To Maschine Or Not To Maschine

[Syncretia]

people always seem to forget there is phone support, and phone calls are cheap these days even to the other side of the world.

Grrrrr......

Their phone support totally @#$#ing sucks! I don't care what anyone says. I spoke to several people about a Kontakt library installation problem. They people on the phone were rude as hell. They couldn't care less about listenting to the problem of offering solutions. I've dealt with stupider support before. I've dealt with support who are harder to get in contact with. But, I've never dealt with ruder support than NI support.

Anyway, if I believe what everyone is telling me here, I should buy Maschine. I still feel like I'm going to be messing around with 1 1/2 DAWs which is really frustrating. I'd really just like Ableton to extend Live that bit further so Maschine is not necessary. But, it looks like at the moment, from what people are telling me Maschine will be worth it.

I just hate giving my money over to those sloppy @#$#s at NI.

[pencilrocket]

This thing sux.
Convince me it doesn't sux.

Hijinks ensue.

it is nice. why don't buy it?

[Forge.]

people always seem to forget there is phone support, and phone calls are cheap these days even to the other side of the world.

Grrrrr......

Their phone support totally @#$#ing sucks! I don't care what anyone says. I spoke to several people about a Kontakt library installation problem. They people on the phone were rude as hell. They couldn't care less about listenting to the problem of offering solutions. I've dealt with stupider support before. I've dealt with support who are harder to get in contact with. But, I've never dealt with ruder support than NI support..

fair enough - I guess it just depends who you get and individual experience. The people I spoke to were fine.

[Syncretia]

Several of the support audibly sighed as I was explaining the problem.

[Ben_Binary]

I have only had horrible experiences with NI support.

Finally I had one guy promise me a $50 NI voucher as an apology but they never responded to my emails asking for it...

So business is business and the warning "Buyer Beware" is still good advice.

[dj_blueprint]

I just bought Maschine last week so I can't really judge it that well. Yet.

I will say what I like:

-the hardware is pro, heavy and the pads are excellent.
-the software sounds great.
-the workflow is very reminiscent of live.

The bad, so far:
-the software installation was long and shitty, i had to re-install twice for some odd reason, and I use a MBP.
-too much overlap with what Ableton already does. It begs me to call up Ableton to create hardware that is, basically, a drum-racks equivalent that you can also use Operator and other live instruments with a display and automapping parameters with the display. It wouldn't be hard since it's basically a MPC version of a APC40 with a nice display.

I'll probably get torched by others but overall, when it boils down to it, i'm not going to sell it, im going to learn how to integrate it into my workflow.

[23kon]

I've been really tempted with Maschine and money isnt an issue, it's do I need it? can I see an advantage?
Two small things put me off if I wanted to use it as a standalone piece of software/hardware
1) No Sidechaining
2) No timestretching
In fact, they aren't small things, they are both pretty important things in modern musicmaking.
Other than that it seems great.
granted, i'd have to rework a lot of stuff INTO maschine for playing live, but going forward I can see how easy the "workflow" is for musicmaking.

a little "lol" at whoever slated the word "workflow" created by NI's marketing team, this is true.
Your hardware/software is what you make of it. Workflow is a thing that is unique to the individual.

One of my favourite albums of all time was created on machines with extremely limited capabilities and workflow! DJ Shadow "Endtroducing" - made on an MPC60

Buy what you can afford and make-do.

YOU should be the creative force behind your music, not your computer or software.

[djadonis206]

Two small things put me off if I wanted to use it as a standalone piece of software/hardware
1) No Sidechaining
2) No timestretching
In fact, they aren't small things, they are both pretty important things in modern musicmaking.

Consider your options even though you want to use Maschine as a standalone

There are work arounds, especially if you have Live. You can route your kick and bass/lead/whatever to separate input channels in Live and sidechain to your hearts content.

