POLL: Maschine / MPD 18/32 / MPC 500/1000/2500

[delicioso]

Maschine is a sequencer, controler, effectboard, soundlib, discolight, synthesizer, sampler and last but not least a mpc ripp off....

Hardly. While there are overlaps in functionality between Maschine and MPC, Maschine goes far beyond any MPC. Maschine is on a whole another level, period.

[The Carpet Cleaner]

....all i'm saying is....the maschine videos sound all a bit overloaded and faceless...

And.....the mpd is "only" a controler....
Maschine is a sequencer, controler, effectboard, soundlib, discolight, synthesizer, sampler and last but not least a mpc ripp off....

You choose....

Lol you can use maschine hardware as a great midi controller if you dont want to launch the software. It up to you.

[3dot...]

Maschine is a sequencer, controler, effectboard, soundlib, discolight, synthesizer, sampler and last but not least a mpc ripp off....

Hardly. While there are overlaps in functionality between Maschine and MPC, Maschine goes far beyond any MPC. Maschine is on a whole another level, period.

heh...I remember a discussion about Ableton Live being the" MPC killer".. a few years back ..

[starving student]

....all i'm saying is....the maschine videos sound all a bit overloaded and faceless...

And.....the mpd is "only" a controler....
Maschine is a sequencer, controler, effectboard, soundlib, discolight, synthesizer, sampler and last but not least a mpc ripp off....

You choose....

hahaha I see where you're coming from now and I love the sentiment but it's unfounded in this case, maschine isn't anything unless you hook it up to some software just like the mpd, it's just that after you do you've got something much better than an mpd......... and thankfully I don't have to choose, my mpc isn't going anywhere. Ableton Live, the mpc, and maschine will all go to the grave with me

[aizo]

I still don't understand whats so superior to a Live 8/MPD combination.

The much more efficient and inspiring hands-on workflow; the ability to be completely mouse-less and not having to constantly stare at the computer screen. It does make all the difference. It's harder to grasp if you've never used hardware like MPCs.

Let me tell you like this. I have an MPC 2000, an Axiom 25, (used to have a MPD18), and Maschine.

Even though I have a flash card installed into my MPC, it's still a royal bitch to load samples onto it. If I used it for sampling it would be better but still it'd take a long ass time compared to Ableton. Now with the Axiom or (previously) the MPD, it's much easier to control drum racks and other things but I still need to use the mouse and the screen. If I sample into drum racks I have to sample into session or sequence view and then drag it into drum racks.

Now, with Maschine...I can sit in my seat with it in my lap and turn the opposite direction of my computer and make a full song. FULL SONG. That song can be a huge sequence of events. It could be a bunch of loops and samples that I trigger in real time and tweak for live performance. ALL OF THAT can be done without looking at the PC screen. I can even save and name the set without a mouse.

Just because there aren't many videos of people using it as a live performance tool doesn't mean it can be done or isn't being done. Shit I use my MPC and Maschine for dirty, industrial, noise, drum and bass, jungle shit. Not a single bit of hi hop gets done on either.

[Carl Lofgren]

I own both a Maschine and a MPC2500 and the only thing I want to say is that I know that the MPC will still be working with any computer/system I choose to work with in the future long after Native Instruments have ditched the Maschine in favor for their latest gizmo-thingy. Native Instruments makes good stuff but I'm not trusting them one single bit. I don't want to say I'm through with NI - but I'm deeply fed up with them.

Hardware is king.

[Cool Character]

^^^

This man understands risk assessment.

[toxictobi]

[23kon]

Fair enough comment Carl.
Would be a proper f*cker if you had lots of tunes made on maschine then they discontinued it and support like they have with other products (as others have said). I guess that's what makes the likes of Ableton Live a safe bet. It's their core product.

Had a little laugh to myself thinking if they did discontinue Maschine if the likes of Darren Price (Underworld) would post up a video on YouTube cursing their name and saying 'i spent all that time transferring all underworld tunes into maschine then the b*stards discontinue the product'.
Just my twisted sense of humour there.

Well, I went and won myself a MPD32 on Ebay tonight so it should arrive in the next couple of days.

Main objective of getting it is to help me do some beats to finish off a load of unfinished tracks that need work done to them and updated drums.
This is mainly dancey kind of electro stuff.
I also want to get back into the more hip/trip hop kind of breaks stuff that got me into computer sample based music in the first place (inspired by my hero at the time DJ Shadow and his classic 'Endtroducing' album out at that time).
Never owned a pad-sampler, its all been done on computer sequencing so looking forward to giving it a shot.

This might lead me to end up buying an MPC as a standalone gig tool OR even going the Maschine route.

[starving student]

whats the deal with all the ni dicontinuing talk, I was under the impression that the products they made but are no longer making new versions still work, is there some kind of time stamp on these products thats making them not work anymore or what?

