Maschine Studio or Push 2? (2018 edit :) )

BTW out of the everybody here Skins definitely is the least biased by far when it comes to an opinion...




















Having said that - bravo not a bad review - quite well written!

 

Hey all

Many many thanks for your opinions.

What I found out is.....it's all subjective hehe.
I really need to get of them (Studio or Push 2), work some time on them and see if I like it or not. Only then I will be able to say if I made the right choice or not.
If not, just sell Push 2 and get Studio (or other way around).

I think I will still go for Push 2 and then......see how it goes.

Thanks guys

 

This was me for like the last 6 months since I bought push2. At first, I totally had buyers remorse and was a bit overwhelmed because it (Push2) is so powerful in Ableton. Too powerful... Much more than just an instrument...its truly a DAW controller that either make (or break) your productions. Maschine is much simpler and once you understand the concepts of modules like master, group and sound, you're good, but then you hit major roadblocks (on missing features, development, etc...). Maschine is just so under developed at this point, its mind boggling.. Anyway Push2 can control pretty much anything in Ableton, which is a much more feature rich environment than Maschine. I guess thats expected from a DAW. Eitherway, its taken me a long time to come to grips with my Push2. Finally though, after combining the Push2 with an Akai APC40 (my first Akai purchase ever, yay!- and what a wonderful controller it is), I now have some control in the Ableton-DAW environment over pretty much everything. The sad thing is that my beloved Maschine Studio, while sitting front and center, serves nothing more than a drum module in Ableton Drum Racks....I never sequence or do so songs on Maschine anymore (MAAB are pretty much the only exception)

 

Had the same dilemma a few weeks ago.
At the end i choose Maschine, it looked more user friendly to me.
I just wanter to start with all Production thing.
Now i think i choose wrong.
After a lot of hours on it ,i ran into all it's flaws.
I think I'm going to sell the unit and get me a new Push 2.
I know that it will be more difficult to me to get use to it.
But hey, at lest at the end i can really can produce with it without "breaking my head".

 

Fear not ...
If you ran into all it's flaws ... that means you were trying to make a complete song on maschine, so you have some experience making tracks already in a DAW (because you tried to replicate your DAW workflow on maschine, and you realized some things are more difficult to accomplish)
And if you have experience in a DAW, then trust me: it won't be as difficult to learn how to use Live and Push.

 

I'm not arguing for either setup. But, I think two points need to be corrected.

You can:

Just click the Group or Sound number to Mute or Unmute. However, you can't automate mutes with either the Maschine hardware or a mouse. And, you are half right that you can't trigger notes with your QWERTY keyboard. This isn't a DAW. You can use other MIDI devices to trigger notes in Standalone, but not to control the software's main functions. When using the Maschine VST plugin, you can trigger sounds with a QWERTY keyboard using your respective DAW.

You can, and you can automate this with your mouse:


Hope that helps somebody.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

I don't know why Maschine doesn't just have an Ableton daw config button, as so many people buying the Maschine will have Ableton, in one form or another.

Incidently I now have the push 1 and the maschine mk1 as surplus controllers. The maschine Mk3 and the Push 2 both have their uses, and given what's on the horizon for the Maschine I expect the decision to opt for the push 2 will soon be redundant.

 

just to chime in on something, I have a feeling Ableton will release Push 3, and address issues with user feedback, and requests. Maybe touch screens, audio interface, and other features. The problem with Push, is when the next one comes out, it makes the previous version much less desirable to use because of how much goes into updating the current hardware.

Now Maschine is fully compatible and supported through every unit. Some users love the Mikro, and see no need to upgrade. I would stick with Maschine because of the support for hardware. I have a MK1 Mikro, and the fact that it still works after all these years, is fantastic. I just got the MK3, and I know that 10 years from now, it will still be relevant. Not to mention that MPC Stuff has sick upgrades to customize your Maschine

 

I hope not or i'll have to find yet more room I don't have for yet another controller.

Still I was thinking, if they did away with the top and bottom row of buttons, and instead had a larger touch screen,
[not to mention a quality audio interface], this could be reason enough for a Push 3. Other wise its hard to see what
else they would have Push 3 do, that can't be done with the current controller.