If you don't want to do that, xfer records makes an awesome LFO with ducking plug-in that only cost $29 that you can use inside maschine. Put a compressor in front of the LFO and this sounds better than the above technique. Plus, you can shape the sidechain.

Time-stretching is a non issue. Maschine chops samples and they play back, with no artifacts, in tempo.

Or, you can sample into Maschine from Live so everything is in sync. When you sample into Maschine, you can set it up to sync to the bar and you get perfectly cropped loops in the tempo you're working it. If you want to change the tempo in the song, chop the loop and keep rolling.

YOU should be the creative force behind your music, not your computer or software.

[humnumb]

1) No Sidechaining

http://www.native-instruments.com/forum ... p?t=129358

2) No timestretching

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfImZkYm_BA

[23kon]

Cheers for the links. Not owning maschine i was just going by a youtube video i watched about some guy moaning that maschine 1.7 shouldve included these features that maschine didnt have in this update.

To get timestretching doesn't that need Kontact5? 379 euro?!
and for sidechaining I have to have reaktor - another 379 euros?!

[humnumb]

Cheers for the links. Not owning maschine i was just going by a youtube video i watched about some guy moaning that maschine 1.7 shouldve included these features that maschine didnt have in this update.

Yeah, complaining about what his expectations were as opposed to what NI has been telling us for weeks is well...idiotic.

To get timestretching doesn't that need Kontact5? 379 euro?!
and for sidechaining I have to have reaktor - another 379 euros?!

Nope. You can use any plugin that does timestretch and sidechain, including free ones:
http://www.kvraudio.com/get/1315.html
http://airy.andre.online.fr/AU/#speedster
http://bedroomproducersblog.com/2010/11 ... t-plugins/

Maschine and LFOTool: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXOBvWz2i6M

[delicioso]

http://www.macprovideo.com/hub/native-i ... nstruments

[pencilrocket]

Cheers for the links. Not owning maschine i was just going by a youtube video i watched about some guy moaning that maschine 1.7 shouldve included these features that maschine didnt have in this update.

To get timestretching doesn't that need Kontact5? 379 euro?!
and for sidechaining I have to have reaktor - another 379 euros?!

Yes. If you need current comercial level time-stretch (included in most Daws) you have to buy that product you mentioned, furthermore it is inside the sampler. Or you can do it in the daw free of charge (if you possessed a package of daw.)

[lethal_pizzle]

You can use the free Kontakt player to timestretch inside Maschine, then resample. Kontakt player gives you 30 minutes before it times out as this is a demo feature.

[starving student]

I still say don't get it, it's rubbish, you don't need maschine, you got drum racks man and on top of that you got a whole line of mpdzzzzz to get you goin, and I know about some mpdzzzzz I started with the first one and have had every single drum controller, minus the nanos. Just do yourself a favor and forget all about this machine business, how do we even know it really exist I mean have you ever really seen one.... uh huhhh see all of these people talking about maschine has even one of them actually showed you a maschine yet.......? that's what I thought, who even knows if this much flaunted and squawked about workflow fairy dust even really exist. If I was you the first thing I would do in the morning is go down to the local gc and find this so called mythological beast called maschine and walk right up to the sales rep standing next to it and say loud and clear with a thunderous voice.......'here here good sir what ever you do do not show me that maschine'..................end of story, and if he doesn't listen and trys to demo it for you anyway I'd scream 'unhand me good sir lest I chastise you with my whipping cane, this maschine business is for the common folk and I'll certainly have none of that. then I'd scream 'you, boy over there, bring me my brisk tea and lets have out of this hellish place' bring the carriage around and back, back I say to our mincemeat pie and drum racks now and forever more very well there there, the second there is most important in this type of situation, anyway.... look at it like this, with the drum racks you could have racks with in racks within racks within racks within racks, now somebody tell me can maschine do that, heeeeeell no!!!!! I could put a rack in a crack of a crack in iraq dammit and I'd like to see maschine pull that off why don't yee