Maschine still painful when using DAW's

Reassuring forum posts. I thought I was going insane. I've had Maschine Studio for a couple of weeks and for a start all I want to do is add some drums to an existing track in Cubase. I don't want to use the Maschine sequencer - maybe I will for the odd project but as it stands Cubase is my sequencer and I was hoping I could just use the pads to play straight in out of the box more or less. But no it seems. It's taken me at least 2 days to work out that to just do this I have to go to make sure midi thru is off on my sequencer otherwise I get a feedback loop from hell, go to each Sound in a Group and change the destination to 'Host' then do this another 15 times - every time I change to a different a Group. I'm honestly blown away at how tricky Maschine is to work with in my DAW. The reason I bought Maschine is because all the PR kept going on about 'workflow' and it sounded like it would be a great addition to my set up.

So why is there not a Global or a Group midi setting that will tell every Group to send every pad out to the Host?
Do you have any plans to do this NI? I really hope so otherwise Maschine is next to useless to me.

I know that a lot of work can be done on the box itself but I understood that this would be matched by superb DAW integration too. But it seems the DAW integration was discussed over a beer in the pub the day before it was released.
Please tell me you're planning on addressing these issues NI. I love the box, I love the idea of it and I love the sounds but at the moment it's not going to provide any kind of workflow for me and I'm really close to selling it.

 

This is my situation on a daily basis. The sad thing is that from the beginning until the 2.0 software update Maschine integrated easily with Cubase and other daws. NI really screwed it up. Thats what makes me fearful that they'll ever just make a DAW Mode because someone dreamed this crap up in the last couple of years and the design team bought into it..I would go back to 1.8 software but most of my expansions are for 2.0

 

You can change kits now without all setting defaulting, but you had better have written the beat first. You can't overdub the MIDI file you're working on after changing kits without redoing parameters. Come on guys, let us detach from the Maschine sequencer!

 

I bought Maschine MK2 about a year ago really excited to bring some more hands on approach to my music and for the highly advertised workflow because when it comes to production workflow is one of the single most important aspects.

I even "researched', NI themselves claimed it was compatible with DAWs and google turned up results of routing to various DAWs including Cubase like I use. I was absolutely blown away when I finally got it all set up in Cubase and realized how absurd this product is. It's the complete opposite of improved workflow with a terrible sequencer and a vst mode that lacks the single most basic and important feature of recording midi directly to DAW just like every other VST on the planet.

My Maschine collects dust now as I work in DAWs like most people and don't wish to spend 10 minutes manually routing workarounds just to use my DAWs sequencer. NI has great software out there and it's just really disappointing they've made such a glaring error in this $600+ brick. It's equally disappointing to read through these forums for possible solutions only to find out that this basic function has been requested and ignored for years.

Sorry NI my old friend, but you've lost my future business and many others.

 

Small point but its important to keep in mind that easy recording into a DAW was there in Maschine up to v 1.8. The 2.0 software killed that. Looking at their new Maroon 5 promo ,its clear that the developers see DAW compatibility as doing preproduction in Maschine : recording any midi into the horrible sequencer and then in final stages exporting all in a DAW. Sorry to see someone find out the hard way how awkward Maschine in a DAW is.

 

I used a crossgrade to Komplete 9, so if I sell my Maschine I lose Komplete 9. If it were not for the fact I would lose big money trying to sell I would have dumped Maschine months ago. So I wait....hoping one day I can use my thousand dollar investment. I may just start sampling Maschine's drum sounds into Live drum racks.

 

Hey guys, pretty shocking revelations in this thread..
I had honestly never noticed these problems in about 6 months I've had it! I only found out reading it here..
I simply never tried to use it the way you guys are..
I just mainly use it standalone, sample stuff, make beats, different sections and then just bounce them into the Ableton and arrange it, seemed like a good idea since even the transport is disabled in VST mode, and that really bugged me..
Personally I just hope they implement some more advanced midi features, like usable Aftertouch, midi time stretching, some magic voodoo whereby I don't have to restart a clip from the beginning every time I want to launch a very long sample...

