Native Instruments Maschine

[awepittance]

i went to the native instruments forum asking if certain things were possible such as using the maschine with Reaktor and i dont know the general attitude on that forum seems like any time you make a criticism or ask for a new feature the moderators (native instruments employees) get very defensive and passive aggressive in their responses.

kind of a turn off

[goffer]

after looking in the template manager I found 2 Reaktor presents... not sure how well they work though.

[Guest blicero]

wow, Modeselektor uses Maschine?

 

http://www.bpitchcontrol.de/Moderat/statements.html

[Guest maus]

got ahold of a maschine yesterday, and here's my perspective on it:

 

physical aspects:

 

the unit feels great... it's not as substantial as it seemed at namm, but it's a metal construction (at least the top portion of the frame) and feels pretty robust (especially compared to the kore controllers.)

 

the pads respond very well... it's almost a cross between the korg pad kontrol (my usual favourite pad controller) and the akai / m-audio "black pad" types... which are generally a little stiffer. really easy to pull off grace note type things, subtle triplets and stuff if you're into drumming on it live.

 

the sounds:

 

the library is fantastic. there are some REALLY killer sounds that ship with maschine. you get a good amount of the battery 3 / synthetic drums type stuff that i already had, but there are some simply KILLER drum sounds. the artist kits are great too. the kicks just hit HARD... not a lot of need for layering or additional processing (outside of bussing for compression or what have you.)

 

standalone:

 

to be honest, i haven't played around with the sequencing and "MPC" style features of this thing much. i had an MPC back in the day and enjoyed it, but i do my sequencing in logic now, and don't feel the need to supplement that with a "sequencer within a sequencer". the little bit i did look at the standalone mode, it does seem pretty full-featured in terms of being able to operate it all from the controller without having to use the software directly.

 

the slicing is very poorly implemented. very limited control over slice placement, start time, transient detection, slice editing and removal. i had hoped this would pick up where battery 3 left off (battery 3 was initially supposed to pick up where intakt left off, providing similar slicing flexibility, and that didn't happen... my hope was that maschine would pick up the slack... no dice there either.)

 

the groove / swing features are staggeringly underwhelming. you have a 'swing' knob which goes from 0-100%, with predictable results. no groove templates or modifiable swing whatsoever. pretty much the only reason (for me) to have a sequencer running within logic or in standalone is for higher resolution / more tight quantisation and swing... guru has this right, maschine seems to have missed the boat. so far.

 

plugin / use inside logic:

 

don't bother. in all honesty, this is absolutely atrocious. i am quite frankly stunned that people aren't more enraged about the host implementation of this thing. the forums are, admittedly, ablaze with complaints and angry comments, but the reviews gloss over this portion.

 

i'll start by saying this... at NAMM, i asked NI (as did many others) if maschine's hardware controller was a dongle... kind of like what they did with kore originally. we were all repeatedly told that no, it was not a dongle, and the software would run with or without the controller.

 

well, that's true. it does run. you just can't fucking use it. at all.

 

you CANNOT control maschine as a sound module for drums without the controller. end of story, case closed. if you attempt to play maschine using your midi controller, you'll get a chromatically mapped version of whatever pad is selected. you cannot use the library unless you use the maschine controller. simple.

 

even that wouldn't be so bad if at least the maschine controller allowed you to input midi data into your sequencer. it does not. arm the maschine VI track and hit record, and see where that gets you. nowhere. nada.

 

so where does that leave you in a production environment? here are your options:

 

1 - use the convoluted pattern system in maschine. sure it's easy to create patterns and assign them to "scenes". guru works in a similar way. the difference is that guru allows you to choose those patterns via MIDI notes and gating. maschine does not. changing scenes requires MIDI program change messages. apparently NI thinks it's 1995. ON TOP OF THAT, maschine WILL NOT play an empty scene. that means that you can't shut the fucking thing up... granted, there is a workaround... but... seriously? a fucking WORKAROUND to get it to not play? i suppose you could automate muting of the track... but... jesus fucking christ, really?

 

2 - this is the method that NI seems to be championing on the forums. they suggest that you render out your patterns to audio, and then import the audio. they have the audacity to say "that's what a lot of producers are doing these days." great! i'm sure a lot of producers also have homosexual sex or cutting themselves regularly, that doesn't mean I WANT TO FUCKING DO IT. i dont' want to have to re-open maschine and re-program drum parts if i decide to change them at mixdown.

 

for my working methods, the integration aspects of maschine render it nothing more than a toy. it is not presently up to being a serious production tool. it completely blows my mind that this was released this way. its one thing to offer the standalone MPC style functionality as an alternative. don't get me wrong, there's a huge market for that, and it's great... but to suggest that this way of working is somehow superior and to LIMIT THE FUNCTIONALITY of the unit to essentially force people into working that way... wow... just wow.

 

perhaps it was more a matter of implementing the MIDI / sequencer integration functionality in time for release... NI has stated that they're "working on" allowing midi control of the software, etc., but for a lot of people, it's too little too late. if i had bought this thing, i'd be nothing short of fucking furious. (of course i probably would have researched it a bit more first.)

 

if they start to allow more flexible midi usage; like guru's ability to drag the sequences directly into your sequencer, or even the rudimentary ability to choose patterns with midi on/off messages, this thing will likely be great.

 

in summary, if you're looking for an MPC replacement, or a flexible drum machine for live use, this thing should be just what you need, but BE WARNED that if you want flexibility and control over the software in a sequencer, it's just not there yet. i'd wait and see what NI does with the software next.

 

cheers,

c

[awepittance]

great review man, i'm glad that users like you and a handful of people on the NI forum were very truthful about what the Maschine COULD NOT do. too often i find that loyalists will make a false claim about a product without really trying it themselves 'oh yeah this thing has a bad ass beat slicer in it' then when you finally use it you're like wait this is 2009 right?

 

if maschine was integrated with all of NIs products namely Kontakt, Reaktor and Battery i would buy it pretty quick. The fact that it appears to have been released as a beta product to beat the crowd of other visual feedback midi controllers i think is pretty saddening.

[Guest maus]

great review man, i'm glad that users like you and a handful of people on the NI forum were very truthful about what the Maschine COULD NOT do. too often i find that loyalists will make a false claim about a product without really trying it themselves 'oh yeah this thing has a bad ass beat slicer in it' then when you finally use it you're like wait this is 2009 right?

 

agreed... you mentioned the attitude on the NI forums earlier, and that is very much the experience i have had, even working for the company - they don't take negative criticism well at all.

 

i'm debating doing product reviews on youtube or something to get the real word out... not ONE review of maschine REALLY gets into the limitations, which are verging on bait-and-switch as far as i'm concerned... it doesn't help when review publications are counting on advertising dollars from the companies whose products they're reviewing...

 

if maschine was integrated with all of NIs products namely Kontakt, Reaktor and Battery i would buy it pretty quick. The fact that it appears to have been released as a beta product to beat the crowd of other visual feedback midi controllers i think is pretty saddening.

 

agreed 100%... the benefit of all this is that the problems are entirely software-based... the hardware itself is disco, and the library is great... so these shortcomings can all be addressed with updates... they just shouldn't have to.

 

i also forgot to mention that the MIDI implementation of the controller outside of maschine itself is pretty good... there's an app that comes with the package that you run seperately to custom-make templates for controlling just about anything, and there are several common templates included for the likes of battery, live, guru, etc.

 

it may very well replace my korg pad kontrol on the desktop here... that way it'll serve as a reminder to check back in with NI periodically to see if they make the software usable...

 

c