Ableton Forum

as in not along with an apc40/launchpad or anything else. I'm just curious how many people have settled on
these two for all of their needs?

Yep - I do. I've had Maschine for about six months now with Ableton and can't really see myself swapping for anything else soon.

The Maschine updates are slowly turning what is already an excellent instrument into a mind-blowing one. The next update for example is having MIDI drag and drop added into it. So when programming a beat/line into the Maschine plugin, you will then be able to drop it straight into whichever Ableton track you like. It already has had MIDI out added, together with audio drag and drop, as well as a patch that allows you to control Ableton directly, triggering clips etc straight from the pad. It has surprised me how Maschine can be as versatile as it is, but is not on many people's minds when they are considering a new controller. For me, Maschine has been an amazing find!

I myself have come aboard recently and maschine seems like such an intuitive controller with these latest updates I don't know of another controller that is so well balanced, they either have buttons that are only good for triggering and not the best for banging on or utilize some open source apps that take some getting used to for some users or something else but maschine really seems like the perfect thing to use with a computer. I wish Native would make some more videos those tuts are excellent.

I use Live but not Machine that was useless info I know.

I've read a few people say they couldn't work out what maschine was good for - something that's always puzzled me. What didn't you like?

Maschine is without a doubt the best purchase I have made in years for my setup. It is so fun to work with, it keeps getting better as mentioned, and it adapts well to whatever I'm working. It is actually pretty useful for experimental stuff believe it or not. You can get pretty deep with effect, filtering, envelopes, etc. You can also stack effects in a chain and apply sounds to that as well. As for using with Live, I got along pretty well for about 3 months with the Ableton template. It is pretty usable. I ultimately bought the APC40 so that the maschine controller is just on its own, but you could conceivably do ok with it. I think that for a liveset, I might leave the apc at home and just bring maschine for both purposes...

I'm not sure why anyone who has seen any of those native tuts would find maschine not useful

Maschine and Live are the essence of my live setup. But I could not go with just the Maschine hardware as a controller. I use the Maschine hardware to control Drums in the Maschine plug-in, APC40 to control Live's mixer functions/clips/selected device parameters, and Kore controller for send effect parameters. Then I also have the BCR2000 for control of various things for the Master 8 tracks or the main 8 drum tracks (sub tracks of one of the main tracks). This isn't necessay, but I like to have some drum channels with instant access to sends and volumes or effects and quick access to levels,filter or effects of the main 8 bus tracks.

glitchrock-buddha wrote:Maschine and Live are the essence of my live setup. But I could not go with just the Maschine hardware as a controller. I use the Maschine hardware to control Drums in the Maschine plug-in, APC40 to control Live's mixer functions/clips/selected device parameters, and Kore controller for send effect parameters. Then I also have the BCR2000 for control of various things for the Master 8 tracks or the main 8 drum tracks (sub tracks of one of the main tracks). This isn't necessay, but I like to have some drum channels with instant access to sends and volumes or effects and quick access to levels,filter or effects of the main 8 bus tracks.

it sounds like you've got alot going on, btw Ni owes you for it's live userbase catching on,
forgive me I'm not adept at using many controllers at once, how much would your sets suffer if you used only maschine and live?

no apc/launchpad here.

Maschine + Live combo does it for me... though i can see the appeal of an APC.

I find Maschine is great for creating loops and beats... and also when i need to, i can change it to trigger clips off... the 4x4 grid is fine for my work-flow.

my only gripe is that it would be great to be able to switch to 'native mode' with one hand... instead of the Shift+Control.. which is just out of reach for a one-hander.

I always forget about Maschine until one of these threads pops up and then I'm interested again.

The problem is it's set square at that "not right now" price point. Even just 50 bucks less would give it that "done deal!" feeling.

The Northern Contingent wrote:I've read a few people say they couldn't work out what maschine was good for - something that's always puzzled me. What didn't you like?

the effects are a sore spot for me I just haven't been feeling them, I might need to dig deeper with them but something about their character just doesn't do it for me yet

one thing i love about it is its footprint, they used the space better than any other controller i've seen in my opinion, the apc has alot goin on control wise but it's too big and would throw off the whole vibe of my setup, I'm thinking about looking into getting a wooden chasis for maschine I think it would look excellent in some retro walnut or some really refined looking wood

beats me wrote:I always forget about Maschine until one of these threads pops up and then I'm interested again.

The problem is it's set square at that "not right now" price point. Even just 50 bucks less would give it that "done deal!" feeling.

funny that you say that cause it does have this kind of weird feeling like it's just outside of your peripheral view, haha maybe akai hired a voodoo witchdoctor to put a blurring hex on it, I mean I have one
and it's still like that, you've got to remind yourself about it sometimes

you might be right about price, but i've seen some good deals used, I got mine in a trade of a kaosspad 2 and casio cz-101 which the two of those had cost me $200 so it was a good deal and new, the guy I got it from didn't know what to do with it, that might be part of it that people don't know how to feel about it yet i guess

beats me wrote:I always forget about Maschine until one of these threads pops up and then I'm interested again.

The problem is it's set square at that "not right now" price point. Even just 50 bucks less would give it that "done deal!" feeling.

Try used! I got my Maschine for $350 on Craigslist. The unit was never even plugged in. The guy bought it on impulse, opened the box to look at it, and when he went to return it because he wanted a MPC instead, the store said no dice. You can also find lots of used ones on eBay as well.

Maybe I'll look for used ones but I always feel sketchy about anything used that involes electronics hardware synced to software.

Also sorta scary how quickly these things seem to be put on the used market. Not saying it isn't quality but it almost sounds like they debuted on a Tuesday and used ones were being sold on that Wednesday. Was this thing marketed to meth addicts?