Sitting on the Fence - Push or Maschine

[TheDreamisReaL]

Push controls almost every control every aspect of live and Push isn't really building on what Live does it's just simply the controller for Live that people like myself have been asking for,

No doubt Push looks great, and offers the control people have been asking for.
BUT, can you
Adjust user waveforms in Operator
Adjust Sampler Start/End points
Store/Recall Rack parameters
Make a sequencer style melody without some wacky workaround with a drumRack and/or M4L
Record Automation of Return Tracks and their racks Macros
load a Space Echo emulator or Reverb that sounds good
navigate to something in Arrange view and adjust anything

I could go on and on.
Not that Maschine does any of that either, I found Maschine to be annoying when trying to use it within Ableton.
Nevertheless, I got a lot of love invested in Ableton, NI, controllers and hardware, yet I see a lot of room for improvement.
Live 9 is gonna be great, but there are still a lot of things missing.
For "almost every aspect" of Live you can name, that you control, I bet I can name one you cant.
I'm gonna go one further too,
I bet customizing PUSH with Traktor is way easier and more flexible that it will be in Ableton Live for years.

I think your forgetting about Live's controller mapping so mapping controls to the 8 macros, saving and recalling is easily done now ...Maschine is still very dependent on a DAW to go from creative idea to full production song, I look at push as the ideal balance between a DAW thats based around production/performance and a controller which is something we haven't seen from any of the other major DAWS...I personally wanted that and like I said on a earlier post you can't compare these two

[TomViolenz]

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[yur2die4]

You can arrange hands free with either controller. Just hit Global Record and rock out....

[TomViolenz]

You can arrange hands free with either controller. Just hit Global Record and rock out....

Well you got me there
I guess I'm way too cerebral to work in the "classical" way. I need too feel like I have total control over the process and I'm just not good enough to do it on the fly...

[fimpson]

I'm currently swaying towards push - but there's no way I'm getting anything until Push actually comes out.

Might sell my Impulse 49 depending on how good the 'writing melodies with pads' thing is - although it's nice having faders.

Hoping it's not more than $500 - in theory it shouldn't be because the software it comes with isn't exactly as "expansive" as Maschine's

Also I'm REALLY hoping I'll be able to just buy the hardware and not spend the $100 bucks on Intro - since I've bought the upgrade to Suite with the free upgrade to 9...

[delicioso]

I'm currently swaying towards push - but there's no way I'm getting anything until Push actually comes out.

While the design of the Push is clearly Maschine-inspired, there's actually not that much overlap at all between the two devices. Push can't even do most of what Maschine excels at (especially sample slicing and the the ability to have an almost entirely mouseless/computer screen-less workflow).

For me, the Push is a non-starter considering I already have an iPad with isomorphic controller apps as well as TouchAble/Griid/Lemur...etc. And it's inevitable an app or Lemur template replicating Push will drop soon enough, as was the case for APC40/Launchpad. Push doesn't offer any functionality that could replace all of what Maschine does nor does it offer anything that I need or don't already have.

[kevwestbeats]

I'm currently swaying towards push - but there's no way I'm getting anything until Push actually comes out.

Might sell my Impulse 49 depending on how good the 'writing melodies with pads' thing is - although it's nice having faders.

Hoping it's not more than $500 - in theory it shouldn't be because the software it comes with isn't exactly as "expansive" as Maschine's

Also I'm REALLY hoping I'll be able to just buy the hardware and not spend the $100 bucks on Intro - since I've bought the upgrade to Suite with the free upgrade to 9...

Push $600 people are already taking preorders

[fimpson]

Push $600 people are already taking preorders

oh :/

@delicioso: Yeah, Maschine is obv very different from Push in both function and concept - Maschine being mostly about audio arranging etc and Push being about Midi performance and arrangement. The way I see it is basically: Push for midi, Maschine for audio. I simply prefer to handle my audio with a mouse which is why I'm going Push.

[TomViolenz]

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[The Carpet Cleaner]

Push $600 people are already taking preorders

oh :/

@delicioso: Yeah, Maschine is obv very different from Push in both function and concept - Maschine being mostly about audio arranging etc and Push being about Midi performance and arrangement. The way I see it is basically: Push for midi, Maschine for audio. I simply prefer to handle my audio with a mouse which is why I'm going Push.

