Ableton Forum

WHAT about the new BEAT THANG...Go to BEST BUY and they will soon have a magazine on it. You can look on youtube now.

Saw Eskmo last night and he has switched from his old trigger finger, and was sporting a new Maschine....

I prefer the road less traveled, MPC 5000.

Thanks for the responses everyone. Looks like Maschine has won the poll anyway!

Also thanks for throwing Beat Thang machine into the mix too. Their machine looks like a Dell Alienware laptop!
How much is the Beat Thang? Looks like it's not available yet. Wow at what they've done though. If the pads on this are decent then this could shakeup the market when it comes to standalone samplers! It has some spec! definitely brought the sampler up to 2011's technology standards. I love the little scratch-wheel on the side.

Money really isn't an issue. I just want something that will work with me the way I want something to work.

I can see Maschine being a great thing, but it's another program to learn.

It's been playing about with NanoStudio's TRG pads thats got me wanting to get back into more beatmaking and back to old hiphop/sampling kind of stuff. Although i'll probably still continue making dancey stuff.

The good thing about maschine is that it can be standalone or integrated into ableton i guess.

With the Akai MPD 26/32 id have to setup/assign stuff in ableton sets.

I do dig the standalone MPCs and itd be a very simple setup for gigging! and no potential crashes
The thing that lets these down is the available effects to hand (mind you I do have a Korg Pad Mini).
But the MPD 26/32 has assignable knobs to hand which i can set to ANY of my VST's or Ableton effects.
Thats also an advantage they have over maschine as theres more knobs/sliders to-hand whereas maschine only allows the 8 knobs.

Am i right in saying that it can only have the 8 assigned to the particular vst/effects at once and you couldnt have for example two knobs controlling effects, another two controlling effects from another pad/channel?

Im finding the ranting theraputic to my decision making, sorry if im just airing all my thoughts.

To be honest i think im still airing towards the MPD32 as a control surface and pad machine.
and i'd maybe even end up buying a MPC1000 as a standalone thing for fun and gigs too.
If the Beat Thang is a competitive price though I could see me buying that over a MPC1000 purely for its more effects and playability for more exciting live performances than an MPC - it definitely looks that way from the demos online.

Can someone advise on the effects question ive asked about maschine above?
One thing that does interest me about maschine is that it can host VSTs. So even if ive made loops and songs in ableton i can extract the midi loops to create live sets in maschine where i can tweak vst synth parameters live as well as trigger samples.
Hrm, but all this would be possible with the MPDs anyway.

Decisions decisions!

All the videos and feedback about Maschine definitely make it an interesting prospect. This thread is the first ive read negative feedback about NI. to me they seem a good company especially with giving away updates for free!

esky wrote:I vote for a MPD 32. I tested Maschine and gave it back. I don't really understand the hype. Doesn't a pad controller, Drumracks and Live give you the same...? Is searching for samples with a tiny display and a rubber knob so much better...?

Thats kinda my thoughts too.
What do others think? what makes maschine so much better than using an MPD32 with Ableton Live?

23kon wrote: Am i right in saying that it can only have the 8 assigned to the particular vst/effects at once and you couldnt have for example two knobs controlling effects, another two controlling effects from another pad/channel?
Can someone advise on the effects question ive asked about maschine above?
Hrm, but all this would be possible with the MPDs anyway.
This thread is the first ive read negative feedback about NI. to me they seem a good company especially with giving away updates for free!

Yes, Machine has group macros, where the 8 knobs can be assigned to anything you want within that group. The pitch of this, the feedback of that and so on. I have a feeling that the next update will improve upon this even more, perhaps macro pages as well. Now, as for negativity, remember that it was one person amidst everyone else that recommended Maschine. As for the MPD controllers, they are nice, but offer nowhere near the control that machine offers. Remember that machine can be switched in real time to a MIDI controller mode, of which there are Ableton, Traktor and such templates for control of Live's drum kits and such. I once played a set that was totally improvised where the only controller I brought was Maschine. I switched between internal and Live Control modes, allowing it to automap to Live's effects and mixer settings, and then back into Maschine for jamming there as well. Lots of fun!

Thanks for the reply Exper.
Thats one of the things that was putting me off maschine, i thought that the knobs could only be assigned to what was currently being played at that particular time (e.g one effect/parameters of that pad/synth).

Don't worry, i'm not letting the negative comment about NI put me off. I realise its one persons view against the hundreds of positive reviews, videos and feedback about this bit of kit. When I do my homework about something i'm thinking about buying - i REALLY do my homework!

I didnt realise that Maschine was capable of shifting like that to be a midi controller at the touch of a button. Interesting.

The type of music I want to get back into making is sample based hip/trip hop stuff (dj shadow being a big hero of mine lol) so this is why im after more of a trigger pad thing (mpd/maschine). however i will be still doing dancey stuff which i make with one of my mates so i want this new controller (whatever it is) to be able to integrate into the performance too.
When it came to the dancey stuff id be using either Touch-Able or LiveRemote to trigger clips/scenes and tweaking parameters with knobs in there. And for another set of hands to control id use either my novation nocturn OR have the MPD32 with its knobs and sliders - and also pads to trigger samples. Im not sure that Maschine would offer as many controls at a particular moment as the MPD. Thats why im swethering towards the MPD.

Definitely the software side of maschine seems a good way of working though, especially for the more sample based way of working.

My mate i make dancey stuff with curses me for going through controllers in the search of a perfect setup for studio and gigs. Think he'd go daft if i suddenly switch to maschine as it'd be yet another thing he'd need to learn and buy to keep up lol.

