Ableton Forum

Looking at my dock I see I now have five DAWs, four audio editors, two notation apps, and four music programming environments installed.



And zero dissertations finished.

True. The average 99 cent Smartphone app today is more capable in every way than any of the great recording studios all the way up to the mid-nineties. Just let that sink in for a moment.

NI now has 26 expansion packs for Maschine and have still somehow managed to neglect genres that are acoustic drum based or existed before drum machines.

47 channels and nothing on, heh?!

It is reminding me of the current state of TV networks. Instead of having 1 or 2 channels with solid programming 24/7 they have 10-12 similar channels with maybe 2 or 3 programs per channel and the rest is shit. But I get it. The more channels they have the more add revenue potential they have.

But I really don’t get why half of NI’s expansion packs are Hip Hop based and not really all that different in content. How about tossing in a rock/metal pack or jazz?

beats me wrote: But I really don’t get why half of NI’s expansion packs are Hip Hop based and not really all that different in content. How about tossing in a rock/metal pack or jazz?

eh, target market?!

What about all the different types of real drums and basses? Weren't most of their first packs based on real instruments? And whst about all the Kontakt Factory content?

NI have always been sort of half assed with content. How is this new?


Step 1: Add 60GB of content, with little or no direction in mind except 'wow' factor.

Step 2: ????

Step 3: Profit!


IMO it's the problem with a Pokemon business model, a little of everything but nothing completely stands out.
Cause gotta catch em all.

Well at least with pokemon you can collect solely for resale value with profit and it's ok if you're older than 8.

Otherwise hey why not go all the way and be a Brony?
(not that there's anything wrong with that)

You can access Kontakt libraries with Maschine but one of the advantages with the expansion packs is they also come with patterns that if nothing else are great for ideas and analysis. Maybe people think they can just tap out a metal or rock beat but if you’ve used something like Addictive Drums and their patterns it quickly becomes obvious there are a lot of intricacies with even rock music that you aren’t just going to bang out with pads or a step sequencer, even more so for jazz or percussion patterns.

But no, NI thought 2 minimal techno expansion packs with their minimal drum patterns is much more useful.

They're probably at the point where they're like 'we've already got so much in place, most of the work could be automated and we can pump these out every month' and the care for details are gone.
All they need to change are the samples and graphic design.

they use presets to change their sample packs and sample packs to design their presets.



then they give it a new name and... profit.

simple solution: don't buy them

Btw, the factory content to my Maschine MK1 is about half the drum one shots I still use to this day. Good stuff. But then I only use them as starting points for my sound shaping.
Some nice (like almost half of them) real drums are among them too. So I'm more than happy with that purchase back then, since it's also still the nicest and most versatile Midi controller I own.

But rock or jazz on a drum machine with 16 pads and a 16 step step-sequencer?! Are you sure you bought the right tool for the job?

I still use Komplete One