Right out of the box, long time Maschine MKI user with some serious disappointments.

My bias towards NI is strained to say the least at this point. I loved Kore 2, and incidentally, guess which plugin causes Maschine 2 to crash? (Among a handful of others, which work fine in other DAWs, and now have to be moved out of Maschine's path, or it won't load)

So here we are, a beautifully made bright new shiny controller, which I actually have nothing but good things to say about... but then you remember that it depends on software.

Here Maschine, let me point you at my directory of projects AND my communal directory of samples, in the user library tab. Oh, you CAN'T find the samples I just pointed you at? You want me to go one at a time, rather than letting me point at a directory just like Battery, and solve this problem in an efficient and user friendly way?

OK, I'll just load a factory group.

Now let's play a beat in, straight off the pads. WTF? Why are double and triple stroke hits that work fine on the Mk I not working on Studio? If I'm even touching a corner of a pad, I can no longer hit it with another finger. I guess double and triple stroke rolls require separate pads now, because something fundamental was taken away, about how I play Maschine. That's kind of a big deal. In fact, it seems that the pads are now EXTREMELY sensative to how close to the center I strike them. That is total BS and is going to mess with how a lot of people play.

Can I finally timestretch in real time? Ok, that's a dead horse that has been beaten into mush, and the answer is no. I have to do a destructive edit to do what almost every other thing that deals with audio samples can do, even though the company that made this product has a wealth of sample manipulation and graintable experience, and in a worst case scenario, could license elastic audio from somewhere else and be done with it.

So I'm left with a pretty librarian that isn't good for finger drumming, no matter how many Jeremy Ellis videos are thrown up, and a tool that breaks other tools made by the same company, yet still manages to pull the best features in from said tools. (I guess Kore 2 morphing was just a dumb idea that wasn't even worth considering, further limiting Maschine's live performance flexibility)

I like the drum synths and the hardware quality. The flow for sequencing a beat is still good. That's it. The rest is all fluff and crap. This thing is very close to heading back to the store, and if it goes, I think so too will go my future Native Instrument patronage. You've made some great products and ran them into the ground. You can't even be arsed to include 2 quarter inch outputs, just to limit the amount of gear one would need to take Maschine on the go... for $1000.

 

This has been discussed extensively on this forum (there is a whole thread about including an audio interface for a product that isn't really designed to be "Maschine on the go"). It's not a simple as just throwing one in for the hell of it. I won't rehash that thread, but most users don't want it. And, there's a video floating around somewhere where NI explains the reasoning behind not including one. By the way, NI removed the audio interface from Kore 1 to Kore 2 WAY BACK because most users then already had their interface of choice. Maschine Studio is no different.

 

What is Kore 2???

 

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/mar08/articles/nikore2.htm

That.

 

For the directory issue, you may need to run the import Maschine 1x from the file menu first on the folder that contains your user groups and projects. They need to be converted to Maschine format. There is a sticky at the top of this forum that explains how to do that.

Not sure what you mean about the pads, try the preferences hardware settings and change the velocity scaling and sensitivity. Also, make sure the kit you are triggering is not using choking or polyphony to 1.

 

I don't know why I never knew of this device but it seems interesting and similar to the Mackie C4 Pro. Of course both are unfortunately discontinued.

 

Yeah, aren't the pads basically the same between Studio and MK2?

 

Think the OP needs some sleep or something.