The morphing features look amazing and I think it will compliment my Kore 2 nicely - seems less of a drum machine and more of a performance and composition tool this time - much more interesting Only wish is it had a screen built in
I had a good hard look at the Jam. Cool unit, but it has no velocity, you're mostly stuck inside Maschine, and a scripted Launchpad Pro does the same sequencing tricks directly in Live, so I went for that.
It was also the Bitwig integration that interested me, but I just found out it (well the software part) doesn't support aftertouch which is like basic. No velocity either, even worse, what are they thinking? So deal killer.
no aftertouch at all for vsts hosted inside maschine? that's grim. then again, ableton aren't much better, Live can't even see the poly aft. of their own Push and LPP. sometimes I wonder wtf is wrong with people working in hardware control departments in this industry. like, what's so complicated about it. some of these guys gotta RTFM or something.
It's a joke. NI seem to have been completely ignoring all requests for it too. I was willing to give it a chance despite the initial impression it was just designed just as a beats tool rather than usable for other sorts of music but clearly that is exactly the problem. At least Live supports channel aftertouch which is the most common sort in all decent midi keyboards (not sure if that includes the S Series though tbh).
NI changed focus long time ago imho, around the time they abandoned Kore. They abandoned technical superior ideas in favor for focusing on simplicity, accessibility. It shows in their software lineup as well in their hardware lineup. Instead of forward thinking NI only reacts to the market. Currently it's th causal usage trend needing simplicity. It's a pity for us, even when good for their changed customer base and themselves. I sure hope the former NI will come back at some day.
I'm all for a degree of simplicity and accessibility, but it's not even that. Compare the simplicity and accessibility of mapping plugins and importing presets into Kore and try to achieve the same in KK - you just can't. It makes it much harder, not easier.
3rd party plugin support in KK came afterwards. KK itself wasn't designed for 3rd party plugin support. It wasn't even designed to be able to remap parameters of NI plugins. The initial KK design was purely simplistic and accessible. And restricted. Kore on the other hand was designed to open up and centralize your whole studio (in the box). It's a pity, really. Imagining what Kore3 could have been... what Kore2 still is... if only it would get some love...
True but as I recall it was always their goal to include plugin support, just not initially. Also it's based on functionality in Maschine that it has had for years and yet still has those same limitations.