I would sooner have a touch screen digitiser overlay for the existing push. This might be possible with a usb port to
enable it to function with the existing screen. or maybe NI will add this extra to their Mrk3

 

Then they would miss out on the opportunity of selling a brand new shiny controller for 999.99$...
Music gear seems to be going in the direction of smartphones and computers, a new one every couple of years or even every year.

 

The Mk3 is so legit, the only thing they could do to really make people flip, is if they made a Standalone Maschine USB Hub box that can plug into Maschine MK3 or Studio, and run them both standalone. If MPC can do this with MPC Live, I see no reason it cannot be done with Maschine. Understandably you could not use plugins, but you could access everything else.

Man, they could do it so sick. Add USB sockets for sample loading if you wanna render VST stuff into samples and load it into Maschine in Standalone mode. It could have a 6 hour lithium battery for portability, and it could be small enough to fit in your hand. Im sure most would not mind attaching a small box the size of a tiny interface to their maschine to run it standalone.

I just can't think of much else besides touch screens that can really make a huge difference

 

Honestly, I wouldn't buy the Mk3 again. Beforehand I was thinking about getting a Mikro Mk2 from eBay but I was afraid I wouldn't get the "full" product. Now I feel this would have been the better choice, as for me personally, the "experience" isn't that joyful and so full of limitations that the Mikro could have done the job. In the end lots of people, including myself, seem to use Maschine as VST mostly, pure Midi and route out to a real DAW.

Well I kinda have that already, I bought myself a 12" Windows tablet for exactly that purpose. Sadly NI seems to think Apollo Lake CPUs aren't a thing they should support with their software.

If I could go back I'd buy myself with that money combined an i7 Tablet, put it in the spot where my Maschine is standing now and be happy with Studio One and some standalone Synths like Falcon on it. Well wait, Studio One Pro runs flawless on Apollo Lake, so I'm happy.

 

Exactly my thoughts. There are super small computers nowadays, NUC's, Surface Pros, and an 11 "laptop is not exactly something "big", personally, I rather choose my computer and be able to upgrade it whenever I want instead of letting NI decide for me, but to each his own.

 

My Opinion:

1. Live 9 + Push 2 (not Suite)
2. Maschine 2 with Mikro and/or Jam (as a start)

Both used from Reverb if possible...
https://reverb.com/

 

Well if you wanna go down that route, just know that Reaktor 6 may not run on that device. Also Maschine not being exactly CPU-efficient runs, but you have restrain yourself to a few selected Softsynths and FX - however if you're working mainly with samples or if you're bouncing your tracks (a thing we all did with our previous-gen computers at 2009) you won't run into issues, even on that low-end CPUs.

 

"In the long run for some people Maschine will replace Ableton (once the arranger is improved)."

...this is the epitome of a sentence without any meaning..."in the long run" = 5 years? given the current development speed maybe more like 10 years..."some people" = those that like shiny marketing videos and like to punish themselves?..."once the arranger is improved"...see point 1...
do you think that the other companies stop developing their software anymore???...i mean...i use and like maschine for what it is but i don't know where your positivity in regard to development comes from...stems? sounds.com? half baked audio?...

 

The biggest lack of Ableton Push 2 is midi mode.
I often use Maschine as a pad controller with Cubase projects for triggering samples or drumming.
But with Ableton and Push I can't. It would be nice to have a 8x8 midi template for Superior Drummer for example.

For all another cases Ableton and Push are much powerful than Maschine, especially with new controller's features in Ableton 10.

 

there is no factory supplied midi mode for sure, Push however has an open api so check around, there may be a commercial or freeware offering, particularly on github.
for a flexible 8x8 look no further than launchpad pro.. its also a decent input device for Maschine given its 8x8 nature and scale modes...for midi again, some setup is required, but it was easy enough to change a button to add sustain, making chord progression entry into maschine actually possible without a keyboard.

 

Native kontrol, sells a great script that allows Push to be used as a controller with other software.

 

https://www.nativekontrol.com/PXT-General.html