Maschine needs audio tracks!! Opening it up in a DAW is a huge bummer for everybody

Always good to admit that our points of view can change with time and experience; nothing wrong with that. From my point of view, I'd love to see a refinement in the workflow of the Sampler. Trying to work with non-EDM recordings such as acoustic percussion with vocals is a real drag. There should just be an elastic grid like Ableton, or at least some kind of automation on the transients that snap to a grid (hello Traktor?). I'd like to see more flexibility in the amount of slices you can make automatically. And I find that when working on the software, the overlap feature can really gets cumbersome as the focus on the sample changes unintentionally too easily; I find myself having to drag with the mouse up or down to get out of the window to edit the section in focus. There should be an option to drag a selected section to a sound slot by itself, without the whole file attached. In fact I'd love to see an option to automatically assign each chosen slice to a sound slot sequentially, avoiding all the monkey work. And trying to get non-EDM samples to conform to your BPM and pattern length can be a painful process. No doubt about it, Maschine needs an elastic grid or grid of some sort. But hey, maybe it's just me...

 

I am repeating myself here, but i think its worth doing it.

The suggestion: Better audio handling abilities for Maschine could be a purchasable add-on.

The idea: Something like a second (or third, considering the mixerpage) window, where you have a basic arranger timeline with setable markers to sync with your scenes.

With such an option, everyone could decide for himself, wether he wants to enhance abilities or stick with the slick workflow he is used to.

 

It's good to evaluate your opinions from time to time and yes there are usually multiple sides to a coin, but I think people should not look upon adding audio tracks and lineair recording as "turning Maschine 2.0 into a DAW" nor "making Maschine 2.0 less compatible with other DAWs already exist". These things shouldn't be considered mutually exclusive to one another, that's just dumb.
The point is Maschine still lacks a huge feature within the Maschine software itself. A feature useful to everybody. From vocals to live instruments, currently the Maschine software is totally not the way to go there without audio tracks.

PS; while I still refuse to pay 99$ for what should have been free to begin with, I certainly don't seem to miss out on anything spectacular in version 2.0 so far.

 

You already can decide just use it inside of a daw with a Mackie controller and let's go. And it don't have to be the original Mackie one I use a icon and its great, and now I also have linear automation cause I do this in cubase. Let maschine be like it is, a pattern based beat machine. That's my opinion.

Uwe

 

Totally? I have to disagree here. It's certainly not geared toward "linear" audio recording of traditional recording solutions, but it's by no means out of its range of possibilities. I use it for this all the time and actually love the alternative approach. Not for everyone though and even I would like more and better options for achieving this kind of recording within Maschine. Not necessarily just an "arrangement view" a la Ableton Live though. Something that's still inherently Maschine (and is easily controllable via the hardwares), but allows users to do what they want.

 

Yes, totally! It's not geared towards linear audio recording, which is exactly my point. Yes, I know you can record longer samples and yes you can record vocals as samples, chop them up and align them. But it's one big waste of time being limited by the Maschine software itself. Even if they would only add four linear audio tracks with basic editing capabilities, it would be an incredible difference in terms of live instrument or vocal recording. My point was never about it being 'impossible'. It's not impossible as it stands to record vocals, even though I am still often surprised about how the Maschine being a 'sampler', seems more aimed at buying ready-made sample expansion packs instead of actually doing the sampling. Not having audio track recording seems like just another sign on the wall of this product being incomplete in sense of being a sampler. I don't want it to turn into a full blown DAW, but it certainly does lack some basic but essential features nonetheless imho.

 

Komplete integration kinda geared Maschine a different way then to be a simple beatmaker. So its not suprising that people look at it as a different type of tool by now, and start to demand additional features.

To me it feels like Maschine is kind of a jack of all trades at the moment, but also imcomplete in every aspect.

But then again, i am still using it on a dayly base. The one thing that keeps me doing it (besides sticking to an investment) is the nice workflow due to the hardware/software integration (which starts lacking as soon as i have to instance it in Cubase, due to no rewire support or audio tracks in Maschine).

However, i recently tried Bitwig + Nektar Panorama combo, and if panorama integration would be a little further, and if Bitwig was version 1.2 already i would have switched.