To stay on topic, maybe this will sound ridiculous, but have you tried using maschine in controller mode to control itself from within a daw? So when you want to record notes in your daw you just go to controller mode and record, then go back to maschine mode for editing sounds etc..?
If it works it'd be really nice cause then you 'd also have the transport control..
Speaking of which, I'm becoming very keen of using maschine to control ableton when I use it, once you learn your way around, it really improves the workflow in ableton .. maybe not like a dedicated controller, but pretty extensive nevertheless...

 

How? I'm on 2.3.1 but if I try to change kit the midi in settings are reset... not the group settings, but the sounds within the group's settings
Also, if I change the sounds singulairly, the settings are kept, but if I change the group then they change..
If this issue is resolved then I found a way to easily control maschine from within ableton, using only a drum rack which you can save and recall in a moment

 

I was at a friends house who had a Maschine Tutorial video that feature 3 Maschine "experts" creating tracks in standalone, none of their workflows were smooth, none of them complete anything, and they all complained more than once that Maschine needs help.

 

I agree with you, machine isn't a complete production system.. surely it'd be possible to do a complete track using only machine, nevertheless I doubt anybody really works that way..
Personally, I have no complaints about this daw integration issues because I kind of changed my workflow since I have maschine, and generally find it quicker and more fun to finish a track.
The way I use it on an instrumental track:
-Start a jam using maschine and my different hardware instruments.
-Sample long takes of the instruments with all different modulations etc in machine
-chop the takes and build some different scenes
-import everything into my daw, arrange and finish the track

in the case of a song with vocals that already has a structure and I just want to add to I would do a bit differently..
-Start in the daw and open an instance of maschine
-set loops points in the daw around specific sections and make corresponding scenes in maschine
-write the different parts.
-drag audio into daw.

Honestly I don't find the need to sequence the midi from within the daw, once I got used to the maschine sequencer...
Just the way you can select, nudge and edit notes all from the controller is really fast if you get used to it..
I suppose if you are using it to sequence in your daw you'd lose a lot of that functionality, and would be forced to grab the mouse to start editing...

 

I do. Regularly.

(Though I'm not arguing against it becoming a more complete system and for more users, of course. You just have to adopt certain ways of doing things and not expect it to work like Logic or whatever.)

 

Fairplay, a bit too much for me...

 

+1 please do something about this NI

 

+1

Maschine works well as a mini-DAW, but it should also work seamlessly as a plugin in other DAWs. I can't believe the hassle required to get it to work. Certainly not what I expected from NI. Huge frustration!

As a plugin it should work just like Arturia's Spark.

 

What sucks is that Live is a better sequencer, audio editor, and is much much faster for me. I wish we could use Maschine as a simple drum machine plugin and not be forced to use their strange and inferior sequencer. I wish I had known, shame on me for not researching and wasting the money. NI wont be fixing these problems. At least I have the Komplete crossgrade, I just have a useless controller that cost me $600 plus expansions I bought before hitting the brick wall.

 

Just hook up the controller to live in MIDI mode. Not the integrated experience you (and I) were looking for maybe but it's certainly not a useless controller.

 

But wouldn't that mean I have no access to the 15 or so Maschine expansions I paid for? I guess I have to sample the NI kits into a Ableton Drum rack and then work in MIDI mode. That should take 30+ hours or mindless tedious work. I should just buy an MPD32 and put the Maschine back in its box until NI gets their head out of their asses.

 

Controller -> DAW - > Maschine Plugin.

Check:
https://www.native-instruments.com/...chine-sounds-with-midi-notes-in-my-sequencer/

 

I have tried that, but changing kits after inputting MIDI notes changes MIDI settings, and no more than one group can be used despite what MIDI channel. The best I have seen so far is putting a Battery in Keyboard more. But of course, I loose my expansions.

 

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Not being able to use more than one group is a huge pain in the ass. My workflow involves cycling through kits really fast. I dont take the time to load individual samples. Sometimes I use just the snare of the kit in group 1, then the HH of another kit loaded on group 2, then a kick and a sub on group 3; and so forth... I gave up "trying" to route midi to Maschine VST ages ago because of this. I mainly use "drag and drop" audio for this very reason. It seems to be the fastest way to get something out of the crappy Maschine DAW and into your DAW of choosing. I just don't understand why they focus the "Maschine" DAW for the people that want to use it as standalone, and allow some way for all expansions and sounds to be accessed through Komplete and integrate Maschine (hardware) to Komplete. That way writing midi notes inside your DAW and playback would be seamless.