I'm not delicioso but I will still chim in:
While only Maschine does audio well (the whole sampling aspect), I think both have different strength when it comes to live playing and Midi arrangement.
Pro Push: The really great isomorphic keyboard implementation (and I'm not of the opinion that an iPad app is gonna be a good substitute) and the 32 step step-sequencer.
Pro Maschine: The bigger pads (some of the best on the market) are great for live drumming and coming up with original drum patterns for your compositions. And the per-step automation of any parameter in the step sequencer which is beautifully implemented in Maschine and non existent in Push.

So it comes back to preference again which is better for Midi performance and arrangement.

And I disagree that those two are very different. If they were (e.g. the whole Arrangement View aspect of Live as the focus of Push) I would be much easier to convince to buy Push in addition to my Maschine.

I think we are all having this discussion because there is so much overlap in what those two devices do.

I have maschine and an APC40. My setup currently is really comfortable.
But I can see myself buying push if I have some exra money in the next few month.

More toys to play with!

[kevwestbeats]

Push $600 people are already taking preorders

oh :/

@delicioso: Yeah, Maschine is obv very different from Push in both function and concept - Maschine being mostly about audio arranging etc and Push being about Midi performance and arrangement. The way I see it is basically: Push for midi, Maschine for audio. I simply prefer to handle my audio with a mouse which is why I'm going Push.

You couldn't be more wrong about Maschine. Its totally a midi device if you want it to be. The software does good things with audio but its also strong in handling midi with Ableton. I use Ableton mainly for its midi sequencing and rewire capabilities at this point. Maschine is a great fit for Live users who learn the templates and how to make them work together.

[TomViolenz]

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[panten]

Hey, this is a really lively & healthy debate. I've not made my mind up, not surprisingly, and probably won't until Push hits the shops and I can actually have some hands on experience.

If I were to buy Maschine I would be primarily using it as a plugin for Live. I realise that a lot of people love using it standalone as a groovebox sketchpad but it's not the reason I would be buying it so it will be, for me, an nice side effect. For the guys who have used Maschine in both standalone & plugin are there any differences in how it operates?

It seems to me that one of the Main advantages of using Maschine is that it will enable you to sample and slice to pads. This is the big one that will decide whether I go Maschine or Push tbh as I want to be able to easily sample (from any source) perform, re-sample/mangle and so on using only the controller. How extensively you'll be able to do your initial sound design from Push remains to be seen.

So if I went Push, what are the workarounds for this?

• Well for realtime sampling 'on-the-fly' you can of course just record an audio clip, set the markers and slice to new midi track. This method is super fast but doesn't initially give you the direct control that Maschine has over your slices. It's based on transients unless you manually set warp markers (which takes your hands off the controller) Until Ableton give us mapping control over the start/end points in Sampler this option will always be a bit limited.
• Build M4L devices that can sample/chop and dump to drum rack pads. I've actually started building this already as an exercise to learn Max for Live. I can see myself persevering with this in the long term and getting a lot of enjoyment from the process. This way I will be able to tailor the tool to my needs, even if it's in my own half-arsed way.
• Use a 3rd party sampler plugin. I know very little about this side of things and how useful it can be within Live.

As far as using plugins in Live with Push. I have no problem at all in setting up a rack and making smart knobs to control parameters, you only ever need to do this once. I love the way Camel Audio's Alchemy does it in the Perform tab. Morphing between the presets to control the 8 macro knobs is a genius method. I'd much prefer that performance way of controlling a vst than scrolling through pages and pages of parameters to tweak them individually.

I wonder if it's really that important to be able to do all of the precursory sound design from the controller (creating new samples aside) Are you able to set up complex chains and smart controls using the Maschine controller at all?

I've been modding my MPD32 setup recently using the AMAZING nativeKontrol MPDRx & Clyphx scripts and they're pretty darn impressive. I just hope that these 'heated' debates about which controller is better won't really be valid in the future. Then it will come down to how many colours your fat jelly pads have

[TomViolenz]

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[panten]

What I meant by 'smart controls' was this: http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p ... EBB269FACD
I've not experimented with this yet but I'd imagine you could create some really intricate slicing presets in Live that would allow you to really change the nature of your existing samples. Again you would only need to set this up once (per preset) then you could just jam away and try things out in realtime. Either controller could use this method but what interests me is that this could be done on Push to get some of that realtime sampling functionality that Maschine so dominates.

I can see this workflow being really nice with push and slicing to drum racks actually. The transients aren't always the best unfortunately but for how quickly you can slice and the versatility of making custom presets is maybe a small payoff.
Now if only the Live API would allow you to midi map those start and end loop braces in a clip...