 

I tried the Komplete controller this weekend and i really liked the on-the-fly functions that turn up on the LCD's for tweaking sounds when loading stuff up.. When i sat down and got lost in sounddesign which i NEVER have been interrested in before due to non-intuitive and outright clumsy integration with 3'rd party controllers, or delving into layers of submenu's or ugly GUI's.. i got the sense that NI is moving towards something bigger, like a "third big thing" , where one (1) being Maschine Software 2 , Two being the Komplete controller - that they now integrate with Maschine 2.x software and Komplete 10 just got released.. so a natural step would in my eyes be some mayor upgrade to the software.. What is missing in the current 2.x that could be counted as a "big thing"? from that perspective i don't see that "Audiotracks" alone would be very innovative but together with some more DAW-like features it would be possible. I'm really tempted to buy the Komplete controller but if Maschine Studio get these "on the fly features" i might start to work with sounddesign until they hopefully see the point of adding audiotracks.. i can't see why they can't reverse the sampling function and develop Audiotracks instead and those that want to use it as a sampler just tick a "use as sampler" option.. I can even see an autosplit that splits an audiotrack in pattern-like chunks while making an overdub over the whole arrangement.. yes, it might be wishful thinking but i would love to just use the Maschine Studio as a centerpiece as it has the potential.. i would even in the event of the functions for the komplete kontroller - not - making their way inte maschine software, buy the komplete keyboard.. just for the fun fact sound design got so much more enjoyable with it.

..hope i didn't forgot to say: Audiotracks would be nice

 

Audio tracks and the arrangement section need lots of work before Maschine can be more to me than just a drum plugin that maps NI softsynth automatically. Even the "experts" can't seem to do what they want easily when trying to construct an entire track solely in Maschine.

 

I'm on the verge of abandoning this tool...I do all my work in it, and right now it's just too frustrating.

 

Audiotracks ftw.. STEMS has made it's way into the DJ world, pinching my eyes and sprinkle some imagination on top of it, it could look like 5 audiotracks, the Maschine 2 code is said to be modular so why not ask the dev's at the DJ department for the snippet and go from there..why invent the wheel further when it's already in the schack.

 

The main issue for me about not having audio tracks is that unless I splice all my vocals for ex. playback isn't very friendly since I have to restart drom the begenning of a scene where the take is triggered...

 

I feel your pain. It is one of my major gripes with the way Maschine currently works too. My stance, though, is that traditional "audio tracks" is not the only way to get the functionality we want and I'd very much like to see this achieved in a more Maschine-like way.

 

Also I would like to use maschine more like a looper sometimes, but I can't seem to find a way to do it efficently..after you record something you still have to write in the midi triggers and determine the lenghth of a pattern..
Woud be cool to be able to punch in, punch out and have it playing back already...

 

And here lies another of my main pains with audio in Maschine. There are better ways (e.g., preparing Patterns ahead of time), but they're less than ideal or intuitive. And typically, to be musical, you still have to wait for the same length of time as your recording before it loops.

 

I know I've tried that, but you have to decide the lenght of your loops ahead of time.. which is so and so.. the best solution I found so far is Mobius, it's a free VST looper, but you can't drag the loops from the VST onto maschine pads easily..

 

Sequencing inside a sequencer is stupid. Period.

 

Where else would you do sequencing?

 

Here's a screenshot of a multitrack stem arrangement from Focusrite.
Mr. 36, I know this is not for you, but for others out there, is this something you'd like to see on Maschine?

 

I don't particularly care for audio tracks in Maschine. I have no problem laying down parts & building a basic structure in Maschine, then integrating my project into a DAW & developing it further.

I think of Maschine as a replacement for my hardware units, a FantomX & an MV8800. But those both have audio tracks so I can't see why NI can't throw a few tracks into Maschine. I didn't use the audio tracks on my hardware, OT was too cumbersome loading them from compact flash. But that shouldn't be a problem on a modern PC.

If they're not going to add audio tracks, I wish they'd just come out & say why not.

All that said, I pretty much stopped using Logic, Sonar, PT, Studio One... yup I've owned one version or another at one time or another. But I stopped using them because they don't do what I want them to do as quickly as Maschine does.

At the same time, if I wanted a straight linear DAW, I'd put Maschine sway & get Kontrol. I'd trigger my samples from Kontakt or Battery & call it a day.