Why do you continue to use Maschine and buy NI products?

This thread is without any arguments on my end. My question to you is why do you continue to buy NI software/hardware? How long has your maschine hardware lasted? My maschine studio since 2013 and komplete audio 6 interface since 2010 (first time it came out). I don't just use NI stuff. My best experiences have been from using NI hardware/software. These are some reasons I give NI my money first (apple also).
-Presonus-In the past two years I have had two faderports die. Two ERIS monitors die due to blown fuses (google that issue). 1818 vsl audio interface (can't sell due to poor drivers). Now I made a mistake in recently purchasing the presonus studio 192. Big Studio One 3 user I am. I shipped back the 192 interface to musiciansfriend. Presonus are blaming my usb 3 ports for it's issues. I have had issues with the firmware updates, and some audio dropouts. So I'm pulling out the audio komplete 6 again. Love studio one to death.
-Arturia-Worked out pretty good. When I first started using Arturias software I found it buggy as hell.
-Propellerhead-Used reason with my mpc 2000XL back in the day. After a while, I couldn't deal with rewire. It killed my workflow. Wanted vst support in reason, and recycle integrated in it (maybe they did). Haven't used it since 5. Wasted a ton of money on the sonic reality bundle back in the day.
-Ableton-Big user back in the day since live 6. When live 8 came I left. It was so many issues with it I jumped shipped to studio one. Sold my apc 40 as well.
-M-Audio- Poor drivers for the audio intefaces. M-Audio Axiom controller was alright. Software did suck. M-Audio Torq was a waste of my money.
-FL Studio- Couldn't get down with. Don't like the workflow at all.
-Roland-Tried some of the edirol interfaces back in the day. Was just average.
-Cakewalk-When owned by Roland had several issues with Sonar. It was to buggy for me. Cakewalk Rapture Pro gave me serious issues when I bought it.
-Apple-Been great with my 6 plus and ipad. Stuff has been great so far.
-Novation-Automap gave me a lot of problems way back. Keyboard was cool. Software sucked though.
-Korg-Software synths are cool. Their authorization sucks, and I hate it.
-Steinberg-E licenser got on my nerves after a while. Groove Agent horrible workflow, and no thought to how a producer actually works. Routing a pain in the butt. Missing presets messages got annoying lol. Browsing in halionsonic I don't like. Cubase gave me issues meaning 7, 7.5, and 8. I still on a $1200 computer get cpu spikes, disk overload, midi notes not recording randomly etc. Sold cubase twice. Tried to make it work. Steinberg ur 44 interface. Decent drivers, but it didn't work on my new pc with nothing but usb 3 ports.
-AKAI- Used an MPC 2000XL for a while. Just didn't use anything after that. Software reputation was buggy way back.

Took me a while to find something that worked. That's NI's hardware and Studio One as my DAW. In the end I quickly left with the products that gave me the most trouble or didn't fit my workflow.

-

 

I totally feel your pain. Lost count of pieces of kit that just don't live up to the hype, are poorly supported by the manufacturer or simply dont do what your told they will do. You get an updated driver for hardware then DAW get update and the scripts dont work no more.
Think because they are pretty much all lousy they all think its ok to do. It shouldn't be the end user that has to search out firmware and scripts, the manufacturer should supply them. Its like they dont really want you to use it. I just want to make music and its them that we pay to enable to make that happen.
M-audio are terrible, i also have axiom controller, gathering dust. Yeah i fell for the hypercontrol bullshit. Doesn't work.
Not slagging N.I. here I love my maschine studio. But there is no chance in hell i could ever complete or get any where near a whole track made in it alone.Its doomed to being nothing more than an expensive sketchpad. like i have said before I think they should do more in the way of midi scripts, they are the ones that have the expertise to do it. Also I have a pioneer wego dj controller I run 64 bit windows 7 and for no apparent reason traktor will now not recognise the 64 bit asio and think its ok not to do anything about it and tell you to run 32 traktor.
I could list loads of issues. Its all swings and round abouts. It shouldn't have to be this hard.

 

now I've calmed down

 

...here it goes again. Didn't the other thread just get locked?

 

now I've calmed down

 

Ive had maschine and komplete ultimate since 2011


the track Im working on just now has some percussion from a Maschine expansion and two pianos layered in Kontakt. The last couple of tracks had nothing from NI.

I use mostly hardware, but I have the V collection, mpc studio, and the NI stuff as software instruments.

Having two very young children limits my time now, before Id do a track every couple of weeks...at that rate Id use more, I imagine Ill use less.

Software sounds great, but as Ive been doing this for 5 years I move more towards hardware for no other reason than its fun to get into geeky stuff and ply with knobs etc. plus Ive a wee bit more money to spend and no one can pirate my prophet 08 and its OS wont be unsupported, but both have their problems...

- Focusrite stopped supporting my liquidmix, they sent me a free software suite to apologise, Id have preferred the liquidmix.

-UAD dumped version 1 but they bought back my hardware, Im happily running a couple of v2 cards.

-One of my Avantone mixcubes amps died, it was replaced and shipped for free, long after its warranty expired.

-My Elektron MD blew its PCB board...$500 to replace!...blew it again in Malaysia three months later...they fixed it for free a year after when I arrived back stateside.

-My two year old Macbook Pro fried its board, I barely used it, $700 to repair...f*ck that.

-3 months after I bought Push...well Push 2, enough said


On my shelf I have pretty much new and unused

APC mini
Launchpad
AKAI EIE
Electribe 2
All 4 Volcas
V Amp Pro
and a rack of cheap behri gear

Cant be arsed with ebay, dont want raped/shot on craigslist



Its a hobby that can be a money pit...the rack and software in my bedroom just now (studios packed up) comes to around $13 -$15k....its only a few grand a year but it all adds up.


