, but since so much of my workflow is basically in the box and VST's, it just didn't fit into my workflow as nicely as I'd hoped.

Good luck with your decision!

 

In reply.

Wow I asked for it and thanks for your detailed reply. I am thankful for people who tell it as it is. How are the pads for softness -not destroying the fingers if playing live i mean - on the padkontrol device you mentioned, and to be honest I'm not familiar with that at all.

My son and I - post professional (on bass) and novice (10 years) were pretty wowed by what the guy with the red hair did with machine on the maschine advert. I noted he was also a professional keyboard/piano player which was quite obvious in other videos.

Is it easy to set pad kontrol up in ableton as I am also an ableton user. I am a bit techy but some of the stuff you said about 'using heavy sample beats with little use of vst's or effects' leaves me wondering what I do know. I use simpler quite often to put samples and effects in chains, so for instance, a snare might be a certain 'D' note and the snare might have an echo on it but not the other notes. I thought that using machine I could map each pad to a key in a simpler (I don't have the suite of albeton, just the version up from intro - ?Live 8 is it) but I guess I dont' know much about using maschine at all. There doesnt seem too many videos that actually show you what it can do, unless I am youtubechallenged cos I feel like I've watched stuff for hours before falling into bed and still don't know. I'm glad you told me it isn't simple.

Is padkontrol simple for the kind of things I've mentioned?


Thanks anyway and I appreciate your time spent trying to help an electronica noob.

Peace. Aidan.
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What does 'my workflow is in the box' mean please? just so I understand if mine is similar to yours.
cheers.

 

No probs, happy to help.

Ok so 'In the box' generally means 'all in the computer', so VST instruments, DAW sequencer etc. What I meant by 'my workflow is in the box' was that I don't own many hardware instruments or analogue synths and most of the time use plug-ins and sequence in my DAW (as oppose to on a hardware sampler/sequencer like the MPC or SP).

The reason I mentioned this is because Maschine doesn't ship with a lot of instruments other than a few 'example' instruments in Komplete Elements. These are basically just a few presets from their Komplete range and not really tweakable to customise them. So, since you won't be able to use any of your Ableton instruments inside of Maschine, you'll either need to use Maschine as a VST, which feels kinda clunky to me since it's like using a semi-sequencer inside of a solid DAW sequencer and the integration is far from smooth, or you'll need a good selection of VST's or hardware instruments (analogue synths etc).

I think the most important thing to decide is the kind of music you intend to make with it. Maschine does sample-based hip-hop very very well. When I say sample based, I mean sampling from an old record, slicing it up and rearranging it over a beat (which could also be made using sampled drums).

At the risk of sounding patronising (apologies if you know this already) this is how the old hip-hop producers would work when all they had was a hardware sampler. They'd grab an old vinyl with some kind of drum break in, sample it, chop it up so they just had the individual drum-hits, then assign those drums to the pads. Then they'd lay down a beat using these drums, sample some melody or phrase from some more vinyl, slice it up however they want (often in rhythmic slices so four or eight sample slices to a bar) then they'd play it back over the beat in a new arrangement.

Like this:

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgE6yoiIFjM"]Asterix Making A Beat Using Native Instruments Maschine and Vinyl Records - YouTube[/ame]

However, if you plan to make music that doesn't utilise samples much, then you're probably limiting yourself by using Maschine to be honest because it's just an inferior way of playing and sequencing when compared to your DAW.

I think it's important to note that if you're interested in Maschine, then you need to be as interested in the Maschine software as you do the hardware, otherwise you may as well just pick up a drum controller like the PadKontrol.

The PadKontrol will work just fine with Ableton, and is completely customisable in terms of what buttons do what. I just set my pads up to play from C2 through D(can't find the sharp symbol on my keyboard)3.

Other drum pads, like Akai's MPD admittedly integrate slightly better into Ableton since there's built-in templates, but it only takes a minute to assign the controls on the PadKontrol, and once it's saved, you don't need to do it again.

The pads on the PadKontrol aren't particularly soft as such, but they're very responsive. I haven't actually come across any pads that are 'soft' but some do need a much harder whack than others (like the MPD pads). I should add though, that the PadKontrol does not feel anywhere near as solid as the likes of the MPD or Maschine. It's well-built, and it holds up well to daily use, but it's very light in comparison to some of the alternatives.

I'm not sure where you're based but it might be worth going and having a go with Maschine, because I don't want to say it's not right for you, and unfortunately because Maschine relies on license locked software, it's unlikely you'll be able to return it if you buy it and don't like it. If you can spend a few minutes in the software and seeing how it works, then I think you'll know whether it's going to work out for you.

As I said though, it's a good idea to focus on the Maschine software when considering what to buy because if it's just the hardware you are interested in, then something like the PadKontrol/MPD would work just as well and integrate into Ableton far better than Maschine.

I do enjoy the sample-based production approach but it just felt odd working inside Maschine when I knew I had such a powerful DAW a few clicks away that was far superior, and then when I wanted to use it, Maschine doesn't play nice with it as I mentioned previously. I do plan on picking up a sampler at some point but it will be an MPC or something like an SP404 instead.

