Why doesn't this sound the same in Maschine as it does in Reaper? (Blocks - Submotion - Treko)

I'm a completely new to all of this stuff, so excuse me for probably sounding really dumb haha.

I started off with the free download Reaktor Player and Reaktor Blocks Wired, which includes 3 instruments, one of which is Submotion, which has a preset called "Treko". I was using this instrument preset in a song I began in my DAW (Reaper). The MIDI was simple, all notes at 127 velocity, a 2-bar sustained E2 note, then a 2-bar sustained G2 note, and finally a 2-bar sustained F#2 note, and it was just repeating that over and over again.

I made NO modifications to anything in the Reaktor player for this instrument, it's just the default Treko sound.

It sounded really cool in Reaper, but then I just recently bought a Maschine Mk3 and I'm trying to recreate the bones of this song I was working on in the Maschine software instead.

I set the instrument on the sound bank to Treko, I copied and pasted the MIDI into the piano roll on that sound bank, and I figure, OK, I'm all set to continue where I left off. But no, it sounds *COMPLETELY* different. It's like, much higher pitched, and the beeps and boops just don't seem to roll in the same way (it's kind of hard to describe, for me).

If the MIDI is identical and the instrument/preset is identical, why is it sounding so different when played in Maschine vs when I had the instrument plug-in on a track in Reaper?

 

If they were no plug-ins/EQ/Comp in reaper, you must have modified the Treko preset. Can't see other way…

 

Definitely no other plug-ins, EQ, compressor, or effects of any kind on the track, and I didn't modify the Treko preset either. I even reloaded the plug-in and preset from scratch to make sure I didn't modify anything. Probably won't be until tomorrow (might get a chance later tonight) but I will export both from Reaper and Maschine to .wav, and also the midi to file, and share all files with you somehow so you can see exactly that they sound different but utilize the same MIDI. What would be the best way to safely share these files?

 

google drive ?

 

MediaFire?

 

There are definite differences in the underlying audio engines in software. This can be noticeable but not to the extent you describe.

 

different sampling rates could be another point?

 

Thanks for the advice and suggestions, everyone. I'm figuring out some things. My ignorance and poor practices are starting to become a little more clear to me and I know to get smarter about how I work on things...

So there are two issues here, one I solved, the other I still have some questions about what I should do:

Why was the pitch off?

It turns out that the piano rolls between Reaper and Maschine are labeled differently. So when I brought over the MIDI from Reaper, which had notes in the E2 octave, and those E2's play in Maschine, it's actually an octave higher! Maschine starts at octave -2 and goes to octave 8, whereas Reaper's piano roll starts at -1 and goes to octave 9. So an E2 in Maschine is actually an octave higher than an E2 in Reaper. I did something wrong when bringing the MIDI into Maschine, because when I was trying to recreate everything and see if all this was my fault (hint: it is! haha), I realized that when I export the MIDI from Reaper and import the MIDI into Maschine, it does indeed come up on the Maschine piano roll as an E1 instead of an E2 like in Reaper. I guess I forgot or didn't realize I'd done it the first time, but when I imported into Maschine originally I must've seen that it came up as an E1 instead of an E2 and was like "What the heck?" and dragged it all up an octave, and then when the pitch was too high, I guess I just wasn't thinking clearly last night or something.

Why are the beeps & boops different?

I know the answer to this one, but I don't know how to solve it. This is my first song I'm working on and I'm learning as I go and realizing I made a lot of silly mistakes when I first started in Reaper.

One of those mistakes was that I programmed my backing drum beat in quarter notes, but wanted it to be pretty fast, so I set the tempo in the project to 300 bpm. Along with that, my Treko MIDI had each note sustained for 4-bars, so it was a single sustained 4-bar note of E, then one for G, then one for F# (thus 12-bars of MIDI in total).

When I started over in Maschine, I changed the drum beat to 8th notes and halved the tempo to 150. Along with that, I halved the Treko MIDI as well from 12-bars down to 6-bars, so now each note is 2-bars instead of 4-bars.

So I noticed as well that when the tempo is 300, the beeps & boops are twice the rate in the Treko sound, vs when the tempo is 150. So by changing the tempo of my project, I also made a major change to how the Treko instrument sounds. I like the way it sounds at 300, but I want my project to be at 150.

Is there any way to modify the Treko preset so the beeps & boops are identical to the default version at 300 bpm, but at 150 bpm?

I hope so, but I don't understand any of the intricacies of designing or modifying the presets in Reaktor Blocks, so I have no idea how I would go about doing it if it is possible. Any advice would be amazing!

If it's not possible, then what other solution makes more sense... should I just reset my project to 300 bpm? It seems like a high number, and a lot of the drum patterns I've written to complement the main back beat, some fills and variations for different parts of the song, are all programmed for 150 bpm now, so I'd have to modify all of it to sound the same in 300 bpm. I just think the REAL tempo of the song is 150 bpm, not 300 bpm, and it was a mistake on my part to start the original project in Reaper at 300 bpm. But if I have to work at 300 bpm just to make this work with my preferred Treko sound, then I guess that's what I would do just this once.

My other thought was if I want to keep working at 150 bpm, maybe I could export a WAV of my Treko sound at 300bpm and then use that as a sample in Maschine instead of actually using the Treko instrument? I haven't messed with bringing my own samples into Macshine yet, but I assume this would be a possibility?

Thanks to everyone for being patient with me and helping me out.

Oh, and a quick TL;DR:

The reason the pitch was off was because Reaper's piano roll is an active lower-pitched for the same note name as Maschine's, therefore an E2 in Reaper corresponds to an E1 in Maschine.

The reason the beeps & boops are off is because the tempo was set to 300 in Reaper, and 150 in Maschine.

And my primary question is, how do I solve the tempo problem? Can I "double the rate" of the Treko preset so it sounds the same at 150 as the default settings do at 300 bpm? Or should I just reset my Maschine project to 300 bpm? Or should I export the Treko sound at 300 bpm and then use it as a sample in my 150 bpm project?

 

Hey, I feel accomplished! I figured out the solution to my final problem as well!

To double the rate of the beeps & boops so that Treko sounds identical at 150 bpm as the default preset sounds at 300 bpm, I took the block called "LFO 2 - Mod" and changed the rate from 1/4 to 1/8, and then took the block called "LFO 1 - 4 Mods" and changed the rate from 1/16 to 1/32. Now it sounds perfect at 150bpm!