I know that akai is not doing anything to my mpc but nobody is giving them grief like ni is getting, if they toss in a couple of more features that I want into maschine I wont need it to do anything else so I can see using it for quite some time

[starving student]

btw I don't use the other ni products thats why i'm asking what all the raving is about

[starving student]

I own both a Maschine and a MPC2500 and the only thing I want to say is that I know that the MPC will still be working with any computer/system I choose to work with in the future long after Native Instruments have ditched the Maschine in favor for their latest gizmo-thingy. Native Instruments makes good stuff but I'm not trusting them one single bit. I don't want to say I'm through with NI - but I'm deeply fed up with them.

Hardware is king.

were you fed up before or after purchasing maschine?

[Cool Character]

whats the deal with all the ni dicontinuing talk, I was under the impression that the products they made but are no longer making new versions still work, is there some kind of time stamp on these products thats making them not work anymore or what?

I know that akai is not doing anything to my mpc but nobody is giving them grief like ni is getting, if they toss in a couple of more features that I want into maschine I wont need it to do anything else so I can see using it for quite some time

I see where you're missing the picture here.

Basically, yes, a discontinued piece of software does have a time stamp making them not work eventually. It's not about features. It's that computers and OSes and DAWs very subject to change in a musician's setup. It's why the rich guys who have no problems sacrificing space keep old clunker PCs around. Will NI's discontinued software run on Windows 8? On Ableton 9, (I mean, a fair amount of supported VSTs can crash Live)? On whatever audio interface you might have in the future? Will the next CPU architecture be compatible with it? Eventually one of the ever-changing facets of the way we make music will make discontinued software stop working on our setups. Our only option would be to stop upgrading anything for as long as we intend to use the nixed software, or become rich and buy the space to start collecting pieces of computing history.

[Carl Lofgren]

I own both a Maschine and a MPC2500 and the only thing I want to say is that I know that the MPC will still be working with any computer/system I choose to work with in the future long after Native Instruments have ditched the Maschine in favor for their latest gizmo-thingy. Native Instruments makes good stuff but I'm not trusting them one single bit. I don't want to say I'm through with NI - but I'm deeply fed up with them.

Hardware is king.

were you fed up before or after purchasing maschine?

After buying the Maschine.

I don't want to go oh-all-hardware-makes-everything-so-much-better but it is a security for the future. As long as it got midi and audio connections you are cool.

Take a look at Propellerhead. That is a company that have been building trust for years. They don't fuck around with changing the underlying core of their software or their business. All projects from the very first version of Reason is compatible with the latest version. Although I don't use any of their products - when I think about Propellerhears I think about a stable company with a clear long-term idea of what they want to do.

There is nothing with Native Instruments that make me feel that way. They are - in my view - erratic - throw out new products, new bargains, new fantastic technologies.

With that said - as a product Maschine is cool. I'm not a huge fan of it - but it's definately cool. We live in 2011 and you can surely use it for a couple of years before NI decides to stab themselves in the throat one more time. And during that time you can surely produce lots of cool stuff on it. But my MPC2500 was on my desk before the Maschine and it will be on my desk even after the Maschine.

[starving student]

whats the deal with all the ni dicontinuing talk, I was under the impression that the products they made but are no longer making new versions still work, is there some kind of time stamp on these products thats making them not work anymore or what?

I know that akai is not doing anything to my mpc but nobody is giving them grief like ni is getting, if they toss in a couple of more features that I want into maschine I wont need it to do anything else so I can see using it for quite some time

I see where you're missing the picture here.

Basically, yes, a discontinued piece of software does have a time stamp making them not work eventually. It's not about features. It's that computers and OSes and DAWs very subject to change in a musician's setup. It's why the rich guys who have no problems sacrificing space keep old clunker PCs around. Will NI's discontinued software run on Windows 8? On Ableton 9, (I mean, a fair amount of supported VSTs can crash Live)? On whatever audio interface you might have in the future? Will the next CPU architecture be compatible with it? Eventually one of the ever-changing facets of the way we make music will make discontinued software stop working on our setups. Our only option would be to stop upgrading anything for as long as we intend to use the nixed software, or become rich and buy the space to start collecting pieces of computing history.

I see what you mean, depending on how you look at things that's a tough call. the only other ni products I own are battery, I think version 3 or 2 but I stopped using that crap cause it was much less than what a drumsampler should be and I've never thought twice about it. I do think however that my computer takes up less space than any of my 5 synths and if ni didn't upgrade maschine anymore I would still continue to use it with the current laptop I've got, a rich man by no means I think my current laptop is worth $680 bucks used now but the two would make a great pseudo mpc-drumsampler-ish type of thing for a long time to come imho. I guess I look at instruments more or less as what they are when I buy them, there are a few things that bother me about maschine but they're so small that I'm sure they'll be taken care of.

like carl I've got an mpc 2500 that you'd have to kill me for and by ni's standards it's beyond discontinued but of course it doesn't run inside a computer. maschine is very nice, and it's just such an easy tool to use................ as a matter fact I'm looking for a cheap mpc-500 right now, used to have 2 of them and I got rid of them and have been regretting ever since.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rahoszJdhY