So softwares not that bad in comparison

 

The biggest post Ive ever written since Gore invented the interwebs!

 

I boughtan amp on UAD two weeks ago and it wouldnt authorise. they sent me an authorisation that supposedly fixed that.

Last night, kids in bed, beers out I went to work on a project..ABleton crashed because it said plug wasnt authorised again. It took me two hours of pluging and unplugging equipment, try to run Touchable and the PXT scripts along with push, rebooted PC four times (had to sit through an update too)...turned everything off except my audio interface and finally got it open to remove the plug from the project..two hours later! Turned out I hadnt unplugged Push...thats all it needed..had fifteen minutes to listen to track before feeding my son and going to sleep for 5 glorious hours..

still seemed like some sort of fun trying to figure it out...hardware...****...first world problems

 

I hear you with not being able to finish a whole track in maschine. A new track I did recently-https://soundcloud.com/dee-brown-401343835 for a indie artist, I tried doing the whole track in maschine. It's hard, so I just dragged the audio in studio one to finish it. Again, I think NI know the sequencer needs work.

 

Well as you are telling everybody else how they should be doing things without actually listening or knowing what people are doing, here's my turn.... as you supply a track to listen now I can get to comment.

1) I've done water/air sounds/whatever that is (toilet flushing?)... at the beginning of tracks before. Bit of a cliché but whatever. It appears that effect continues throughout the beginning of the track. This give the effect of white noise hanging around the background, like a hissy mic. That's the biggest mistake here.

2) Predictably compressed to f**k - you need less compression, it's killing the performance. Soundcloud probably normalized this to f*ck admittedly (try uploading a track without any compression over the whole track I suggest). The vocalist was probably pretty powerful, should have got them to sing further away if you had issues. Perhaps get a real bass guitarist, it's just a little.... clinical (if it was real it's just too compressed).

3) The vocals do sound muffled - Are you having any problems with gain on your mic? (too much/too little). What mic did you use? If dynamic you probably need to buy a cloudlifter.

4) What happened to the top end? Benefit of the doubt, perhaps mp3 got the better of this over soundcloud.

5) Stereo image needs attention big time.

Not a bad track at all, but a remix is in order, esp for (1). It's just mixed too flat and dull, when it need not be. It's a simple track it won't be that hard.

Don't worry, I wont be invoicing you...

Ta.

 

Gotcha. Good rough mix I think at small studio where she tracked this about three days ago. She now has a platinum mix engineer in NY who will be mixing her entire album (thanks gearslutz). I'm sure he will fix those issues. I enjoyed sequencing it in maschine studio for sure.

What's your soundcloud? I would like to hear your production, and what genre's you produce with maschine.

 

I think Native Instruments is kind of like Apple to a certain extent. And I'm a huge apple fan, since buying a macbook in 2013 and never looking back. I hate softwarey things. I'm not a computer geek, I'm an artist. To me, my workflow functions the best when things are easy to use, intuitive, asthetically pleasing, and relatively simplified so I don't have to get under the hood. As you know installing things on mac OS is a breeze. I feel as thought the NI Service Center manages everything I need and updates it accordingly.

I own, Maschine MKII, Komplete Kontrol S61, and KU 10 ultimate. Overall I'm pretty happy with their performance. I think that the VST comunication between Kontrol when an instance of Maschine is open is dodgy and vice versa using Maschine when Komplete is open. They should really work on that. As much as NI wants to force us to use "Maschine 2.0" as a DAW, it will never be that. I don't see any major serious producer staying solely within those bounds. I think that NI needs to focus on Maschine used as a VST. It needs to streamline the communication between it's hardware and both VST Komplete and Maschine. It also needs to make easier the transition from Maschine VST back into the DAW. The drag and drop stuff, rewiring stuff, and rerouting, is a complete nightmare. It kills the mood. They need to make functions with the big name DAW's where things easily transfer over at a click of a button. Once again, I'm an artist, not a software engineer.

Overall though, Maschine has been in every single one of my productions. I would be no where without it. When it comes to recording and working on songs as opposed to instrumentals, I usually stick to Pro Tools 12 and waves plugins. Though I have snuck some NI plugins into my workflow. Like the amazing Replika (still cant believe you guys gave that out for free).

-Jag

 

zzzzzzzzzzz

 

Did you try the polyplex free drum kits? I just drag and drop using Studio One.

 

I'm getting in touch with AG maschine masters (the ceo) about doing a maschine mixtape featuring different artist (can be pop, dance, rap etc) using maschine primarily to make all the tracks. Some of the producers on that instagram https://www.instagram.com/maschinemasters/ I'm trying to get to join this forum to do the maschine battles and do this maschine compilation. Some are pro's and hobbyist. It would be cool if you and some of the moderators contributed some music you did with maschine.

 

my soundcloud page includes quite a number of Maschine tracks - many 'proof of concept' uploads.

here is a track i constructed in Maschine and tracked out into Pro Tools for mixing.



sowari

 

...these were my entries for two of the Maschine Beat Battles - both made entirely in Maschine with NI plug-ins. This month's Beat Battle is special, as only Maschine sounds are allowed. I bet we'll all see some interesting stuff...

 

Not using my Studio at the moment. I'm into orchestral mockups these days and without channel predelay this pretty much sucks. Also I can't make sense out of the scene/pattern mode, to be honest. So until the software gets more arrangement features, I'm going to use a DAW solely. Testing reaper and studio one atm.

 

maschine is not a professional piece of gear in my opinion. encoders, pads and software updates are not pro quality.

however it's plenty good enough to make tracks for soundcloud.