Oh actually .... thought of another question ....
Can the Maschine software accept another controller to control parameters within a vst/effects. E.g can I plug a nocturn in?

exper wrote: I tried it but it seemed like too much complication for use within a DAW. Synth players seemed to like Kore mostly, but they are a small chunk of NI's users.

Being that NI make Massive, Kontakt, Reaktor, FM8 and Absynth, I would say with no malice that you're wrong about NI having a small synth player buying audience.
Also, because you didn't understand Kore and found it complicated in no way makes it a bad product, though the dumbing down of all products to reach a mass audience is very obviously what's been happening in electronic music sales for years now, bleh!

Machinesworking wrote:

exper wrote: I tried it but it seemed like too much complication for use within a DAW. Synth players seemed to like Kore mostly, but they are a small chunk of NI's users.

Being that NI make Massive, Kontakt, Reaktor, FM8 and Absynth, I would say with no malice that you're wrong about NI having a small synth player buying audience.
Also, because you didn't understand Kore and found it complicated in no way makes it a bad product, though the dumbing down of all products to reach a mass audience is very obviously what's been happening in electronic music sales for years now, bleh!

No, I never said that no one uses their softsynths. What I said was the traditional, "vintage" softsynths they sold are really not used much anymore. There are better Prophet 5 emulations for one thing. Massive, Kontakt, FM8 and Absynth are more that emulation synths, (even though FM8 started out as a DX7 clone)
And no, I'm not too "dumb" to understand Kore; I program stuff in Reaktor, build machines within a Nord G2, I even have dabbled in PD. The only reason I would have used Kore would have been to use VSTs in Logic when I actually used it...

23kon wrote: Oh actually .... thought of another question ....
Can the Maschine software accept another controller to control parameters within a vst/effects. E.g can I plug a nocturn in?

I've never tried it, but you should be able to. Keep in mind that so far, only macros can be assigned to midi control. So, once you have set up your macros, you can go into Live's plugin confiqurations mode, and assign those macros to the live plugin window. SO for instance you can set up a few effects on the master output, assign some parameters to the master macro knobs, and assign those in live. Then you can always control those parameters from live no matter what else you have on your screen...

exper wrote: No, I never said that no one uses their softsynths. What I said was the traditional, "vintage" softsynths they sold are really not used much anymore.
There are better Prophet 5 emulations for one thing. Massive, Kontakt, FM8 and Absynth are more that emulation synths, (even though FM8 started
out as a DX7 clone)

You said keyboard players are a small audience, which I seriously doubt and you have no way to prove. In fact the simple fact they make 'playable' synths seems to point to them having a keyboard playing audience as well, which will only grow now that latency isn't much of an issue.
Plus, you seem to think that lack of development in their vintage line meant there's no audience for that type of software which the shit load of vintage gear in Komplete 7 would pretty much point to you being wrong about. It was obviously simply another matter like Kore where NI chose to abandon some products in favor of other pursuits, their choice of course, but people very obviously don't have to be happy with it. I'm a big fan of NI's products, but the simple fact that NI expect me to upgrade to Komplet 7 to keep some organs and pianos etc. around is off putting. I even bought Komplete Care back in the day, but realistically I'm tired of companies like NI asking me to pay a yearly 'salary' to keep up. They're pretty cool with upgrade prices, but by far they most expensive software on my computer after 7 years of upgrades etc. is NI kit.

And no, I'm not too "dumb" to understand Kore; I program stuff in Reaktor, build machines within a Nord G2, I even have dabbled in PD. The only reason I would have used Kore would have been to use VSTs in Logic when I actually used it...

Yes, one of the great advantages of Kore is for people who use multiple DAWs on different platforms. No I wasn't insulting your intelligence, you said it was overly complicated, well, not if you had specific uses for it, and if you play live. Not all of us want to hit a few pads and turn some knobs or DJ live, the fact that you could set Kore to switch entire racks of gear with program change messages is/was very useful. In fact my contention will probably always be that Kore had a hard time finding it's audience simply because NI didn't know how to market it, whereas they seem to be solid behind Maschine marketing wise. Plus, NI gave no indication that Kore was doing badly, just that Maschine was doing better, and both are time consuming apps compared to the rest of their line, so the choice was made.

Well, I've done this track with the help of maschine :
http://bit.ly/lXX8MQ
And it's a hit.
I'm buying a boat next week.

So maschine (+Live) all the way !

Good time to buy a Maschine, there's loads on ebay, seems like a lot of disappointed customers, I don't suppose this board had anything to do with it.

The Carpet Cleaner wrote:Well, I've done this track with the help of maschine :
http://bit.ly/lXX8MQ
And it's a hit.
I'm buying a boat next week.

So maschine (+Live) all the way !

WOW!

Haha! Well if it can make hits then i'm buying it!
Dude, you should join the NI Marketing team

You are right Jimmy, there does seem to be a constant stream of them on eBay. My guess is similar to yours - it's folk who've not been able to get to grips with it, probably 'dj kids' who's mummy and daddy have bought it for them who hoped it would make music for them rather than them having to do any actual work to get music out of it. Brand new in the UK the setup is around £499. On ebay they seem to be selling between £340 and £400 ish. So that'd be a saving of £100-160.
with what i said about spoilt 'dj kids' selling these, i'm not sure that the saving may be worth it as the maschine controller mightve had a harsh short little mistreated life. (Kids have no respect for technology these days lol).

Quite a lot of the ones on eBay are 1.5 and state the update to 1.6 is available online. This is true.
Are all the other extras that come in the package online for download free too? Can someone whos got a login confirm this?

Away to nip out for some food shopping this morning then I might swing by reddogmusic store.
Was in yesterday for a quick shifty at the MPDs but they didnt have any out - only in boxes.
Might see if theres anyone in the shop who used Maschine and can give their tuppence.