Using Maschine With Pro Tools

Greetings NI users,

I'm relatively new to Maschine, and am wondering the best way to record beats into Pro Tools. Here's how I do it, and it may not be the most efficient, but it works so far.

-Open up a new session in Pro Tools
-Create new stereo instrument track, load Maschine as a plug-in
-In Maschine, create drum loops, ie kick, snare, cymbals, hi-hats etc.
-Solo out each instrument at a time
-Create new stereo audio track (one for each sound)
-Hold mouse button down, drag each pattern to new audio track

That's the gist of what works for me, but it does seem to be time consuming, and I would like to increase the speed of my workflow.

Any suggestions and/or advice would be greatly appreciated!

-Justin Pitlik

 

I'm working on making a template to track my maschine stems into PT , so there isn't any messy dragging and dropping.
All you have to do is set up the 15 stereo outs to 15 different audio st tracks in protools. It kind of sucks there are only 15 outs, but you can have multiple instances I think.

First make your template in Standalone, but make sure there are only 15 final groups or sounds you want to track in PT bc you can only use EXT 2-16 (EXT1 is maschine's master) in plugin mode. You might have to bus some sounds together in maschine, but if you want something like 30 channels, then make another template and run two plugins at once, I just need the 15 for my template, makin it simple. Then save your PT session with the labbelled audio tracks and maschine outs. Load your stand-alone maschine projects and route them into PT (takes 5 min). Record enable and press playy, You'll have a perfectly tracked PT session.

Same goes for ableton, which is my next template, with midi controls.

 

I run Maschine as a plug-in just to slave the Pro Tools BPM and hear my song in real time. I make my drum beat, save, and then export audio and close/cancel the plug-in. Then just open up my folder and drag over the newly created loops as audio stereo tracks. I like to pan all the extra non-important sounds like toms, chimes, etc.

 

J-Fly, that sounds like a great way to do it. There's more than one way to skin a cat, and that holds true especially using Maschine with PT. Can you explain in detail how you export your audio? I've just been using the sloppy drag and drop directly from the plugin to a new audio track. Very time consuming...

 

When you're finished making your loops with Maschine, just use the export audio function from the menu. I plan ahead of time and name a specific folder in my Maschine files. That's where I export the audio to. Then open up Pro Tools and create the number of audio tracks needed. Go to your Workspace window to find the loops and drag & drop. There are many Youtube videos on how to do this but this is the way I learned in school. What I don't learn in school, I learn primarily from Maschinetutorials.com

 

These are some great tips, and I'm trying all of them. Thanks guys!

 

Ok hopefully this is a good place for this, Sowaaaaaaaaarrrrrriiiiiiiiii( in an elderly nuns high pitched voice) please come hither and wax about preferring protools over live in combo with maschine these days, I'm very interested!

 

I'm a bit confused. When you say "loops" are you talking about sequences / notes or actual audio loops like a wav.?

 

:lol:

i still prefer Live then i much prefer Pro Tools over Logic.

i am a bit busy these next few days, but i will come back and talk about Maschine and Pro Tools.

sowari

 

Sorry, I'm talking about scenes. It's just that in non-Maschine talk these would be considered loops.

 

I don't think I saw any further postings on this. For those of you that are using maschine 2.0 and PT 11... what are you finding with latency? Using PT HD Native (11.02), I cannot seem to get anything less than 30ms of latency. I tested this by bussing a machine drumkit to an audio track while simultaneously recording my fingers tapping away... the maschine drums are consistently 30ms behind my fingers hitting the pads. I have changed the HW Buffer size and it doesn't seem to effect the latency either positive or negative - all settings are still roughly 30ms. Anyone else notice this? Anyone have a better experience? Am I doing something silly?

Thanks

 

my H/W Buffer size is 512 Samples - which i use for any DAW.

i am using a MOTU UltraLitemk3 for my Audio Device on a Macbook Pro - Pro Tools 11 is behaving like other DAWs in terms of latency, in other words no issues.

we need more info about your system and are you recording MIDI into the Maschine software?

sowari

 

I was playing the pads live - recording the output of machine to a track, and recording my fingers with a mic to another track - then comparing when my fingers hit the pads and maschine played a sound (by zooming in and looking at the waveforms). Almost no variation between HW Buffer settings - all around 30ms. I tried this using HDX, Natve and Eleven Rack as the Audio Engine - again, almost no difference. However, when I run Maschine standalone using HDX as the audio engine - 3ms, lovely! However, I want to be able to use Maschine inside PT - but 30ms is unusable.

 

i don't think i cam help - i am presuming you are using a PC?

anyway, i know nothing about HDX and i don't use the Eleven Rack, so maybe you need to get in touch with tech support.

sowari

 

Using a macbook pro. I discovered the solution... put the track in record, which triggers the low latency mode. That behavior is different than PT10 (when the plugin arch was RTAS).

 

thanks for reporting back!

sowari

 

Okay Sowari spill the beans.....

 

Team, I have Maschine 2.0 and I am using protools v 8.3 My problem is: When I set my PT track up using the instrament plug to track out my work created in Maschine I don't see Maschine to click on. Should I up grade to a higher PT or is it something I am missing.

 

are you saying you don't see the Maschine Plugin listed?

Maschine 2 uses an AAX Plugin not an RTAS

you need to update to at least Pro Tools 10.

sowari

 

I'm looking for ways to speed up the workflow and take advantage of the PT11HD features (just upgraded)

The way I see it, there are several ways to track sounds and patterns from Maschine into Protools.

1) Export Audio dialogue box from the Maschine preferences tab (running Maschine as a plugin or standalone)
2) Drag and drop audio tab functionality for individual groups from Maschine directly into Protools (running as a plugin)
3) Boot Maschine on an Aux channel, route signal to audio tracks and record (running as a plugin)

One idea to think about here is the revised Avid Audio engine. Does the export-audio render engine within Maschine process data better/worse/or the same as tracking directly into Pro Tools as an audio track. The drag-and-drop from Maschine option, while convenient, seems the least flexible here as it appears that it automatically normalizes the content as part of the export.

Thanks