 

just thought i'd add my experiences so you get some more opinions.

the pads on maschine are really great, i have an axiom pro and it is worlds apart from the silly axiom pads. no comparison there.

you'd definitely want to go with the bigger maschine, those 8 knobs give you access to all the sampling/filtering/ADSR/modulation functions and all params for FX, input/output routing, and makes slicing up samples much easier - you use the knobs to zoom in/out and adjust sample start/end points and loop points.

if you had the mikro then you'd really need to do those things using a mouse. i don't like using a mouse for musical things, it takes me out of the zone.

the biggest strength of maschine in my mind is the hardware/software integration. if you didn't want to use the maschine software - like the poster above - then the maschine hardware probably seems comparable to a padkontrol or mpd.

the most common way I use maschine in standalone: i spend some time setting up the sounds i want to use, if i'm flipping a sample then i bring that in. get all my sounds set up using various synth vsts and build a drum kit.
then i turn off my computer screen, put the maschine controller on my lap and use it like you'd use any hardware drum machine. You can do pretty much everything from the controller. I'll sink maybe 2 hrs into a project without ever needing the computer screen. it is super quick to navigate around once you get to know the hardware. this for me is a dealbreaker - i like this part of the workflow. as I'm sequencing out ideas a bit more, i might turn the computer screen on for reference, but rarely need the mouse.


if i need a bit more power or extra features, taking a track to the next level, then i save the project, and open it up inside ableton.

a lot of us here use maschine as a vst in ableton to get the best of both worlds.

When in live, i have a couple of sounds in the maschine vst routed to tracks in ableton, and some of them I leave in maschine's internal mixer. I use ableton live's sequencer to drive maschine's sounds, get access to ableton's fx, control ableton with a combo of the maschine controller (for drum racks), axiom pro 61, and an ipad - if you use one of the many maschine user mappings for live, it will auto map your 8 knobs to whatever is selected in live (blue hand) - and then i midi switch back to maschine when i wanna do something 'standalone', even tho i'm still inside live.

if you are familiar with midi routing and midi mapping this will of course be easier to set up.


despite my many midi controllers, in ableton live i find i have to use the mouse about 50% of the time. in maschine i use the mouse only for a couple of things - like selecting notes or working in a vst.


maschine is a lot more user friendly for a beginner (maschine was the first time i'd really done computer music) - it has kinda been an anchor to learn more about other music stuff and has more or less become the centre point of my workflow. it goes deep when you want it to, but you still need a DAW for real sequencing and mixdown. now i'm getting into live a bit more, but i'd be lost without maschine cos it sparks my creativity and is fun to use.

try one, see what you think. for some people it seems to click, for others it doesn't. That's ok, maybe a different tool will really click with you and your needs. maybe multiple tools in conjunction.

all the best.

 

And don't forget that you can also select notes just from the hardware and that all VST/AU plugins automap instantly (you can rearrange the automapping and save your own custom mapping) to the 8 knobs on Maschine (on the bigger one, obviously) so that you don't have to use a mouse at all even when using plugins. And the displays on the hardware shows all the names of devices and parameter values so you don't even need to be looking at the computer screen. And when using any NI product from Komplete 8, all the presets can be browsed from the hardware as well.

 

Thankyou gentlemen/people for furnishing me with so much info.
I hope that I don't disappoint you in my lack of knowledge or musical
Taste.

In Reply I am thinking that a padkontrol would be easy for me to use
As I work 'in the box' as I now understand the saying. I also
Have an axiom 61 (2nd gen) and those pads really don't invite
Me to anything but repetitive straIn injury-and I already have some
Of that from seven years leaping around in an indie band tears ago.
So that makes the Pads on maschine sound great , especially for my kids to learn on - though it may take a lot to convince my careful wife we aren't going to damage the kids IF we buy any drum machine/pads.

On the other hand, technically, maschine sounds ?perhaps easier
For my kids to have lots of ready to go sounds that aren't too hard to
Tech whereas I love teching the weirdest things inside 'simpler' and
Inside ableton in general.

Money (I know, I know it's not 'that expensive) deters me from maschine.
At the risk of asking again (well I am askin it again aren't I) I mean at the risk of boring people to death, can maschine (or padkontrol) be set so that beats repeat to a quantized value when held down repeatedly(and I mean all the samples/sounds in the pads at Once (or actually a few at a time while playing) as although it's a cheat, I like doing this after Playing on iMaschine and leaving the quantize window open. Strange that such a small thing would sway me but I'd be destroyed if I payed all that cash for maschine
and it didn't (though I guess in ableton I could make each pad in separate. clips and some midi repeat device in each with padkontrol which sounds like
Hard hard work.

Not really sure how much real hip hop sampling I/we'd be doing though I'm
Always interested to get into new things. A bit of a musical all rounder on instruments and a musical mongrel on tastes. I just like all sorts of good well made music and noise.

I'm leaning towards padkontrol or even cheaper options like nanokontrol
Just because I'm not sure.

I also know nothing about machines software. Where would I go to learn much? Here don't seem to be many easy found tutorials on YouTube. I like video tutorials rather than pages and pages to read, sorry to be fussy.

To conclude I'm very grateful for the education and tips (and slightly scared
At how much more there is to know that I don't -as a dad of three, have time to do.)

Peace to you all and if any of you have any time to answer I greatly appreciate. If not I understand. I'm probably an odd ball kind of NI user, having great limits on time and money and the joy of kids and family instead.

Cheers. Many thanks.

 

Hey sorry for not answering and tha king you guys for all the info
. To be honest I thought I had done that but I had three weeks
of earache and deafness in one ear or the other.

I think from what your telling me together, I probably want
To go with the padkontrol for myself as a simple to use with vst
In ableton. That being said, the pads still sounds nice and soft on the
Maschine but I can no way afford the biggs right. Ow and it sounds
Like he small ones a waste of time for ease of performing live.

I'm not much of a producer or even record much at all. I play
Live for my own fun and will with others when their kids grow
Up a little and would probably buy the bigger maschine for my
Kids when they're older.

Cheers fellas! You've been very helpful to me.
---
Oops. I did thank you twice. Oh well.

Peace